In an era of constantly available data, reporters are being pushed away from waiting for the facts to come out and toward making more assumptions and including their own opinions in an attempt to increase readership. This opinion-driven news cycle has led to a degradation of the quality of our news.
As Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Unfortunately, many of our news sources have made a habit of presenting their opinions in the absence of facts.
In the wake of the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight 370, CNN had wall-to-wall coverage for weeks, despite the relatively small amount of factual information. Instead of being able to present facts, CNN brought in every person who had ever flown a plane, flown in a plane or seen one in the sky. A majority of the coverage wasn’t even close to being newsworthy, but that didn’t stop them from airing it, nor did it stop people watching it.
Back in August, when the sports world was obsessing about whether Michael Sam would make the starting roster for the St. Louis Rams, ESPN devoted a tremendous amount of time to covering and analyzing every possible angle. After ESPN published a story about Sam’s showering habits, Sam’s then-teammate Chris Long tweeted, “Dear ESPN, Everyone but you is over it.” Although Sam’s story is inspiring and important for the future of the NFL, it by no means justified the excessive coverage ESPN continued to run. No one should need to know, or care to know about Michael Sam’s showering habits. The story was once newsworthy, but when the new developments stopped, the reporting should have been reduced accordingly.
This problem doesn't have an easy solution. I’m sympathetic to the people who have a constant need for more news — I’m one of them — but we need to make a change to improve the integrity of our news and therefore, the public’s knowledge of what’s happening.
Reporters won’t change their style of journalism unless the viewers demand a different form of reporting, and I don’t expect any show of disapproval anytime soon. In a recent article for Slate Magazine, L.V. Anderson simply proposed “Let’s Turn Off the Internet Every Sept. 11.” While this idea is obviously an exaggeration, she presents an interesting point. Anderson goes on to say, “Editors at every blog and news site (including this one) have looked for new angles on the attacks of 13 years ago, publishing or re-publishing rote essays about how 9/11 changed (fill in the blank)."
She added, "Everyone feels that they must say something new about 9/11, even though no one has anything new to say.”
People are so insistent on having new information that we have gotten to a point where we substitute new, potentially outlandish opinions and theories in place of the facts once used to report stories.
There’s no inherent problem with opinion. The ability to share and express one's own viewpoint is important, but we need to make sure we don’t cross the line where opinion becomes fact. Whenever a major story breaks, people have an incessant itch to know everything about it and the news organizations go into overdrive. Providing news in real-time is important and is what journalists are meant to do, but the real issue seems to begin when the story is over. When the incident is over and there are no more facts to report, the coverage should be curtailed.
The public relies on news to be both swift and accurate, but these qualities should carry equal weight. There’s no value in quick reporting if it only contains speculations about what may have happened. Similarly, there’s little value if the reporting is perfectly accurate but isn’t published until months or years after the fact. Journalists and readers need to reassess the balance of the speed and accuracy of their reporting so that integrity and quality can be returned to the news.
Reach the columnist at zjosephs@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @zachjosephson
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
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