It’s well known that in our newspapers, on our television news and on internet news sites that when it comes to news reporting an unusual infrequent event is more likely to be reported than an event that happens every day.

There’s even a great phrase to explain the phenomenon…

Man Bites Dog

The phrase comes from that fact that if a dog bites a man it’s not unique enough to report. However if a man bites a dog….that’s a story!

If you know what you’re looking for you can see instances of this everywhere…

The tragic events of the Malaysian plane crash were reported extensively however globally 80,000+ planes complete their journeys every day without incident.

When serious crimes make it into the press on a regular basis but the majority of us live most of our lives without crime impacting our lives (if ever) more than once or twice.

and

We hear loads of scary stories about the world of money. The failure of banks. The dodgy stuff going on in some of our financial institutions. Stories which show the illustrate how bad it can be when things go wrong.

All classic cases of “Man Bites Dog”.

In a free and democratic country the press perform a vital task.

I’m proud to live in a country with a free and independent press. I also believe it’s vital to have this to expose the dodgy and deceitful, report wrongdoing and shed a light into some of the less illuminated corners of our society.

However there is a danger of too much news.

If we’re exposed to too much news the danger is that we start to believe everything we read. You could argue that more news does more to inform our perspective but also creates an issue…

If most of what’s being reported is “Man Bites Dog” (the extremes of our society) and we treat this perspective of the world as factual could we potentially develop a distorted view of our environment due to this?

It’s incredibly rare you hear good financial stories in the press. Hearing about the individual who has enough income to retire or has sufficiently protected his (or her) family or who after speaking to a financial planner has a clear route forward are all good news.

And on the whole…

Good news is non news.

Good news isn’t surprising, scandalous or rare.

Good news isn’t “man bites dog”

However the bad news stories lead us to a more dangerous conclusion. If we read enough financial negative stories we lose trust in the system which then leads to apathy and then leads to not making clear financial plans for our future.

Sometimes we think we’re too smart to suffer from the impact of what we’re exposed to consistently however  I’ve met some very clever people over the years who make decisions based on stuff they’ve read consistently without any context or perspective of any of the other options available or focusing on something far more important….

What they want to achieve.

I believe it’s important for all of us to be better informed.

I firmly believe as consumers we need to be aware of the stories we read so we can ask better questions so we can avoid the dodgier financial arrangements out there and be able to filter out the arrangements which might work for us and to define the route we need to take to financial independence and a comfortable lifestyle

However we also need to be careful to ensure when it comes to our money to believe that the ‘man bites the dog’  every hour of every day. If we assume this is the case we will find ourselves not saving sufficiently  for our financial futures due to fear and we’ll all be poorer as a result.

What do you think?