I’m a Media and Communications major. I study radio, journalism, advertising and everything in between. Recently, one of my professors introduced a term which I’d never heard before but had an idea of what it was. He explained to my class the concept of dumpster fire journalism.

Dumpster fire journalism is the analogy that people flock to the dumpster on fire because it’s violent, it’s interesting and attracts a crowd. It’s no secret that as a society we like conflict and violence to be the source of our entertainment. But does that spill into the way we get our news?

When was the last time you turned on the TV and saw something warm and fuzzy being reported? It’s a very rare occasion that the news the majority see is good news. There are no kittens escaping from trees or stories of brand new schools being opened for inner city kids. There’s terrorism, disappearances and all the horrible things that happen.

It’d be easy to blame the people who put out the news. CNN, FOX news and local news channels have a bad habit of picking the stories that show human suffering rather than human interest.

Mainstream news outlets report tragedies that pull at our emotions but fail to report on issues that affect everyday citizens in their day to day lives. People who watch the news instead begin to worry about rare occurrences of violence rather than the real issues that afflict their communities.

This creates a false perception of crime rates and people begin to believe their community is worse than it really is.

However, news outlets are not the only ones to blame. They know what the public wants to see and utilize that to report their stories. The good things never get shown because the good stories aren’t what pull in viewers.

Journalism is all about viewership and until viewers show they value real issues over rare violence than dumpster fire journalism will stay the same.