Why is Journalism Getting Worse? (Opinion)
This opinion piece will anecdotally examine the current state of news reporting and broadcasting in an attempt to articulate and explore modern journalism trends.
Note: The opinion of this author does not constitute as fact, and a healthy dose of skepticism is encouraged when reading this (and any) article online.
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Without preamble, and without judgement, let’s begin with a simple, perhaps subjective, observation:
One of our biggest failings as a people is that we have been conditioned to let others think for us.
Even as I type this, my word processor is attempting to fill in the blanks with suggested words and phrases.
Within this same vein, consider for a moment how you arrived at this article. Was it a Google search? Recommended by a friend or family member? Social media?
In our digital age, there is so much out there vying for our attention that it becomes impossible for any one person to wade through it all. So, we then rely upon the tools and opinions of others to help guide us to information that might be relevant to our personal lives.
And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
After all, isn’t that the gold standard for any form of relationship?
Having others place their trust in you is a great feeling, and when we feel this way, we do our best not to let each other down.
So, why then is there such mistrust in the broadcasted news that we absorb? Wouldn’t it make more sense for a large news organization to value the trust of its readers more than anything else? Where does such a large disconnect originate from?
In an article for the Columbia Journalism Review, Michael Schudson paints a brief but clear history of how our opinion as a whole has shifted from initial trust to eventual mistrust of the press. Since its penning in 2019, not much has significantly changed on this front, and we are continuing to see a shift towards play-by-play news rather than the investigative and informative journalism we so desperately need (my humble opinion).
It is my current belief that this issue we are seeing in our media was actually believed to be the solution to another problem at one point in time.
Let me explain.
Before smartphones, radios, and televisions, aspiring scholars used to gain much of their information about specific topics from a central repository: their local library. Information moved slower, and the time spent in the pursuit of this information was more treasured due to the fact that it was limited by nature.
Unless you lived at the library, if you had a question about something, you would have to wait until your next library trip to receive the answer.
Then, with the slow introduction of the radio and the television, you started to have a greater baseline level of news being spread around the populace in a more accessible manner.
Among various other effects, with the television especially, introducing an “entertainment” element to the news caused the public to form opinions on current events with greater weight, as visualization is often a key element in understanding. This is also why how the news is framed is so important.
But, even with the television, news was often easy to miss if it wasn’t deemed substantial enough to make the nightly news cycle.
Now, moving forward in time once again, our smartphones are always at the ready, ever accessible and capable of providing us with the answers to any questions we may have within mere moments, and the change in our news consumption has proved to be substantial.
Suddenly, everything is news-worthy to somebody.
It is at this moment that I would like to bring up Marshall McLuhan.
McLuhan is famous for coining the phrase, “the medium is the message,” meaning that the method in which an idea or a story is conveyed is just as vital (if not even more important) to the resulting communication as the message itself.
For example, I may write the sentence: “I like cats.”
My message that I am trying to tell you, the reader of this sentence, is that I like cats. The medium that I am using to tell you this message is an article on my website, on the internet, on your internet-browsing device, at the place in which you are choosing to access it from (ex: your home).
Anything that makes up the environment in which you are reading this then serves as the medium, and any part of the medium that could aid/hinder your experience or understanding in reading it becomes part of the original message as well.
So, you may understand from my sentence that I like cats, but certain aspects of the medium may also influence the message to further become: “The author likes cats, his writing style is annoying, and my anti-virus has a pop-up.”
And this says nothing yet of the fact that we often craft our messages to better match the medium we are intending to send them on, like how we might write a screenplay differently than we would write a book, or how we write text messages differently than we would write an email, thus altering the ultimate message we send in the chosen medium in the first place.
Imagine how this train of thought might extend to our now commonplace use of emojis as well, further exemplifying how each person’s personal connotations of certain words/images might impact their comprehension of the intended message.
In 1964, at the time of his theory-crafting, I doubt that McLuhan ever foresaw the introduction of the smartphone, but his theories about how we adapt to new technologies could not have been more spot on, and our communication as a people has changed as a result.
Which also brings us to the debated topic of the “outboard brain,” simply meaning that our reliance on technology potentially causes us to rely less on the information we store within ourselves (in our memory).
