“If it bleeds, it leads.” So goes the old maxim explaining why media outlets focus on the negative.

As an Arizona State University editing professor told me back in the day, traffic flowing smoothly won’t impress readers; it takes a seven-car pileup to do that. 

But reporters can carry this pessimistic tendency to excess. When issues can be framed as a “glass half-full,” they’re often cast as “depleted container raises worries about thirst, death, experts say.”  

I’ve seen this most recently from our friends in California, especially at the leading Los Angeles daily. For years, the LA Times has focused on the state’s drought with headlines nearly apocalyptic in tone: