Why is our news so lousy?

When I was a kid a long time ago, the TV and newspapers adhered to the Who/What/Where/When/Why/How of news collection.

Now, they don't appear to even try to get it right. They don't even know how to provide the basics. They apparently don't know how to do any kind of minimal research, they ignore the obvious.

But they are quick to pass rumors off as facts because it might draw a few more people to their web page to expose them to their advertising.

Immediately after Hurricane Katrina, they reported all kinds of crimes that never happened. When buses were ordered to the Superdome to pick up the survivors who had been quietly waiting for several days, the bus drivers were terrified of being shot by (false) media-reported gangs of armed men marauding through the streets of New Orleans, so the drivers parked the buses about 30 miles away and walked off. Authorities had to find people to drive the buses the last 30 miles.

These highly paid 'reporters' (*derisive snort*) are more interested in making sure they look good on camera than actually providing information. And it isn't just one or two sources, it's all of them

I went through about ten news articles about the Joplin, Mo tornado before I could find out what general time of day it hit. Evening. Great. Before dark, after dark? Still haven't found out what time period it happened.

News? Responsibility in reporting? Not in America.

Sue

Guess you missed the news link that CanoeDogs shared in his "Tornado Rips North Minneapolis" post.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Hennepin County officials say one is dead, at least 22 are injured and devastation is widespread after a suspected tornado touched down just before 3:30 p.m. Sunday afternoon.

The news sucks because of the adjendas of the various and sundry news organizations and the reporters themselves.

Look at Dan Rather. He killed his career because he wanted so badly to believe a false story. Didn't fact check, didn't do his due diligence, just aired a cockamamie story and he paid the price. He's not the guy who reported on Kennedy's death from Dallas, he's the moron who tried to hang Bush with false facts.

Local news may be better or worse than national. I seldom watch the evening national news, as they determine what's news, who will be the bad guy, who is to blame, well before they even get to the event site.

Joplin is nowhere near Minneapolis. They are separated by about 590 miles/950km; so the time reference for Minneapolis is useless as a reference point for Joplin.

Maybe they're catering to what people want, tasty baby food. Compare the writing style of magazines and newspapers from the 1950-60's to todays rags and you'll be amazed at how dumbed down everything has become. Its really disturbing.

Competition to get the viewers first is all about advertising money?

Thanks. I stand corrected.

as someone who used to work for one of the big 3 networks supporting their news division, you have to remember - who is the customer?

TV Networks exist to do ONE thing - they sell eyeballs to advertisers

Anything else that happens is secondary to that

The news media is a business, and they need to get good ratings to make money. To do that they present drama and controversy. TV news is more entertainment than information. It takes a while, but you have to really dig to find the news outlets which present more information with minimal attempts at influence and dramatization.

Recommend reading "The Age of Propaganda" by Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson. It is a good education on techniques used by and in the media to influence. Once you understand the techniques of influence, they do not work as well on you; sort of an inoculation. Then you become better at assessing the veracity of reporting. A good understanding of the business of news media will also aid tremendously so you can know more about access and agendas.

"Now, they don't appear to even try to get it right. They don't even know how to provide the basics. They apparently don't know how to do any kind of minimal research, they ignore the obvious."

Yes ... journalism is dead.
Not just investigative journalism ... even basic journalism seems to have died a premature death.

Sad but true.
That's probably one reason why many people are turning to blogs for their news - there is more intelligent analysis there. Sometimes :-)

Pete #2

As long as we have fanciful tales masquerading as true instances of actual survival on this site, I don't think we have a leg to stand on. We are no better than any other media outlet.

News is a business where advertisers are the clients. Above all else, news must be entertaining and simple to keep the attention of consumers who will buy the advertised products. In the past, media outlets didn't have to compete with the Internet. Nowadays, anybody with a little money can put up a website and be a competitor of CNN, Fox, MSNBC, etc.

Related story, I bought about 5 different local newspapers the other day. Are these things getting thin or what? I guess few people read newspapers anymore...sigh.

People often look at me as if Im insane when I tell them I do not watch the news. Im Happy to find so many here think of it the same as I do.

Montanero:

and...
Ireckon:

That's the hollow-headed, knee-jerk thinking of big business, with the usual short-term follow-through, resulting in...



People don't trust the news sources, so they don't pay attention to them. So, to keep the advertising coming in, they regress to news bytes on dimwitted, drunken/drugged, promiscuous pseudo-celebrities whose names a thinking person wouldn't recognize, catering only to the people whose reading consists of the National Inquirer and comic books.

In the words of a young boy from Arkansas: whoopeedooooodoooo! With the emphasis on the doo-doo.

