Understanding fear-based news
The Internet and Smartphones are two major influences in our lives today, have you thought about the dramatic change these two phenomena’s have made to life? The Internet has taken the old yellow pages saying “Let Your Fingers do the Walking” way beyond what we could imagine. We literally now do not have to leave our house to shop, eat we can even travel virtually by looking at a YouTube Video.
Smartphones? Well that’s taken the experience of sitting in front of a Screen to enjoy all what the Internet gives and moving it all into the palm of our hands. Truly exciting times, yes, we have become a little lazier in some respects, but a lot of life has become easier but sadly like all good things there is the potential of a dark side.
Now? With Smartphones and Mobile Data Everybody is a reporter, with review pages, Facebook, Twitter everyone gets the chance to be an Investigative reporter. What this has done is make the news agency’s up their game to get your attention. The end result is a reporting trend that is a little alarming, you could call it making a mountain out of a molehill, sensationalising anything but it actually has a Tag Line and it goes like this, “Fear-Based News”.
What is Fear based News driven by? “If it bleeds, it leads”. Fear-based news programming has two aims. The first is to grab the viewer’s attention. In the news media, this is called the teaser. The second aim is to persuade the viewer that the solution for reducing the identified fear will be in the news story. If a teaser asks, “What’s in your tap water that YOU need to know about?” a viewer will likely tune in to get the up-to-date information to ensure safety.
This type of news feed has been used a lot this past few months to target Retirement Villages and Contracts, and we at De Paul Manor Estate on the Gold Cost are naturally alarmed about this trend.
Let us put it in this perspective…
There are well over 2000 retirement Villages in Australia, 60% of villages are owned and operated by big and small private companies. The other 40% of villages are owned and operated by big and small Not for Profit organisations, church and charities plus local community groups.
There is well over 200,000 residents that live in these retirement villages with contracts that’s a lot of people yet what did the headlines say? “Contracts to complicated” Retirement Village Contracts need Urgent Review” all very scary you would think it was a massive problem, but was it?
Well out of that 2000 retirement villages in Australia the massive total number of issues was? Four.
The Retirement Village Industry which De Paul Manor Estate on the Gold Coast is part of has had regulation in place for 37 years and it has served all involved well, so feel safe and secure when dealing with us when making your retirement choices on the Gold Coast.
Now sit back and enjoy the wonderful things the Internet and Smart Phones offer, and maybe turn off the news for a while.