In 2007, Clive Thompson wrote an article for WIRED that stuck with me over the years, in which he noted his observations on how people have become more and more dependent on computers to store their daily information.
And, like anything in life, this comes with heavy pros and cons.
By relying on technology, we are able to stress ourselves less and store less information in our memory (our inboard brain). This shifts our role from the information keeper to the information processor, enabling us to grasp and understand more than we would have been able to before our technological advancements.
However, this then comes with the tradeoff that we no longer possess that information within ourselves, relying on outside sources (our outboard brain) to store the information for us.
So, because we have become attached to the feeling that we can simply look up information whenever we need to, our memorization skills are rapidly declining. After all, why bother remembering something if my search history is able to be accessed at any time?
As such, the number of online searches each day is astounding, and it has been capitalized upon in the form of ad revenue. Additionally, we are then forced to place a great amount of trust in the companies that provide us with our outboard brains, praying that no stored information is somehow altered since the last time we accessed it, but that is a topic for another day…
So, how does this all tie back in to our premise regarding the gradual decline of journalism?
Well, simply put, providing the answer to a common search term or reporting upon a niche topic can prove lucrative for the savvy entrepreneur or corporation, and there is a litany of people aiming to seize a piece of that proverbial pie.
So, in order to make a living for themselves, our news broadcasters had to adjust to this new landscape. Quantity became key, and with an alarming number of AI-written articles out there nowadays, this should ring especially true.
With a wide range of topics to cover on a global stage, the news had to expand accordingly. But, realistically, this could not be accomplished without a substantially larger workforce.
A workforce that could only be hired with a great deal of money that they did not possess as their coffers grew smaller due to decreased marketshare.
So, to produce a greater number of articles on a broader range of topics with the same or reduced workforce, the quality of the news had to be sacrificed due to less time spent on each article/broadcast.
With more distractions at our fingertips, however, the majority of the public are less committed to reading longer articles anyways.
When people do not see the content that they are already looking for, they simply move past it due to concerns about time or attention spans, feeding into self-propagating opinions that become more and more reinforced with each scroll.
Without a greater wealth of free time, we have to then make the conscious decision to have an open mind.
This proves to be difficult for many, including myself, as every second is valuable and it is much easier to dwell in complacency than to challenge existing beliefs on a whim.
Instead, consequentially, we become experts at ignoring, polarizing those that started at different points in adapting to newer technologies.
Effectively, we become “captured” by the first opinion that we see on a topic until something is able to sufficiently cause enough disbelief for us to examine the facts from all sources that have been thus laid forth.
As a result, our news is not only split amongst different topics, but also a vast sea of different opinions about the same topic, each one believing that they are the most correct.
Analytical data then comes into play as the deciding factor in what audiences news organizations should cater to when writing articles.
Cookies and clicks and shares and likes, all tracking the content that users (no longer readers) are most likely to engage with.
And, this is, perhaps, one of the most defeating realizations:
Our news is being broadcast with an intended audience in mind.
Therefore, all of our current media organizations have no choice but to be biased; it is simply how they stay in business.
Due to the abundance of options out there, media organizations have determined that their users will not read their articles unless the headline or summary gives a hint that they will like what they find.
And that is truly crushing.
We no longer read just to read. We read to agree, or feel right and vindicated, or to prove that people we don’t like are wrong, or say, “We told you so.”
As such, these circumstances invite little to no meaningful change in our modern journalism dilemma, and those with an interest in learning with an open mind are often met with mixed messages across the web.
And I’m not entirely certain how we move forward from our current situation.
I just wanted to speak about some observations I have made, in the hopes that it sparks some thought in you, the reader, as you navigate these current circumstances we find ourselves in.
I do not intend to denounce new technologies or claim a higher ground against those that are content with the world we live in.
In truth, I long for a time where we did not go into things with the intention to mislead or persuade, but simply to write, where journalism was journaling, and curious minds could be cultivated.
But, all messages eventually end, and, perhaps, this extends itself to the mediums as well.
After all, if the medium is part of the message, it should evolve at a similar or greater pace.
New technologies allow us to communicate in ways that we had never dreamed of before, and although not all of them are entirely favored, they still move forward the needle.
I can’t wait to see what we come up with next.
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