Sue

I an olde guy, and set in my ways. I still subscribe to a morning paper (actually a fairly superior one, the LA Times) and begin the day by reading it cover to cover, a habit i have cultivated for years because a lot of times it paid to trot off to work informed and knowledgeable.

Conventional papers are definitely waning. More and more I read news online. I gave up on conventional TV news years ago. I do find NPR a fairly credible news source.

Any news should be taken cautiously. In the rush to present the story, important details are often overlooked, and critical relationships are not explored. I have seen that all too often where I indeed have independent, credible information.

Over the years I've come to realize the importance of history in understanding the present because on a macro scale the past really does repeat itself, over and over and over. So IMO, the more you know of history, the easier it is to make sense of the present, weed out reliable media sources, avoid being swayed by propaganda or agendas, etc. The sad fact is that humans have changed very little over the last 100 years. Well, at least we're consistent.

Well, there is satire, then there is apparently American television news.

in the early 70s I spent some time in the Far East as an enlisted USAFSS type...although I picked up a little of the language, did not learn to read Japanese, Tagalog, or Thai... relied on the Christian Science Monitor (no religious affiliation)for what I perceived as an unbiased news source...used it for situational awareness especially in the Philippines and Thailand

I just remembered that the news channels have picked up stories from the onion news network before....Talk about flat out sad state of the news right there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Onion

Around the bottom has the events.

Even worse, so many newspapers simply print the majority of their articles from the wire services because they can't afford to have their own reporters to go and cover stories, so many newspapers are basically printing the same stories as each other. Which wouldn't be so bad if the wire services themselves still had top notch journalists like they used to but they are also under financial pressure to keep costs down and churn out stories quickly for 24/7 news coverage.

I believe the change happened when the FCC removed the "public service" requirement from the licensing process. Prior to that, news was not a "profit center" but a public service, operated at a loss to fulfill the requirement.

When that requirement was struck down, the news became a profit center just like everything else.

Nomad

I seriously doubt that newspapers and television ever operated at a loss. That's why they sell advertising. Newspapers existed in the Old West, and the owners made a living by selling advertising. The same holds true today.

I am simply tired of movies and news that cater to basically illiterate 15-year-old boys.

Sue

At one time every network, TV, radio, newspaper, had a news bureau. Small news outlets had local and statewide bureaus. Mid-sized one had nationwide setup with offices in NYC, Miami, Chicago, LA. Large networks maintained offices in capitals and major cities worldwide. Much of the international flavor of major cities like Moscow, London, Paris, Bangkok, and many other cities, came from news services maintaining offices there.

There was a whole lot of redundancy because CBS, ABC and NBC all had their own people and networks. NYT. LA Times and Washington Post all had their own networks. Then you had both the API and UPI press services. Pretty much every story and every angle, with a few notable exceptions, like FDR's polio, got covered as all these organizations competed to get the story and get it first. It also helper that reporters had very little loyalty so they moved moved to organizations that would get their stories out.

It was also a time of accountability for news. Facts tended to get out as any organization that shaded its coverage got undercut by another service. There were only three main TV networks but radio had hundreds of independent stations and newspapers were numerous. Even small cities had two or three newspapers. Large cities often had three or four major papers, four or five regional papers, and many minor ones. And every single outlet dreamed of breaking 'the big story'.

The other thing you need to understand that news bureaus for TV and radio were seldom profitable. Newspapers made their profits on advertising and classifieds but TV and radio consistently lost money on news. But, conventional wisdom was that if you ran a network you needed news. The 6 o'clock news was the lead into prime time and ratings that allowed you to charge the big bucks to advertisers. It was also a point of pride to have a news department that got he story first, got it right, was seen as honest and reliable. CBS made its bones in the 60s with its coverage of the space program.

What changed was that the news department went from being seen as a status center to being just another profit center. News had to start to show a profit on the money invested. So the expensive parts, like maintaining bureaus in major cities, and particularly foreign bureaus, got liquidated. News departments shrank and, in a lot of places, ceased to exist. Local TV stations don't often have actual news departments. They get something from a news service and regurgitate it. Which is why, if you pay attention, you can go see the exact same phrases used time and again across networks and papers. Instead of there being two or three reporters giving accounts that differ so there is a verification and nuance we get one account that may or may not ask the key questions and cover important aspects.

With news departments required to show a profit the news has also shifted to celebrity gossip and fluff pieces. Those sorts of reports are cheap and easy to get and you have a built in audience. So we get five minutes on Paris Hilton flashing her vajay-jay and Justin Bieber's new haircut and thirty seconds reporting on the airliner that went down.

Then there is media consolidation and the lack of accountability it allows.