No matter the time of the year, the news is almost always depressing and disappointing. This negative bias makes many people simply avoid the media altogether to escape the impact it has on their mental health.
The answer is not sugarcoating the ugly truth, as this will only make you look untrustworthy. Instead, you can help your audience see the bigger picture and broaden your focus from just talking about the problem to looking at what is being done to solve it.
If that sounds like a challenge, follow this simple five-step structure outlined by Christine Schmidt at NiemanLab.
"Regular news consumption can engender a kind of learned helplessness that makes clear the appeal of ideologically slanted news — which offers up a clear cast of good guys and bad guys with no moral grey — and just avoiding news entirely," the article reads.
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