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Nicholas Sonsini

Professor Kyle King

ENGL 137: Rhetoric and Civic Life I

27 October 2016

The Good News and the Bad News about American Media Consumption

Did you see that video on Twitter last night? Questions like these have become almost

routine around high school classrooms, college campuses, and even the office. On the surface,

one does not give so much as a second thought to something as innocuous as a video on a social

media platform. Most of the time these videos and stories do not individually have that much of

an impact on society; collectively, however, this form of sharing content has radically changed

how Americans have received their news. From its humble beginnings of newspapers and radio

broadcasts, to the rise of televised programs and the current digital revolution, the news has

reached Americans in numerous different ways over the past half century alone. These changes

in the way that we consume our news has led to more unreliable and deceptive information being

shared by our society today; this is largely because of the decline in the number of local

newspapers, the rise of clickbait revenue sources for digital media, and the introduction of the

online filter bubble.

As the saying goes, we must know where we came from to know where we are going.

While this clich is often thrown around by motivational speakers, its truth is vital when

examining cultural trends, especially in news consumption. To fully grasp what the news is

today, we must first look at the function of the news in the recent past. This understanding will

help to illustrate the similarities and differences in news coverage between the mid-20th century

and today.
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When discussing how people consumed news in the 1940s-1950s, the two mediums

inseparable from the era are the radio and the newspaper. It is difficult to overestimate the

influence that these industries had on informing the general American public before the mass

introduction of television. At this time, the only real way people could get their news was from

newspapers in the morning or radio news broadcasts in the afternoon. The Golden Age of the

1930s saw half of all Americans living in a home with access to a radio, and NBC was the first

major company to begin using this platform for news (Randle). Even though the 1940s saw the

percentage of Americans having a radio soar to over 80% (Randle), new printing techniques and

technological advances allowed for newspapers and television to have a new surge of impact on

American news.

Even though sensationalistic writing was wildly prevalent during early 1900s, efforts

within the journalism industry helped created a far more reliable news source half way through

the century (Pariser). Obviously some degree of yellow journalism will always exist in the press;

however, it was the continued success of newspapers and the faith people had in them that

helped them not only survive but thrive alongside televised broadcasts.

The 1960s saw up to 71.8% of American households have access to a television (Randle).

This in turn led to a near clockwork routine of getting up and reading the paper in the morning,

then watching the evening news as a family in the evening. With few homes having more than

one television, and with the relative lack of channel options, the only new stations available to

the public were NBC, ABC, and CBS (Randle). Initially, this narrow window of televised news

coverage combined with the rapid growth of American suburbs led to huge increases in the

popularity of local town or county newspapers (in addition to the national and metropolitan

ones).
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The relationship between newspapers companies and television at this time propelled

both industries forward. The growth of suburban America allowed for more and more coverage

of local events and stories in print; likewise, as televisions become more accessible and began to

offer more channels, more news stations were able to form. While television did introduce some

new stories, often times the stories discussed on the evening news actually began as pieces from

the newspapers themselves (Oliver).

Even with this mutually beneficial relationship, televisions ability to produce more

instant news is truly where the paradigm shift in media consumption begins to occur. As stations

began to have more news programs on at a greater period of time throughout the day, people

became accustomed to the thrill of seeing breaking news. Breaking news was often introduced to

viewers on the evening programs and then covered in-depth the following morning in the

newspapers. This cycle persisted until a medium developed which could provide breaking news

at an instant while also having a more detailed description than a television segment; that

medium would come into existence in the form of the internet.

The internet may arguably be the greatest technological advancement in the history of

human society; however, it also may have played a part in destroying the integrity of journalism.

The internet has become undisputedly woven into every aspect of modern life as computers have

become far more accessible to the average person over the past twenty years. This digital

revolution transformed nearly all American industries, and journalism was no exception.

Specifically, the internet did two critical things that print newspapers could not achieve: create

up to the second news and do so for free.

The first thing that instant news does is increase the likelihood of inaccuracies when

reporting information. Instead of focusing on whether or not the story is completely credible,
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often times news companies would prefer to risk the veracity of their stories to be the first ones

to report it. While this has always been fairly common to an extent in all news reporting, the

ability to share this information online has exponentially increased its effects (Oliver). Also,

many newspapers have tried to shift towards digital markets, and in doing so they often set daily

tweet minimums for their journalists, whether or not they actually have news to report (Oliver),

in an effort to keep up and share their content more with social media users feeds (Pariser).

Another huge reason that the number of local newspapers has declined is due to financial

constraints. Since 2004, the number of daily newspaper companies in circulation has dropped by

nearly 100, and since the year 2000, the number of employees at newsrooms at these companies

has dropped by over 23,000 (Barthel). Besides losing 39% of its workforce in the past two

decades, print newspaper companies have lost over $30 billion in ad revenue in the last 12 years

alone (Oliver). In that same time span, the increase in online ad revenue for these same

companies was only $2 billion, resulting in a net profit loss of $28 billion (Smith).

The internet has helped to create access to nearly all news for free, and while it is good

that this news is available to more people, it does not necessarily mean the content is of the best

quality. This increase in free news has caused more and more people to turn away from local

papers especially, and this has dire consequences. Most televised news sources are from local

papers themselves, and the absence of local papers means that local stories, ranging from politics

to community events, will mostly cease to exist in favor of more national and buzzworthy

stories (Oliver).

The immediate question here is why cant these newspapers just go online? It largely has

to do with advertising and the actual monetary value of getting clicks. In the past, newspaper

customers would often have subscriptions to one or two local newspapers plus another one or
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two national level papers. These customers ensured a steady income for the companies, who then

could sell the print advertisement space on their papers for a fairly sizable amount of money.

This financial security allowed the newspapers to focus on accurate reporting and practice

integrity in their journalism. However, the price of advertisement space on online medium is

worth far less than that same space on a print version (Barthel). This causes the first problem

with financing smaller newspaper companies on the web.

The far bigger problem with profiting on a digital platform is the constancy of the papers

audience. Prior to the rise of online news sites, the subscriptions people had to newspapers

ensured that the customers would read nearly the entirety of the paper (as not doing so would be

a waste of the subscription). Since the internet allows users to just click and choose what articles

they want to read, it renders most smaller, local newspapers unable to compete with larger ones.

This again leads to less coverage of local events as the local community often does not create

enough traffic on the news sites to keep these papers afloat.

This rise of clickbait news has led to very negative consequences to the journalism

industry as a whole. First, it establishes the need for more sensationalistic titles and story pieces.

This in turn shifts news stories from what is actual news coverage to the resurgence of rampant

yellow journalism (Oliver), and it also means that the free, attention-grabbing headlines will

often win out over detailed, accurate stories on a subscription news site. Experienced journalists

lose stories and possibly their jobs over this phenomenon, and this results in the average person

getting stuck with lesser quality news. Sites such as BuzzFeed and TMZ are quintessential

examples of this critique, as they have routinely been criticized for focusing more on gaining

buzz online than about genuine reporting (Smith).

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One rebuttal to this point is that these companies are merely delivering the kind of news

that people want to hear. To an extent this is a valid statement, and these news companies

claim they shouldnt be the ones deciding what is news and what isnt news. With that being

said, the role of a news organization is to deliver accurate information to its audience, and

claiming that this role doesnt matter is a complete disservice to those who use it as a means of

learning about current events in the world (Oliver).

The idea that news companies should give us news we want to hear is exactly what is

wrong with the state of the news today. The most damaging part about this flaw in todays news

is that an overwhelming majority of people do not even know that it exists. This flaw is known

as the filter bubble, and the theory was conceived by Eli Pariser in his work The Filter Bubble:

What the Internet is Hiding from You. The filter bubble theory is the counterintuitive idea that

using the internet and social media actually makes you have a less worldly view. The theory is

based primarily on the algorithms used by websites like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and even

several news sites like Yahoo News and Apple News (Pariser). These algorithms take many

factors about you, ranging from your previous internet searches to your location to even the

brand of computer that you are using, to tailor news specifically to you. Additionally, they try to

predict what articles you are most likely to click on and then base future search results on your

past tendencies (Pariser).

On the surface this seems like a very innovative idea; however, in reality its implications

are absolutely frightening. Giving people a false confidence in their own beliefs is harmful for

several reasons. When constantly being exposed to one side of the political spectrum (or one side

of any argument), typically you begin to believe that your side is more and more right. The fact

that very few people know that their search results are very biased in favor of their preexisting
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beliefs causes them to think that this is actually how the world is. Eventually what happens is

people go online to try to develop a greater sense of what the world is like and instead all they

see is their deeply held opinions confirmed (Pariser). The most damaging part about this is that it

completely undermines what the internet could be. Theoretically (and assumptively for most

people), the internet is the one place where all information exists simultaneously, where no one

owns the news, and where biases do not exist; however, because of these algorithms, no ones

beliefs are challenged for the better, and instead true discourse is ultimately halted.

While the current state of the news may seem somewhat inauspicious, it does not mean

that there is no hope for improvement. A news feed based only on algorithms would be

detrimental to future of journalism; however, steps can be taken to correct these negatives before

they spiral completely out of control. The first action that we, as a society, could take is to accept

that not everything can be free. We unfortunately may have to pay something, even as little as

20, for our news every day, but in the long run rewarding great journalists for their work will

only increase the quality of news and promote honest conversation about issues in the future.

Trying to get people not to just pirate these news sources may be hard, but as John Oliver

remarked during an episode highlighting journalism in todays society, If we dont pay for our

journalism, eventually we are really going to pay for it. This point captures the significance of

why it is important, across all new platforms, to have good journalists.

Another area we could improve upon is the algorithms themselves. Throughout the

history of journalism, sensationalism has always been a problem; however, the work of

prominent leaders in the field combined with public pressure led to the demand for

accountability and integrity. Utilizing this precedent, we could ensure that these algorithms do

force us to have our beliefs challenged and that they do not just focus on what display of articles
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generates the most clicks. It is also important to consider the probability that advances in these

processes is likely to occur since we are only in the infancy stage of our current computational

models.

American consumption styles of the news have come a long way from the days of radio

and print. Even though the mediums to which news is shared has drastically changed, we can still

apply the same level of scrutiny towards these new platforms as we have done to the ones in the

past. This emergence of online news sources combined with the diminishing role of television

and print news sources has had several causes and consequences; however, our continued efforts

can help ensure that the future of journalism is not so bleak. This is why we must do everything

we can to promote genuine journalism carried out with the upmost integrity, even if we do not

want to read that section of the newspaper, hear that segment of broadcast, or click on that article

link on the website.

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Works Cited

Journalism Oliver, John. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, season 3, episode 20, HBO, 7

Aug. 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq2_wSsDwkQ

Beware Online, Filter Bubbles Pariser, Eli. from TED Talks, Mar. 2011.

https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles?language=en#t-

513915

Barthel, Michael. Newspapers: Fact Sheet. Pew Research Center. 15 Jun. 2016.

http://www.journalism.org/2016/06/15/newspapers-fact-sheet/

Smith, Gerry. The Fading Newspaper. Bloomberg. 19 Apr. 2016.

https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/the-fading-newspaper

Randle, Quint. A Historical Overview of the Effects of New Mass Media Introductions on

Magazine Publishing during the 20th Century. First Monday, Volume 6. 3 Sep. 2001.

http://firstmonday.org/article/view/885/794