A story can switch on either higher evolved parts of your brain and develop them further, or the more primitive elements, the tabloids were all about the latter.
If tabloids spread fear, then they spread increased use of the primitive brain areas at the very time we most need the functions of the more highly evolved prefrontal cortex - it's tough to practice social medicine when they keep pouring out the poison.
On the days of fearful headlines, when there was doom and gloom right next to pictures of perfect cakes and elicit gossip, everyone in the supermarket looked as if they were under a grey cloud. There were few smiles, less emotional generosity to children, more casual fights between the couples as they walked the chilled aisles.
On the days of good news, of anything to celebrate, it was different and the whoever the folks were that wandered about, the effect was the same... more smiles, more casual caring and emotional attentiveness to others. It was as if a monster that had lurked had gone away and instead a fairy had come to grant them an inner rainbow.
I would wonder if those inch high words of fear or love, coming and going as some chaotic pendulum might, were giving a sort of pseudo-bipolar to us all. I saw those strongly emotive words hitting our brains, stimulating regions that cause hormones to be produced, changing our moods and altering our brains without the bother of a doctor's prescription, consent or anything so mundane as all that.