Less Reading, Less Understanding
Terry H. Schwadron
July 15, 2022
No one disputes that we’ve suffered through a couple of years of bad news.
The never-ending reports on inflation and high prices, the persistently recurrent pandemic, war in Europe and divisive domestic politics are prompting Americans to look for anything but news.
Several measures simultaneously are showing that news engagement is plummeting, reports Axios. What remains are the most general, usually unnuanced slogans and summaries about our public issues that is passing as news. Similar trends are true for cable television news, mainstream outlets, news apps, websites and even social media, as compared with the same measures even a year ago,
It is unclear whether disengagement is because of so much repetition through the day and week, whether because the news is so depressing, whether the pundits and pols are talking only to themselves or whether because our policymakers cannot agree on much besides the weather — or whether people are shying away from reading altogether.
But the signs are not healthy for fans of rational debate of public policy issues. And as soon as an issue grabs the public attention, whether abortion rulings or inflation rates, the inevitable retelling of the substance as filtered through partisan filters spells a constant pattern of noise rather than focus on solutions.
Indeed, a new New York Times poll finds that trust is disintegrating around American institutions and democracy altogether. Some of that responsibility falls to the institutions themselves, some to the media image reflected, some to us as readers and citizens
Though these same measures about American interest in the news is relatively cyclical, those following such trends see public exhaustion with the kind of engagement that democracies demand to remain lively social experiments.
It may also help to explain why there is such a noticeable, if still minority groundswell of tolerance for authoritarian figures to arrive as if on a big while horse to take over the disputes of the day and to magically resolve them.
Partisanship and Repetition
Partisanship accounts for some of the decline, of course, both among viewers and readers who want only agreeable content from their favored provider and among channels that insist on feeding an audience primed for propaganda dressed as news.
Whatever else one can say about the constant effort to twist news into politically acceptable messages, the process makes the news dull, So, too, is the also-constant need of cable television hosts to talk to us like idiots who need to be told what the coming news event is supposed to portend.
For sure, we are as tired of hearing news packaged as a stream of blame, crises, scandals and stupid remarks by public officials. Explanatory journalism has given way to clickbait in search of ratings, verification efforts towards underscoring discovering truths has given way to an ever-present “breaking news” bannerand showmanship.
Cable’s possibilities have become predictable sinkholes of repetition and empty talk filling time before the next breathless breaking news moment. It’s dull.
This new dip in attention comes as dozens of local news organizations are failing, as ownership of news radio is being concentrated in a few (conservative) players, as online news has been subject to much bashing on all sides for disinformation or exclusion.
Among the recent news audience measures compiled by Axios:
· Cable viewership across CNN, Fox News and MSNBC is, on average, down 19% in prime time compared with six months of last year, with losses at CNN and MSNBC and slight gains for Fox. It’s important because they reflect different outlooks about what is news and why.
· News app sessions for the top 12 mainstream most-trafficked publishers dropped 16% in the first half of 2022, according to data from Apptopia.
· Website visits for the top five news websites in the U.S. by unique visits tracked by Similarweb dropped 18% in the first half of 2022.
· Engagement on social media — that is, likes or reposts — with news articles dropped 50% over the past six months since last year, despite more articles published, according to data from Newswhip. Facebook has sought to change its
news feed to a separate tab.
Bad News Prevails
For me, this situation evokes my news organization of a generation ago when we were asked to reimagine the format of news to better provide convenience in presentation and news context; we settled around a different way to present headlines that tried to tell a secondary contextual element.
But along the way, we talked with designers and thinkers who suggested such things as splitting the front page into separate columns for Disasters, Need to Know and Accountability or other like separations. Today, that might be Silly Things Said Aloud, Scandals and Blame. And Disasters.
This decline comes despite news about the economy, the war in Ukraine, a series of deadly mass shootings, the Jan. 6 hearings and the Supreme Court’s revocation of abortion rights, immigration and politics.
Survey data also underscores weariness with bad news. The percentage of respondents to Reuters Institute’s annual Digital News Report that said they sometimes or often actively avoid the news is 42% in 2022, up slightly from 38% in 2017.
It matches with similar surveys in other parts of the world. A new report from Reuters Institute and the University of Oxford discusses “selective news avoidance, citing constant bad news. The report notes that better-informed citizens can help democracies make better decisions and reflect more social tolerance. The report also suggests that younger people say they often are confused by the news.
News trust in the U.S. is the lowest among the 46 countries polled for the report — at 26% (tied with Slovakia).
Past studies cited by Axios have shown constant bad news can give us PTSD-like symptoms.
As an example, reactions being sought to the televised House Select Committee on Jan. 6 show that millions have tuned in, but the number of minds being changed by the content remain modest. The biggest issue cited by the committee has been the desire to reach people with information that may challenge perceptions about how the Capitol riot came about. In my own conversations, the reaction that the hearing content won’t matter to any legal resolution is prevalent.
The question clearly is what is our responsibility to be aware of anything beyond the specifics of the gas price we see at the pump?
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