IETLS Writing Task 2 | Effects of negative reporting on individuals and society

The tendency of news media to focus on problems and emergencies rather than good news has a negative effect on individuals and society.

To what extend do you agree or disagree?

Media is playing a very important role in our lives. However, news media across the world tends to give more importance to negative news rather than good. This has a bad effect on the lives of individuals and society. I completely agree with the statement and explain the effect negative reporting has on individuals and society.

Fear can easily buildup when someone listens to negative news. Most of the reports are presented in such a way to grab maximum user attention. Because of the complete attention given to it, those visuals will be a part of the viewer's mind. For example, during the times of the coronavirus, a lot of news reporting is done based on the number of deaths. In such cases, people will be afraid of dying. There are instances where people consumed sanitiser because of such news, resulting in death. In effect, negative reporting has a huge toll on everyone's lives.

There are several effects on society due to this type of reporting. One among them is panic buying. News channels covering news may not intentionally do this, but this can create fear among individuals which slowly leads to panic buying. Because of this a lot of products will go out of stock in the supermarkets. Another reason is the lack of cash in ATM. People withdraw huge amounts of cash fearing there will be a shortage. In such a scenario, a lot of people find it difficult to pull cash from ATM, leading to a cash crunch in society. In effect, negative reporting has a very bad effect on society.

In conclusion, negative reporting has a huge effect on individuals and society. I completely agree with this and news media should play a proactive role and reduce the effect of negative reporting.

The thesis statement is just missing the topic outline for the discussion to be considered a completely informative summary of the upcoming discussion. That is a small oversight on your part that, although it does have an effect on the clarity of your opinion, will not result in a marked scoring down for yourself. You were able to explain your point of view clearly in both reasoning paragraphs. However, a more effective presentation for paragraph 2 would have been to discuss what the effects of the negative news in the previous paragraph was. If you had stuck to the Coronavirus discussion in the next paragraph, you would have created a highly cohesive and coherent series of reasoning paragraphs. Clearly showing that you have the ability to extensively discuss the same topic, based on different topic considerations. The result would have been a higher TA and C&C score individually, and a higher overall score at the end.

The concluding paragraph contains additional new information about how you believe the media should play a proactive role. Since this is not included as a discussion point in the original prompt, this additional opinion should not have been presented as it created 2 errors in your concluding presentation:

- An unrequired opinion that was not properly explained and developed
- An open ended essay that does not properly summarize the previous paragraph presentations.

Therefore, the concluding paragraph has a tendency to pull down your final score.

I think the explanations and opinions are not enough clearly. And also I think by reporting problems, governments can raise awareness in each individuals