Life Support for Journalism

My first impression after I read the front page of Sunday’s Seattle Times was – ‘PLEASE FOR HEAVENS SAKES,STOP’. This was one day after reading and following the horrors of the gun man on the rampage in upstate New York and enough was just enough. Ironically in a seperate editorial piece entitled ‘Breathing new life into journalism’ written by John Nichols and Robert McChesney, the death of print media was lamented.

The editorial piece bemoans the death of print journalism and attempts to place the blame on corporate ownership, less reliance on local journalists and an overreliance on less expensive fluff. The irony of this piece of editorial genius is pretty obvious – it was written by syndicated national pundits deploring the dearth of local journalism. Here is a direct quote – “The crisis can be traced to the 1970’s, when corporate ownership and consolidation of newspapers took off. Managers quickly began to satisfy the demand from investors for ever-increasing returns by cutting journalists and shutting news bureaus.” Here is the irony - Nichols is a correspondent for The Nation’s Washington correspondent and an editor at the Capital Times. He is also the author of The Rise and Rise of Richard B. Cheney and Jews for Buchanan. Robert W. McChesney is a professor at the University of Illinois and the author of the award winning Rich Media, Poor Democracy. Not exactly local journalism.

I have a different theory. Maybe it’s the general belief amongst most media outlets that sensationally graphic mind blowing horror sells. If you peruse most headlines you would believe that on every corner in this country lies a mass murdering psychopath waiting to pounce on innocent children, churches, senior centers and schools. It’s as if they scan the police scanners nationwide waiting for the ultimate SWAT team call so that they can once again remind us of how truly horrible the world really is.

This is in complete contrast with the actual numbers for violent crime in the US. According to FBI crime statistics, violent crime actually fell by 3.5% in 2008. So why the back to back shooting sprees on the front page of our local papers? That wasn’t a rhetorical question – I really want to know what your theories are. Is it the misguided notion that horror sells almost as well as scandals and sex? Is it the ease in which the papers can cover it – after all you don’t even have to go to the crime scene, you can just turn on any of the news channels to get up to the minute, play by play coverage. Is it also a part of the copy cat syndrome – one severely disturbed person gets the idea from another emotionally scarred and deranged person being covered on the news? Is it a coincidence that the father in Washington State shot his children less than 24 hours after the non stop coverage of the idiot on a rampage in New York?

I don’t know about you – but I have had just about all the bad news I can handle for a life time just in the last 6 months. I’m tired of turning on the news – be it local or national – to hear more bad news. Between the bail outs, mortgage crisis, and war in Iraq, Afghanistan, auto makers going broke and the unemployment statistics – I have had enough. I’m not saying that journalists should lie to us, but can you just stop trying to out do each other with the worst news? All the bad news fit to print and video loop over and over ad nauseum in a ‘me too’ style of news coverage. To repeat from earlier – PLEASE STOP. Not only will you be giving us news consumers a much needed break, you might also improve your standing in the world of journalism, whatever that is supposed to mean these days.