First we should acknowledge that news people have to make a living. They are not wealthy philanthropists who freely contribute hours of their time to put a story together simply for the pure joy of presenting information. They have bills to pay, families to support, and a future to plan for. Money is important to them.
The next thing to understand is that the vast majority of media personnel are paid from advertising revenue, and advertising revenue is based on the number of people watching, listening, or reading their stories. The larger your audience the more you charge advertisers, and the more money is available to pay the staff who gather and present the news.
Members of the audience vote with their attention span. If you change the channel, turn the television off, or move to another news service, this action is noted and collated. Companies exist that supply media outlets with their audience numbers and these numbers are used to market their product. In response, to maximize their revenue, the news service must tailor its content to the wants and needs of the audience.
Here is where we run into problems. News organizations often pretend to be a public service. They say their main reason for existing is to inform the public and they call themselves serious journalists. However, if news about kittens, puppies, and famous entertainers draw a larger audience than crime, politics, and threats to health, that is the news you will see and hear. The news media survives on popularity. The more people following their newscast the more money the organization will make. Serious news coverage remains part of the mix, but only to the extent it doesn’t chase away audience share.
This is not a condemnation of news media. It’s just a relating of the facts. Again, news organizations are a business, businesses disappear if they don’t have revenue, and their revenue is derived from satisfying the desires of their audience. In other words, when it comes to providing information to the public we get the news we ask for. Which, in turn, means that if news consumers aren’t well informed it’s because we don’t want to be.
One problem with putting out only the most desirable news is it can create conflicts of interest. Often the people who are at the centre of events are politicians and entertainers, and a journalist can only get the details of a story if they are on good terms with the people at the centre of it. If a journalist casts a particular government or politician in a bad light they will be less likely to gain access in the future and, therefore, they will be shut out of information that might be valuable in stories. It’s the same with entertainers. To get interviews and questions answered they need to maintain a friendly relationship, which translates to, if the journalist wants to be successful in the business they have to go easy on people who, at times, should be pushed hard to answer important questions. For this reason alone we seldom get the full story.
This not to say real journalists don’t exist, and providing vital information to the public is not high on their wish list. Many journalists want to have an impact. They want to make this world a better place. It’s just they have to survive within a framework of catering to the demands of their consumers.
So often we hear the term “comprehensive coverage”, and from that we have come to expect a detailed report containing background information and in-depth research. But this is still based on whatever level of attention the news consumer, you or me, is willing to give. These reports are gauged to walk a fine line between educating the reader, or listener, and overwhelming them with facts and details unfamiliar to them. Few important stories are simple, but there is only so much time and energy we, the news consumer, are willing to devote to getting the entire explanation.
We prefer sound-bite simple, we want black and white obvious. We don’t like stories with multiple shades of grey and no real sympathetic characters - where finding the truth may take years of investigation, and maybe even require a change in perspective. We don’t want to hear problem after problem without any solutions and we want good guys and bad guys propped up in front of us so we know who is who. If it is going to take study and effort to learn all the aspects of the problem, write it in a magazine or put it in a book, not in a major media newscast. This is simply a fact of life.
There was a time when politicians answered tough questions because certain journalists were held in such high regard politicians were afraid of being chastised, or even condemned, by them. To put it more succinctly, consumers supported certain reporters and columnists because we trusted them to interpret the nuances of each situation on our behalf. This is seldom the case any longer. Too many news organizations are owned by families or corporations with strong ideological leanings that influence the opinions of their journalists - and drives the open minded ones away.
Even in media organizations widely considered as objective, getting the full information is rare. Whether this is due to the quality of journalists, the complexity of the issues, or the lack of time given to flesh out stories, it’s all open for discussion. Are journalists incapable of inspiring us to demand more, or are consumers uninterested in stories where it takes time to construct an explanation? A bit of both I would guess and how we change it is a mystery to me.
Just a Picture
