Tales Too Tall?

Journalism is, for the first time in a long time, cool. We now have the capabilities to employ all kinds of media to report the news. We can reach out to young people who prefer the Internet. We can cater to older crowds that like to see their news in writing. Regardless of the formatting of the news, we can now reach a broader scope of readers. And that’s exciting.

But with this sort of change comes a new way of thinking and the understanding that there’s the risk for division. As Leonard Downie Jr. and Robert G. Kaiser point out in “The News about the News,” new “technology and the increasing diversity of American society have fragmented the news media and their audiences” (11). The authors suggest that cable television and Internet sites, which allow the news to be more available, increase the competition to be first. Somewhere along the line, then, the desire to get the story first leads to “loosening traditional standards of confirmation, accuracy, taste and fairness” (11).

As journalists, we’re society’s primary informer. We shed light on unfamiliar areas and help right wrongs. We also educate, provoke and, at times, entertain. But when is journalism just for entertainment’s sake appropriate, if ever? This is the direction we seem to be headed in. And this is why I sometimes feel as if I want journalism to stay the way it is, or at least the way it once was.

But now cable television is top dog. And perhaps that’s not so surprising. As the authors mention, “[m]any in the news business became convinced that in an era of unparalleled prosperity and security, Americans would rather be entertained than informed. The consequences of this attitude are obvious on every television news show, and in too many newspapers” (11). Glitz and melodrama, the authors say, have taken over.

I’m not sure this is the way it will always be. I’d like to think that in this new era of convergence media, people will no longer be allured by the glitz of cable television. Perhaps, instead, they’ll turn to the Internet, where there’s a glut of well-written news articles waiting to be examined.

Interestingly, I think newspapers, too, are guilty of melodrama, perhaps without their ever knowing it. In the Columbia Journalism Review, for example, one young reporter, Peter Holley, points out that he unknowingly dramatized the story of one girl, Sarah, whose drug addiction and descent into a seedy lifestyle as a prostitute made her a celebrity practically over night. Although it was a student who broke the story, I feel as if this kind of journalism has become more commonplace. Some could argue, perhaps, that these are the kind of stories people want to hear. I say no matter. When we as journalists settle for feeding society’s cravings—if that is really what it craves—we succumb to a cat-and-mouse game that does nothing to advance conditions in society. The most shocking stories, in other words, aren’t always the most effective in conveying a fact or statistic.

In short, I’d say we’re no longer prudent, or at least some of us aren’t. We’re easily allured by stories that could comment on societal problems as if they were something that could be contained. But, as Holley suggests in the article, sometimes these problems can’t be so easily fixed. And sometimes our writing about them makes these problems worse. Of course, I’d never argue we shouldn't write about an issue just because it’s messy or difficult to grapple with as a journalist. Rather, I’d argue we should be careful not to sensationalize or generalize for the sake of making a story easier for readers to understand. Holley says, “It occurred to me that I had no idea what led Sarah down her troubled path; certainly it was more than casual experimentation. As an inexperienced reporter in search of a great story, I had relied on a trite, one-dimensional narrative of tragedy and redemption, the kind of thing we’ve all seen countless times on television and in the movies” (11).

Sometimes I think it’s easier to get a handle on a problem by looking at it from a different perspective. For example, I could argue that this assumption that journalists must somehow shock or impress their readers into reading the news is like Estragon and Vladimir, from Samuel Beckett’s tragicomedy “Waiting for Godot,” passing the time until something happens to their lives. In one scene, Vladimir says, “We’ll hang ourselves to-morrow unless Godot comes.” Estragon says, “And if he comes?” And Vladimir responds, “We’ll be saved.”

But the thing is, analogies and comparisons and generalizations don’t always work out. While I do think readers want to be sort of “saved” by journalism so that their lives can be ameliorated (and journalists, too, sometimes act as if they can “save” their readers), one person’s story or a simple comparison doesn't always accurately show what’s going on in a situation, even if it makes a good cover story. That, to me, is the hardest part about journalism—resisting the urge to abridge stories so that a piece can be made simpler, showier, more interesting.

This is going to be the biggest test for journalists in years to come.