Anyone who has taken a journalism class can tell you that if someone died, that goes in your lead. It becomes your heading. If nine people died, that’s even better. As cynical as that comes off, it is the truth. When people see that nine people were killed, they are automatically drawn to the story, it is human compassion that draws them. The front page of the New York Times today is a testament to the fact that sensationalism sells papers. Nine die as gunmen storm police school in Pakistan. In drug war, Mexico fights cartel and itself. Gunman kills 8 at N. Carolina nursing home. There are, of course, other stories not about death or war. Politics, opinions, entertainment and feel-good stories exist too but the front page is dominated by stories that will make people gasp, cry or worry. Has the shock factor become the essence of news? Has it always been that way? Schudson says that newspapers in America started out as publicity for printing companies. They expanded with ads and small gossip columns. They took entire pieces from England papers and reprinted them. At the very beginning, there were no shocking stories; there were political debates and social events. Sensationalism has been one of the most influential trends in news, I think partially because it also directly correlates to the amount of papers sold.
Schudson does not think that there is much to the idea that a “thirst for news is fundamental to human nature.” I have to disagree with him here though, because if it were true that people did not have a desire to know what was happening in the community, city, state and world that they live in, there would be no newspaper industry at all.
The style of reporting the news also changes what news we receive. What I mean by this is that the easier it becomes to snap a picture or type a story and email it in a second, the more news we read. Online newspapers are constantly being updated so that the front page you read at the beginning of the day could be different from what you read at night when you come home. This is what is shaping the change of the news, though I do not think that at its essence it has really shifted. The entertainment section seems to have grown the most over the years, also due to the ease with which we can now report. A poor quality video of Britney Spears after she shaved her head received over 150,000 views. This also plays into the question Caddie posed about whether or not the press’ watchful eye is a negative quality or not. I don’t think that it is all negative; in fact I think that it is a part of the job of journalists, to an extent. Schudson uses the example of Watergate – though it caused distrust of the politicians that the people elected, it was better to know that they were caught. This is a huge example but this is the kind of journalism that the public expects, that we are here to look out for them. Lately though, it feels like we are nitpicking and getting on every word they say and thing they do. Obama’s joke about the Special Olympics was looked down on and widely criticized, but the blockbuster movie The Ringer with Johnny Knoxville about someone pretending to be disabled to fix the Special Olympics was not. The thing is that once someone takes on a public office like the president, or even a pop star, the criticism comes with the job.
Questions:
1. Do people have an innate thirst for the news? If so, is their taste what determines what news is?
2. Is it really the technology with which we report the news that shapes it or is that simply a contributing factor?
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