As someone who has spent more than half of his life working in various newsrooms ( and covering some of the most fucked up places and conflicts of this world of ours) , all I can say is that you are right…

There is a plethora of reasons why whenever you switch on any news channel, you get bombarded with one ugly thing after another — and most of them have to do with the simple fact that the over-whelming majority of the audiences will not be interested in a “good” story- ( for example, there were hundreds , if not thousands of cases, during the big refugee crises, in which individuals, of groups of people, went to extreme lengths to help the strangers who showed up at their doorstep with nothing but fear and the clothes they were wearing- but for every person who clicked on one of these stories, there were 50 who clicked on the stories talking about the drownings, misery, violence of the border guards etc…Same thing applies to almost every “crisis” situation)

It always struck me as a bit odd — the fact that a story with positive connotations, or the one I did about the businessmen from our diaspora who payed from their own pockets to build the houses for 64 homeless families — and never even tried to get the credit, or the media attention, never get as much traction as a “bad” story, or the one I did about a boat-load of about 30 migrants who were left to drown in the Mediterranean while the various agencies and guards kept arguing whose responsibility it is to save them. After a lot of mulling and trying to understand, I figured that there must be an evolutionary reason for this- We seem to be primed to take a bigger, of not automatic, interest in the “bad” news, vs the “good” ones. As if the preference for the “bad” news is some sort of a sub-conscious safety mechanism- we need to know the “bad” things happening somewhere else, because , tomorrow, they might be happening here-

Now- with the modern technologies and the expansion of internet — we are in an unparalleled position in human history (as far as we know)- almost everything can be accessed with relative ease and there is an over-abundance of information on all levels. Meaning- it was never easier to get the news from each and every corner of the planet.

Now, since our preference seems to be what it is, the news will, naturally, concentrate on the “bad” stories…. add to that the sheer volume of the news coming in out of every corner of the world- and, by switching any news channel, or reading any newspaper, will give you an impression that the world is getting worse and worse and that we are on the brink of some sort of apocalypse.

While, in fact, the opposite might be true.

With all the horrific situations in various parts of the world, there is also an unparalleled improvement in many other countries and regions- We might concentrate on the fact that the pay inequality has never been bigger- but we can also state that there was never a period of time, in known history, when a bigger percentage of workers were getting decent wages and healthcare.

We might speak of the rising tensions and the political polarization while we count the victims of what seem to be endless circles of violence, but we might also ponder on the fact that there was never another period of time in which more countries (and/or ) people- were cooperating on trade, science, arts technology and all sorts of little things which create the details of our daily lives.

Then , there is the little phenomena of the political leaders constantly presenting things as much worse then they truly are, ( US is a perfect example)… that is done with the simple purpose of control- a population which is scared is much easier to control, or convince, than people who feel safe and secure.

So, you hit it spot-on… Today's main headline should be “the world we live in is a good place”, or “the world is, in fact, not as bad as we thought” …maybe even “stop worrying- things are getting better ( maybe not for you personally, but overall, they are) ”. But that headline will not get as much attention as the one saying that the world is about to explode/implode/be hit by an asteroid….

In fact, the truth is probably ( I Say probably since we have no way of knowing the details of things from the past) doing just as it always did- it is us who keep projecting and imagining