Increasing Incidence of Bad News

HAVE you ever noticed that headlines proclaiming bad news awaken more reader interest than those conveying good news? Whether it is a newspaper headline of a natural disaster or some scintillating gossip splashed on the front cover of a glossy magazine, it seems that bad news sells better than good news.

Today there is no shortage of bad news. But one sometimes wonders whether bad news is what reporters and journalists are trained to look for and ferret out—to the exclusion of any good news.

Plentiful Throughout History

Indeed, bad news has been plentiful throughout the centuries, outweighing any good news. In the annals of history, the scales are heavily tipped toward human suffering, disappointment, and despair, which have been mankind’s lot.

Let us consider just a few examples. The book Chronicle of the World, devised by Jacques Legrand, sets out a collection of stories, each written for the particular date on which the event happened but as if it were being told by a modern journalist reporting the event. From these well-researched reports, we get a bird’s-eye view of the widespread bad news that man has heard throughout his troubled existence here on planet Earth.

First, consider this early report from Greece in 429 B.C.E. It is covering the war then being waged between Athens and Sparta: “The city-state of Potidaea has been forced to surrender to the besieging Athenians after being reduced to such a state of hunger that its people have been eating the bodies of their dead.” Bad news indeed!

Moving on to the first century before our Common Era, we find a graphic report of the death of Julius Caesar, datelined Rome, March 15, 44 B.C. “Julius Caesar has been assassinated. He was stabbed to death by a group of conspirators, some of them his closest friends, as he took his seat in the Senate House today, the Ides of March.”

During the centuries that followed, bad news continued to abound. One shocking example is this news from Mexico in 1487: “In the most spectacular sacrificial display ever seen in the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, 20,000 people have lost their hearts to Huitzilopochtli, the war god.”

Not only has man’s cruelty provided bad news but his carelessness has added to the long list. The great fire of London seems to have been one such disaster. The report from London, England, dated September 5, 1666, reads: “At last, after four days and nights, the fire of London has been halted by the duke of York, who brought in naval gunpowder teams to blow up buildings in the path of the flames. Some 400 acres [160 ha] have been razed with 87 churches and over 13,000 houses destroyed. Miraculously, only nine lives were lost.”

We must add to these examples of bad news the epidemics that have raged through many continents—for example, the cholera epidemic of the early 1830’s. The printed heading reporting this reads: “The spectre of cholera haunts Europe.” The realistic report that follows depicts bad news at its frightening worst: “Cholera, unknown in Europe until 1817, is spreading westwards from Asia. Already Russian cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg have had their populations decimated—the majority of the victims from the urban poor.”

Escalation in Recent Years

So while it is true that bad news has been a fact of life throughout recorded history, recent decades of this 20th century give evidence that bad news is on the increase, indeed it is escalating rapidly.

Undoubtedly, war news has been the worst kind of bad news our present century has heard. The two greatest wars in history—aptly called World War I and World War II—certainly saw bad news reported on a horrendous scale. But that really has only been a fraction of the bad news this unhappy century has furnished.

Consider just a few headlines selected at random:

September 1, 1923: Quake razes Tokyo—300,000 dead; September 20, 1931: Crisis—Britain devalues the pound; June 25, 1950: North Korea marches into the South; October 26, 1956: Hungarians rise against Soviet rule; November 22, 1963: John Kennedy is shot dead in Dallas; August 21, 1968: Russian tanks roll in to crush the Prague uprising; September 12, 1970: Hijacked jets blown up in the desert; December 25, 1974: Cyclone Tracy flattens Darwin—66 die; April 17, 1975: Cambodia falls to Communist forces; November 18, 1978: Mass suicide in Guyana; October 31, 1984: Mrs. Gandhi shot dead; January 28, 1986: Space shuttle explodes on takeoff; April 26, 1986: Soviet reactor is on fire; October 19, 1987: Bottom falls out of the stock market; March 25, 1989: Alaska hit by oil spill; June 4, 1989: Troops massacre protesters in Tiananmen Square.

Yes, history shows that bad news has always been plentiful, while good news has been comparatively scarce. As bad news has escalated in recent decades, good news has diminished as each year goes by.

Why should this be? Will it always be so?

The next article will address these two questions.

Good News Ahead!

