Commentary
Information, Please!
Why young viewers are turning off broadcast news
bas276@nyu.edu
My generation is turning its collective back on traditional news broadcasts, and it’s not because we are apathetic or just read the news on the Internet for free. We are quite frankly sick of the childish way news is portrayed today.
Every time I turn on my television in hopes of getting a few minutes of relevant information, I am left wondering why I didn’t just put on reality TV or a sitcom. Several thousand Americans my age have been killed in Iraq; the national debt is increasing by over a billion dollars a day; and China owns almost $400 billion dollars of the American national debt — but instead we find out that Lindsey Lohan was drunk, again; Paris Hilton is still rich, spoiled and lacking in smarts; and another white girl has been kidnapped.
Refusing to rise above the fray, NBC’s Today recently had a segment entitled: “Cleavage At Work: How Low Can You Go At The Office?” During the segment, probably inspired by the overabundance of news stories about Hillary Clinton’s microscopic display of cleavage a few days earlier, Today co-host Meredith Vierra offered this sage advice: “Workplace experts advise, dress for success as long as it’s not construed as dressing for sex.”
Twentysomethings aren’t just turning away from broadcast news because of segments about showing too much skin. News can often have too narrow a focus, says David Morris, opinion editor of the Texas A&M University student newspaper The Battalion.
“When there’s news about Britney Spears or California fires, though important, the broadcast media, especially television, doesn’t seem to cover much of anything else,” he said. “And I really couldn’t care less about Britney’s latest baby momma drama.”
A 2004 Pew Research Center study about how people get campaign news found that adults 18-29 “are abandoning mainstream sources of election news and increasingly citing alternative outlets, including comedy shows such as the Daily Show and Saturday Night Live, as their source for election news.”
Of course we are. For many of us in our twenties, the news -especially local news —has become unimportant, because it’s so often irrelevant. Even a journalism student like me can’t suffer through it. WSAV-TV in Savannah, GA recently broadcast a report about how to prevent a carjacking. The reporter advised us to be aware of our surroundings, have our key out and to lock vehicle doors once inside. Thanks - but are you really telling us anything we don’t know? This is just another scare tactic, designed to keep us frightened, which keeps us watching.
Local news “teases” — promotions for stories — are now so ridiculous that the radio program Opie and Anthony, best known for off-color jokes and firings, has developed a news tease hall of fame. It features TV newscasters saying utterly preposterous things like: “A popular car could be extremely likely to crash, we’ll tell you which vehicle has many worried at 11,” or, one my all-time favorites: a six part, 22 minute story reported by Carl Monday of WKYC-TV in Cleveland about a man who was caught watching pornography and masturbating at a public library.
What we get from The Daily Show and the Colbert Report, while steeped in sarcasm, is some relative information about our government and its leaders. The Daily Show has shown quotes on Iraq from President Bush that contradict his previous statements. Displays of flip-flopping by politicians are hardly ever shown on television news anymore. Unfortunately it takes a team of comedy writers to do the jobs that journalists are supposed to do.
Kent Collins, the Chairman of Radio and Television Faculty at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, doesn’t think satire is a major source for news, but that it may be pushing students to find out more. College students, he wrote in an email, “first see/hear it on Colbert & Daily, and then read deeper in the regular media websites.” If he is right, satire shows could be responsible for driving the issues an entire generation cares about. What happened, then, to news programs presenting substantive issues for the public to digest and discuss? Instead, television news has contributed to a culture that debates the death of Anna Nicole Smith much more minutely than the merits of the war in Iraq, possible war in Iran or the sub-prime mortgage crisis. At least it seems that way on my TV.
When there is real journalism, our eyes stay glued. According to the Pew Research Center study, 26 percent of 18-29 year olds got their campaign news in 2004 from TV news magazines, such as 60 Minutes. When there is an important story, a proper narrative structure and some top-notch reporting, we’re willing to watch and learn — just like our parents, and other older adults. Please, for our sake, take out your notebooks, call your sources, stop debating about Britney Spears’ child custody battle and get back to reporting the news.