Did you know that in 1980
55 million Americans watched the network news every night? In other words 24% of the USA population
watched the news. If 24% of the USA population
watched the network and cable news on TV today 75.6 million people would be
watching.
So why are just 25 million
Americans watching the network and cable news today? That means less than 8% of our population
gets their news from the blob tube today.
What about the other 92% of the population?
Okay, this story could be
a psychological thriller if you care about such things since we are talking
about something that can have a major influence on your mind. If you are a trusted psychologist is this
drastic loss of news watchers a bad or good thing?
As an investigative
reporter I want to find the truth behind the numbers. So I first check on things like do people
trust the news media. Here is the latest
Gallup poll.
Why would people want
to watch news they don't trust? No
wonder the numbers keep dropping. Is it
good or bad that people don't trust the media?
If they don't trust the TV media who do they trust for news?
Sadly print media and
radio are both fading into extinction as news sources while the digital
revolution has brought us multiple sources for news bytes but little in the way
of in-depth reporting.
I had a theory it all started back in 1979 when President Jimmy Carter got attacked by the killer rabbit. Such stories could have accelerated the loss of trust in the media.
In spite of an
expanding variety of ways to get news, a sizable minority of young people
continues to go newsless on a typical day. Fully 29 % of those younger than 25
say they got no news yesterday either from digital news platforms, including
cell phones and social networks, or traditional news platforms. That is little
changed from 33% in 2010.
In all cases the more
choices we have for news the fewer people are using them. Thus the access is there, so is the
availability, but the content and delivery seem to suck.
Once upon a time there was
some semblance of journalism integrity when it came to news. Standards, ethics and fact checking were all
practiced before most stories got into the news. With the Internet, there are no longer
requirements for standards on content, ethics in the writing style, objectivity
in reporting or fact checking in the content.
Once upon a time no
respectable reporter would quote an anonymous source but today's Internet is
filled with unsubstantiated facts and unknown sources of information. Worse, there is no one in a position to
bring such discipline and ethics to the Internet since it has no loyalty to
sovereign geographic boundaries.
Who would you sue and
under what court of law if a story full of lies is on the Internet? It can be almost impossible to track the
source of the story when Internet servers all around the world are used to
transmit information.
So we are helpless to
enforce any journalistic standards.
Maybe it is a good thing fewer and fewer people are watching the news or
are accepting the digital universe as the source for news.
Yet I cannot help thinking
that a society that no longer thinks and is no longer informed of the
situation in the world may very well be so caught up in self-serving interests
that the good of all the people is a distant memory.
Maybe we need more digital
applications teaching us how to give selflessly rather than simply take. Self-gratification is not a Cardinal virtue
in spite of what you may have read in the digital universe.
.
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