Like you, I’m a responsible citizen. I try to be a good neighbor, pay my taxes, and obey most traffic laws.
So, being a responsible citizen, I recently paused to catch up on the current news headlines. In minutes, I felt like I was standing behind Dad’s old Farmall manure spreader while it spewed its contents—in high gear.
What the heck is happening??
“Getting the News”
Certainly, it wasn’t always this way. For decades I was a newshound and prided myself on having a sufficient handle on current topics. Blame my upbringing, but I consider knowing what’s happening in the world a privilege and a responsibility. It’s a duty as important as informed voting.
That’s not to say that some news didn’t slip through the cracks—Elvis is dead??—but with a little effort every day, a reasonably clear picture of the world could be constructed.
It Looked Simpler Back Then
My parents set the example. The Minneapolis Tribune was fetched from our mailbox every noon while I grew up on the farm. Dad subscribed to a handful of farm magazines and Newsweek. Mom poured over the local newspaper as well as regional papers she relied on for her political activities. As a family we watched the nightly news on TV, listened to the radio and talked to neighbors, friends and relatives.
Mind you, Dad didn’t always agree with what he read or heard (*now there’s an understatement*), but he did his best to separate the facts from the opinions. He overlaid his knowledge of history, his own lifetime experiences, and his understanding of human nature. From that, he reached his own conclusions.
I’ve tried to apply the same method to my news gathering. That method used to work just fine.
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Not anymore.
The harder I try, the more I feel buried under an avalanche of time-wasting repetitiveness and annoying triteness. Somewhere buried underneath the piles of gnashing and nonsense, there must be an inkling of news.
But just how do you get to it?
Sorting Through the Flotsam and Jetsam
Not all that many news cycles ago, getting the news was simpler. The hard, cold facts arrived in orderly intervals by newspaper, TV and radio. We only got one TV channel. When Chet Huntley and David Brinkley told us the news every evening, we felt somewhat confident that those were the main details of the top news stories from around the world.
Occasionally these news broadcasts were preempted or prolonged by life-changing events: man on the moon, assassination of JFK, the Minnesota Vikings winning the Super Bowl—
—OK. We’re still waiting for that interruption. And NO, that’s not “fake news”…it’s “fantasy facting”.
Facts Not Influence
Of course, some element of news bias existed back then, too. We’re all human, even news reporters. The physical space we occupy in this world influences how we see things, if ever so slightly. So, yes, the angle of the story reflects the angle of the newsman. That’s Humanomics 101. It just wasn’t as obvious.
And certainly not so accepted.
In fact, the challenge of reporting the story clearly and accurately to the public was what persuaded me to study journalism after high school. The whole realm of the “Fourth Estate” was different back when I graduated from mass communications at Moorhead State University in 1979. The code of ethics we were taught included reporting ONLY the facts as we best understood them.
“People are smart enough to reach their own conclusions,” my journalism advisor would tell us. Our opinions—however innocent—were dealt with harshly. For example, concluding a story with a “red ribbon” ending (such as, “together at last”) was an automatic failing grade for that assignment.
DEVELOPING NEWS STORY: Two-vehicle collision on Interstate kills 179, including family of 15.
STORY UPDATE: Governor calls for the ban of assault radial tires.
STORY CORRECTION: All fatalities in the accident reportedly involved turkeys.
NEWS ANALYSIS: Is it time for America to go vegan this Thanksgiving?
Another holy tenet taught back then was objectivity. Our job as a journalist was to sit apart from the news makers and watch them closely, like an attentive audience roped off from the circus ring. If you wanted to be a performer instead of a reporter, you were sitting on the wrong side of the rope. Straddling the rope was not an option.
One quick trip through the cable news networks will show you how far we’ve strayed from those ethics.
A Jumble of Non-Stop News
How and why the news became so unmanageable are the subjects for entire books and university classes. Factors certainly include satellite TV, which made remote news instantly available, and the growth of the Internet that put it all at our fingertips. We’re also to blame, because we clamored for variety, including the exciting details of people and places and events once restricted to monthly magazines.
We wanted to know it all. We wanted to know it now. The media made it possible.
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CNN was the first TV news service to start a 24-hour news format in 1980. It held us captive with the space shuttle Challenger crash, the rescue of Baby Jessica and hourly coverage of the Gulf War.
Other 24-hour news feeds sprung up, and the clamor began. First, they provided welcomed reports of important events. It was comforting to know that nothing vital would slip our attention as we went about our day-to-day lives. It was exciting that we didn’t have to wait until morning to get updates.
But how do you fill 1,440 minutes in a news day? They began plugging the gaps in the 24 hours with commentary. Rocket scientists, bruised and tattered eye witnesses, and retired military heroes fleshed out the stories with details to paint a more complete picture. It was almost like rowing our own boat through the murky floodwaters of the story.
But that still could not fill in the entire day of a news cycle. Enter “color commentary”, including people who “heard the explosion” or “waded through floodwaters last year” or “plan to write a book about it.” Once “color commentary” was just applied to sports. Now the news is often a sporting event. If you don’t believe me, just flip on the TV news right now.
All of which brings us to this avalanche of news that just keeps tumbling along in no particular direction.
Leading to the Question:
Is this current hateful raucous in Washington really what we need to know most in the world right now?
Consider:
Is North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un on vacation until the Ukrainian issue is resolved? How many have been arrested in the Hong Kong protests? Is an end in sight for the droughts in east China or South Africa? Are the Australian bushfires under control? Is it still flooding in Somalia and northern England? How many earthquakes happened today? Are political unrests still alive in Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile or Iran?
News Tyranny
In 1967, Charles E. Hummel wrote a pamphlet entitled “Tyranny of the Urgent” in which he noted that things that are considered urgent often push aside things that are important. Though aimed at individual life, the theory of Tyranny certainly can be applied elsewhere, including in our news. For example, what’s more important?
- That 821 million people live in hunger in this world; or
- Congressional hearings about phone calls to a foreign ambassador
Granted, if I was a news reporter who had to cover one of these events, I’d go with Answer B, with its indoor seating, nearby coffee shop and the likelihood of sleeping in my own bed every night. Answer A…well, it wouldn’t be nearly as convenient, and the chance of a resolution to that story during my career would be even more unlikely than seeing a conclusion to Answer B.
Did I mention that news reporters are humans, too?
Can we all admit that the current news industry is in total chaos??? Yes, it is, and we contributed to the mess. Can we change it? Not soon—if ever. So, we need to change our own approach to gathering the news. In the tidal wave of endless news noise, we need to step up to the plate and serve ourselves some worthy information.
TO DO LIST:
- Find four reliable sources of daily news – international, national, state and local. (The links are suggestions – you may have other, even better news sources.)
- Don’t limit yourself to “your side” or opinion. Every news source out there is made up of people with opinions and agendas. By looking at both sides of an issue you will get a broader picture of the event.
- Don’t just take it all at face value. Ask questions. Do two minutes of research.
- Know when to stop. In today’s around-the-clock news world, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. If you want to be a part of the solution, give yourself a rest so you can think clearly enough to find the answers.