The whole problem with news on television comes down to this: all the words uttered in an hour of news coverage could be printed on one page of a newspaper. And the world cannot be understood in one page.
Neil Postman
In a recent article in The Economist, a 2008-2012 study demonstrated that the daily circulation of newspapers per 1,000 people in the U.S. dropped by nearly 15%. Meanwhile, there is an increased usage of twenty-four hour networks and online sources for news. A few newspapers in the country remain stalwarts of print journalism but even papers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times have faced a drop in readership. Some newspapers folded altogether, a trend that began in the late 1970s and early 1980s when the idea of two or three newspaper towns disappeared nearly altogether. Others have retreated into the ambiguous world of the information superhighway, such as Seattle’s Post-Intelligencer. The decline has much to do with cultural changes and its impact is despairing.
There is a cause and effect relationship occurring at the same time with newspapers and has been witnessed over the last fifty years. The presentation of news coverage on television introduced an entertainment element that was evident but not prevailing in newspapers prior. As television and the internet have developed, the nature of news has changed radically in two particular ways. First, what is classified as news has altered beyond a point where journalists of old would recognize. The nature of twenty-four hour news networks and the omnipresent internet have too much time and space to occupy with what is genuinely news. Therefore, what serves as news is progressively superfluous. The news personas of today are talking about jail house confessions, sensational trials that hold no societal relevance and celebrity-generated ballyhoos. The desire and the need to fill time and space has broaden the concept of not only what is news but what is germane. Today, no one thinks anything of a “serious news program” devoting time to a woman who killed or may not have killed her boyfriend. From a societal point of view and not an individual perception where it could have more importance, is this relevant or even note-worthy? I would dare say not.
Second, in conjunction with the dispensing of the irrelevant, the news that is delivered is increasingly and perhaps irrevocably simplified. Today, news channels and websites are occupying themselves to answer the question, “what happened?” However, no thought is given to explain why. Throughout the popular mass media outlets today, they may discuss the riots in Turkey but little mention, if any, of secular Turks’ concern over Prime Minister Erdogan’s crackdown of earlier protests. The average American knows nothing of why the protests began, why the Turkish government responded as it did and the ramifications that such measures might have in Turkey, the future of the country as a secular one, its consequences on U.S. policy in the Middle East and how such actions by Mr. Erdogan might affect Turkey’s constant search to draw closer to Europe. The news channels and websites are focusing on “five ways to know he is lying to you.” The content is available but media outlets determined and the public approved through ratings and hits that they are not concern. Those who want to know are out of luck without time on their hands.
What is the effect? It is amazing that in this age of the “information superhighway”, our students are no more capable of telling you when the American Civil War was, who the prime minister of Turkey is or why it should even matter than an earlier generation. At a time when we are constantly bombarded with the positive impacts of computers at every level and we have an unprecedented access to information, we seem to know less. At every level, the knowledge that some seek is truncated by a mass media that favors brevity over breadth and revolvs around the capriciousness of popular tastes and whims rather than on the demands of their profession.
Newspapers are a potentially brilliant resource in that its limited canvas ensures that only that which is truly news can be presented but the space also allows for examination and elaboration on both the facts and the reasons why. If newspapers are to survive at all, it is likely they need to go in the opposite direction of the “less is more” concept they are currently embracing. By seeing their limitations, compared with television and the internet, as the positive that it is and not concerned with what they can’t do, they can see a possible future. It was once said that people did not believe it unless they read it in the newspaper. In the face of all that is wrong with television and internet news, people can learn to believe so again.
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