January 8, 2007
The Questions: Media Edition
Even with my general avoision to much of the televised variety, I think I consume more news than the average person. It’s something of an addiction made easy with this handy internet thing that’s come together over the last few years. News is everywhere, it’s always developing and it’s easy to watch the narrative develop through the many sites offering information online.
I read two olde fashioned paper newspapers most days and a host of others online. I follow a bit of every section of coverage and some of my interests are made obvious through things I write here. Being in the biz just a bit explains my curiosity for news about the media itself. I’ve noticed a couple trends in the business that are puzzling me, and I’m offering them up here, in my second installment of The Questions.
To take this question theme thing into a weird double loop or something, my first gripe for the news media is what’s with all the questions?
Time to call your insurance agent? What’s that smell? Media bias toward global warming? Stem Cell Debate Resolved? Twice as Nice?
All of those are headlines I just found on the Fox News Web site. They’re not the only media organization asking lots of questions with their headlines these days, but they’re definitely one of the most frequent offenders. Reporters are supposed to answer questions. Sure you ask plenty of them while gathering your news, but when you get to the report parts of the job you should be done with the questioning parts. You present what you just found out and if some of your questions remain unanswered you let people know what details are still missing and then go back out searching for those answers so you can tell everyone else when you find out.
It bugs me to see well trained reporters throwing their hands in the air so easily and just declaring their questions outright. I’m not sure why they do this, maybe because they can’t make up their mind, or maybe they just don’t know, or maybe they think the questions are kind of cute. They’re really none of the above because the media should give people the information they need right away.
The above headlines could just as easily read; Business insurance rates expected to drop, Mysterious gas smell takes Manhattan, East Coast mainstream media exaggerates global warming, Stem cells developed from amniotic fluid, Two-headed snake charms Cuba.
But these questions are a double bonus for the news business people. They draw people in, so instead of giving people the facts short and sweet like “Dewey Defeats Truman” they bring eyes and ears to their advertisers. The other bonus of course is the ability to give a straight news story an ideologic shove in a particular direction. After all, what else could they be getting at with a news crawl reading “Are Dems Botching It With Ego-Driven Power Trip?”
These tell me your problems and I’ll solve them in my column columns need to end. I know they’ve been around forever in some form or another, but they seem to be in a renaissance at the moment. While some might champion them as community journalism, they really are an easy way of filling news space with home made news. The items covered in these columns are only news because a columnist made a phone call or two on behalf of the aggrieved party at the center of the column.
The incidents they cover are news manufactured by the media; something that always hurts the industry’s credibility. They also point out two things to me. The customer service available from major retailers and utilities can be beyond poor, but the results obtained by the columnists only come about after the offenders realize they’re going to be getting some negative press.
What I don’t understand is why don’t people learn from this example? The next time I get injured in the bureaucratic hell that can be customer service, I’m going to have a friend call on my behalf pretending to be from a newspaper. I bet we get a response and results in a hurry.