İrem Kılıç - 12

News editors decide what to broadcast on television and what to print in

newspapers. What factors do you think influence these decisions? Do we

become used to bad news? Would it be better if more good news was

reported?

The situation of determining what news should be broadcasted or published is a duty of news editors, but, to do their jobs, editors rely on several factors such as political pressure, Target Rating Points (TRPs) or demands of their workplace which influence their decisions. In my point of view, the more people watch or read bad news, the more they become accustomed to its hazardous affects. Therefore, for sanity to prevail, good news should occupy more place in media than devastating news.

It is a known fact that editors face with a range of considerations when deciding what news stories to cover, and among their deciding factors, political pressure may be the first thing comes to mind. In some conservative countries, goverments keep a tight rein on the media in order to suppress voices of opponents. As a consequence of their restrictions, freedom of the press is precluded. Additionaly, it is an undeniable fact that editors have a propensity for focusing more on the news which has a more possibility to generate revenue. On account of this issue, Target Rating Points (TRPs) can be considered as the second significant factor which affects the editors' decisions about what news is aired or published on. Finally, editors' decisions may be shaped by the request of their bosses on types of coverage. Since, their employments depend on whether they behave according to job requirements or not, their evaluation may be manipulated by the workplace.

On the other hand, I believe that good news should be published and broadcasted more than bad news for several reasons. First of all, according to researchers, showing distressing news on media normalizes terror, violence and fear. People are getting used to direful events that are happening in their countries and this situation builds up learned helplessness among citizens. Furthermore, bad news has immense potential to augment negative behavior patterns, because people, especially children, unconsciously imitate what they see or learn from information sources. By taking all of these factors into proper consideration, news editors ought to rise the numbers of good news in the electronic and print media, for the sake of public health.

To conclude, even though one part of news editors' jobs is making decision about coverage, their determining factors are affected by numerous factors such as political pressure or Target Rating Points (TRPs). From my perspective, they should focus more on good news than unpleasant news to diminish chaos, desperation and risky behaviors among civilians.