bad news vs problem

bad news

noun
  • News of unpleasant, unfortunate or sad events. 

  • An irritating, troublesome or harmful person, situation or thing. 

problem

noun
  • A puzzling circumstance. 

  • A difficulty that has to be resolved or dealt with. 

  • A set of moves required to complete a climb. 

  • A question to be answered, schoolwork exercise. 

  • Objection. 

  • Difficulty in accepting or understanding or refusal to accept or understand. 

adj
  • Causing a problem; problematic; troublesome. 

  • Difficult to train or guide; unruly. 

How often have the words bad news and problem occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )