EDITORIAL: Populist news, the pitfalls of the 24-hour news cycle
The 24-hour news cycle has drastically transformed the way American society keeps up with current events. This modernized approach to disseminating information has made the news process vastly more efficient and enhanced ease-of-access for readers and viewers. As a result, the public has acquired an insatiable lust for controversy and the media are constantly competing to report the latest and most compelling stories to quench their audience’s thirst for information.
Networks like CNN and Fox strive to publish what will prompt the biggest reaction from the public and generate the most social media hits. The problem with this being that the news everyone is receiving is derived from a very narrow range of topics leaving others to fall down the rabbit hole. The question for news networks is not, “What does the public need to know?”, but instead, “What stories are going to sell?”
This is not to imply that what is covered in the news is not relevant or important. Rather, to point out the 24-hour news cycle obsesses over one story at a time, leaving other stories out. Excess coverage of certain topics, such as when President Donald Trump tweets something divisive or interest in his misdoings spikes, syncs up with increased internet search traffic of those news stories.
This increased traffic leads to news outlets publishing more on this niche topic, which in turn leads to more traffic, and the cycle of single-story obsession perpetuates itself. During this process, other stories are lost.
Google News Lab’s data shows that for the news cycle in the first half of 2018, news searches and topics related to Trump consistently dominated search traffic with each new breakthrough story represented as a spike in search inquiries. The spikes were then quickly replaced by another dramatic rise when a new story would break.
The 24-hour news cycle has always been centralized, but this is a new era in control of information dissemination. Stories that require regular updates and consistent coverage due to their ongoing nature are lost in these populist spikes. The news, in so few words, is painfully void of diversity.
The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change met Oct. 10 to discuss their latest concerns regarding changing climate patterns. The report indicates that global temperatures are estimated to reach 2.7° F (1.5° C) by 2030, and the world is already suffering some of the consequences.
Sea levels are rising, and cataclysmic weather events are becoming more common. Despite calamity lurking around the corner, the public reaction has been meager due to scarce news coverage. This being just one of many issues the 24-hour news cycle has paid little to no attention to, leaving much of the public in the dark.
Along with rising global climates, much of the public seems to have completely lost interest in the War in Afghanistan. This year marked 17 years since U.S. troops were sent to Afghanistan making it the longest war with active troop involvement in the nation’s history.
On Oct. 13, Taliban fighters launched an attack at Afghanistan’s western province of Farah and left 17 dead Afghan soldiers in their wake. While the country is pining over the latest Trump Twitter scandal, there are still 8,475 U.S. troops deployed to Afghanistan as of May 2018 and an end to the war seeming to be nowhere in sight.
Google Trends data indicates increased search traffic for the Afghanistan War every Memorial Day and on the anniversary of 9/11. These facts give some insight into just how out of touch Americans are. Additionally, it demonstrates that the public is interested and will actively seek out news when motivated.
The investigation into Trump’s alleged tax fraud is also still very much a reality, and yet the media has sparsely mentioned it. The New York Times ongoing investigation has revealed that the “self-made millionaire” paid 5 percent of a gifts and inheritance tax, $52.5 million, as opposed to the legally required $550 million in the 1990s.
While the statute of limitations has run out on Trump’s tax evasion, if found guilty, he might still be liable to pay civil fines for tax fraud. The New York Times investigation is the culmination of dozens of interviews and the purview of more than 100,000 pages of documents and tens of thousands of confidential records. This is an impressive piece of journalism that almost no one will read.
On Oct. 1 two researchers were awarded the Nobel Prize for their groundbreaking discoveries in cancer immunotherapy research. James Allison of the University of Texas Austin and Tasuku Honjo of Kyoto University were recognized for cultivating a new approach to cancer treatment that provokes the immune system to attack cancer cells.
One might believe such a breakthrough in treatment methods for a disease that has plagued the human race for its entire existence would be more present in the news, but to the contrary, the media placed this issue on the back burner as well. With an estimated 1,735,350 people to be diagnosed with cancer in 2018, the media should be shedding more light on the matter.
The news media is a watchdog for tyranny and discourse as well as a resource for the purpose of keeping the community informed and aware of current events. When focusing on a single news story, the media confines itself to a bubble and loses its purpose.
It is the duty of journalism to present truths, provide a space for debate and to inform the public on what is going on in the world. The 24-hour news cycle might as well be a broken record, replaying the same six seconds of a song we’ve all grown tired of.
But in this new era of journalism, readers have the power of choice. With such a variety of sources foreign and domestic to gather current events and expert analysis, readers have the power to choose where they put their attention. It is now the duty of the audience to not allow themselves to be subjected to the cycle, and thus educate those institutions that would insist on a single, dominating story for hours on end.
Also published on Medium.