ALL of us are saddened whenever we receive bad news of a personal nature. On the other hand, we rejoice when good news arrives—tidings of joy for ourselves or our loved ones. But when bad news affects others and not us, there is often an element of curiosity; some even enjoy learning about the misfortune of others. This may partly explain why bad news sells so well!

During the early part of World War II, there was a graphic example of the morbid interest in calamity that some people have. A 10,000-ton pocket battleship, the Graf Spee, was the pride of the German fleet in 1939. For weeks this battleship had been causing havoc among Allied merchant ships in the South Atlantic and Indian oceans. Finally, three British cruisers tracked down and attacked the Graf Spee, causing loss of life and forcing the ship to limp into the Uruguayan harbor of Montevideo for repairs. The Uruguayan government ordered the battleship back to sea immediately, otherwise it would be interned. So a fierce rather one-sided battle seemed imminent.

Hearing of this, a party of wealthy businessmen in the United States chartered a plane, at a cost of about $2,500 a head, to fly to Uruguay to witness the gory battle. To their disappointment, the battle never did take place. Adolf Hitler gave orders for the Graf Spee to be scuttled. Thousands of spectators who thronged the waterfront expecting to witness the spectacle of a fierce sea battle, saw and heard instead a deafening explosion that sent the Graf Spee to the bottom, scuttled by her own crew. The captain committed suicide with a gunshot to his head.

Despite a somewhat gruesome streak in some people, most would agree that they prefer good news to bad news. Do you not feel that way? Why, then, does history record so much bad news and so little good news? Can the situation ever be reversed?

Causes of All Bad News

The Bible tells of the time when only good news was the order of the day. Bad news was something unknown, unheard of. When Jehovah God completed his creative works, planet Earth was ready for man and beast to enjoy. The Genesis account tells us: “God saw everything he had made and, look! it was very good.”—Genesis 1:31.

The absence of bad news did not last too long after man’s creation. Before any offspring was born to Adam and Eve, the bad news of rebellion against God and his orderly universal arrangement of good was reported. A high-ranking spirit son became a traitor to his trusted position and succeeded in moving the first human couple to join him in his rebellious, traitorous course.—Genesis 3:1-6.

The abundance of bad news witnessed by mankind had its beginning at that time. It is little wonder that intrigue, deception, lies, untruths, and half-truths have featured so prominently in the bad news that has flooded the world ever since. Jesus Christ put the blame squarely on Satan the Devil as the originator of bad news, telling religious leaders of His day: “You are from your father the Devil, and you wish to do the desires of your father. That one was a manslayer when he began, and he did not stand fast in the truth, because truth is not in him. When he speaks the lie, he speaks according to his own disposition, because he is a liar and the father of the lie.”—John 8:44.

As the human population increased in number, bad news increased along with it. Of course, this does not mean that there were no times of joy and happiness, for there were many things in life that were causes for joy. Yet, the clouds of trouble and sadness have been evident down through every generation of mankind until now.

There is another underlying cause for this sad state of affairs. That is our inherited leaning toward wrongdoing and calamity. Jehovah himself puts his finger on this unavoidable cause for bad news by saying: “The inclination of the heart of man is bad from his youth up.”—Genesis 8:21.

Why the Escalation of Bad News?

There is, however, a reason why bad news has escalated in this 20th century. This reason is spelled out clearly in the Bible, which foretold that mankind in the 20th century would enter a unique period of time known as “the last days” or “the time of the end.” (2 Timothy 3:1; Daniel 12:4) Bible prophecy and Biblical chronology identify this “end period,” which began in 1914. For detailed Scriptural proof of this, please see chapter 11 of the book Knowledge That Leads to Everlasting Life, published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc.

The last days were to begin with an event that would automatically cause bad news on earth to escalate. What was that? It was the casting down from heaven of Satan the Devil and his demon hosts. You may read this vivid description of the unavoidable increase of bad news at Revelation 12:9, 12: “Down the great dragon was hurled, the original serpent, the one called Devil and Satan, who is misleading the entire inhabited earth; he was hurled down to the earth, and his angels were hurled down with him. . . . ‘Woe for the earth and for the sea, because the Devil has come down to you, having great anger, knowing he has a short period of time.’”

So in whatever time yet remains until the last days come to their conclusion, we can expect bad news to continue and even to increase in its amount and intensity.