Sit your laptop/smartphone/tablet down, or walk away from your computer. I know you've been dying to read my much-anticipated blog post, but please temporarily refrain from the urge to do so and ask the person closest to you what he/she thinks about the media of this day and age.
Chances are, it won't be a positive assessment.
As someone who's previously studied about and currently working in the media industry, I am well aware that it's getting a lot of flak for the job it's been doing of late, and deservedly so. I'm not writing an academic essay, so excuse me for not having any credible sources to back me up, but it doesn't take a media guru to tell you how toxic the media can be if not digested properly.
The key phrase here is "digested properly." More on that in a moment. For now, allow me to morph into an expert and explain to you a few things about the journalism profession that could help you understand why the media is what it is at the moment.
Huy, why is the world such a dangerous place right now?
Newsflash: It isn't.
If you feel you've been constantly bombarded with so-called "terrible" news of late, it's not because the world all of a sudden is turning into a dystopia.
Strange as it sounds, it's actually just the media doing what it's supposed to do.
Journalism is about reporting what happens, not what doesn't happen. Just ask yourself, would you:
- Bother to read an article titled: "An uneventful day in our neighborhood"?
- Keep watching a TV segment in which the reporter goes: "I'm live here in the middle of nowhere. Nothing's going on right now, everything is perfectly fine"?
- Care to click on a link that reads: "Nobody died yesterday, according to a city official"?
Probably not.
If you take a News-writing or any Journalism-related class, your professor will most likely ask you this question on the first day of class:
What makes a story newsworthy?
After going around the class fielding answers, your professor will sum everything up with a few bullet points. The lists may vary depending on your textbook/professor, but all of them will contain one similar bullet point.
In other words, if your story has the potential to interest readers, it's fit for print. Every news publication will try to tailor its news content to the targeted audience's interest. That's why we are seeing more specialized news outlets to fit specific types of audience, instead of the everything-under-one-hub model of the past.
With all the airplane tragedies this year, the ongoing terrors of the Islamic State, or the seemingly daily citizen-police officer gunfights, it's understandable that you may feel the world is in a pretty bad shape right now.
But it just reflects how you, yes I'm looking at you, the media consumer, wants your news served. Simple supply-and-demand rule: if the audience aren't interested, the media won't produce.
There's a reason why the media keeps feeding you those kinds of stories.
There's a reason why those kinds of stories always draw the highest amount of clicks or receive the highest ratings.
There's a reason why the majority of news stations still implement the "if it bleeds, it leads" model in their work, or the Vietnamese equivalent of "cướp - giết - hiếp - sốc - sếch" stories.
You guessed it. Because you want them.
So Huy, are you saying it's not the media's fault?
No, at least not entirely.
To clarify, I'm not trying to defend the media by any means. A combination of lousy user-generated content, the 24/7 news cycle, and the urge to "get the scoop" have come at the dear cost of journalistic quality. I could go for days talking about my discontent with the direction the media is heading into right now. But that's beside the point.
What I'm focusing on in this blog post is the fact that media consumers need to understand that it is their responsibility to filter their own news feeds. This is what I mean by "digested properly". Yes, the media could do a better job of proportioning their news, but it doesn't help when stuff like this happens:
Here we have a recent post by WPMT-FOX43, a Central Pennsylvania TV station where I used to intern. This is an attempt by the station to "soften" up the news feed with a funny clip of an officer's reaction to being on live TV. Now look at the comments I attached to the picture.
These two are not the only ones complaining why this funny clip qualifies as news. Obviously there are people who enjoy the change of pace and find this story funny, but this just goes to show the double-standard many news consumers have these days.
- Too much terrible news? Me no likey.
- How about something softer to lighten the mood? Why is this even news?
So if you're still complaining why all you see on the news are stories of mass killings, some stupid celebrity scandal, or Kim Kardashian's otherworldly butt, blame yourself first, for the media was just tailoring their content to fit YOUR need.
So you're saying the world is still a safe place to live in?
I don't know about your world, but mine's alright.
Of course now that I've jinxed myself, I may run into some unwanted trouble tomorrow. But even so, it doesn't change the fact that:
1. It's not just the media's fault
2. The world is not as dangerous as you may deduce from what you see on the media.
3. There's no such thing as an Apocalypse™, or The End of the World, unless like me, you're a fan of The Carpenters.
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