by Stewart Richmond

Created on: June 06, 2008

The President of the United States is assassinated. Bad News.
The hated President of a third world dictatorship is assassinated. Good News.

"Bad News" and "Good News" are only differentiated by perspective.

Interest rates go up. Bad news for people buying homes or borrowing money.

But great news for retirees relying on interest to live.

For every person in the world there is bad news which would be good news for someone else.

Many Western nations like the United Kingdom and Australia import doctors from third world countries. Good news for patients in Manchester or Melbourne, very bad news for patients in Lagos or Limpopo.

What is bad news for you, may not necessarily be bad news for me.

The price of oil goes up causing pain at the pump. Bad News.
The price of oil goes up and my oil company shares are paying higher dividends. Good News.

I'll always remember a scene in an old western of a happy undertaker measuring up people for after the coming shoot out. The more dead the happier he was. Sudden death was very good news for him. Very bad news for those who were about to die.

Editors may not be aware of it but they work with Newton's Third Law of Motion every day: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."

It's the same with "good" news and "bad" news.

They don't favour bad news over good news because it will always be up to the consumer on whether the news is good or bad, from their individual perspective.

So there is danger in every attempt to define amorphous concepts in journalistic endeavour.

There cannot be hard and fast rules in journalism as defining lines are constantly moving and social mores are constantly evolving.

(An individual wins $50 Million in a lottery. "Good News." I don't think so. "Bad News" for the millions of ticket holders who didn't win especially me!)

This may appear to be a simplistic approach, but the question is simplistic.

Editors would rarely consider in their daily routine if news is "good" or if it is "bad."

They consider news against a series of criteria which differs from editor to editor, culture to culture, medium to medium.

At the end of the day "good" and "bad" aren't words that come into final decision making.

They don't favour "bad" news over "good" news, they just don't take it into consideration.

It is up to the consumer to decide if news fits their own perspective on "good" and "bad" if it is an issue for them, and reject the media that doesn't fit.

There are millions of options.

Learn more about this author, Stewart Richmond.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.