The 24-hour news cycle should have earned one of Stephen Colbert's coveted "Medals of Fear" at the Oct. 30 Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. With constant news from CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, the media often blows news stories out of proportion and sensationalizes current events. While this ever-present media coverage does have distinct advantages, non-stop news also leads to exaggeration, fear-mongering and sometimes even a lack of journalistic integrity on both sides of the aisle.
Constant coverage by the media mean important events can be constantly monitored. For example, the world was able to watch as 33 Chilean miners were rescued late at night. This 24-hour coverage also provides citizens with up-to-the-minute information about current events, conflicts and important international affairs. There is no doubt that this type of media helped increase citizen awareness of the world. After all, it is important for people to be connected to the world around them.
But this sort of coverage has negative side effects. Because news is geared toward reporting negative stories, constant reports on these events often lead to a negative view of the world. News outlets often focus on the disastrous economy and the close to 10 percent unemployment rate, but hardly mention the steady improvement of job creation during the past year. Examples like this give citizens a bleak outlook on the world and shift the focus on what has gone wrong in the country - not what has gone right. That creates fear among us all.
Additionally, sensationalism and exaggeration are other characteristics of the 24-hour news cycle that lead to a negative portrayal of our nation. Everyone has heard Glenn Beck compare President Obama to both communists and the Nazis, instilling fear in the hearts of those who do not realize that it is actually impossible to be both. And although Christine O'Donnell is not a witch, the left's rhetoric has tried to convince us all to fear what would happen if she had been elected to the Senate. Likewise, Keith Olbermann has asserted numerous times that many conservatives are "homophobic" and "racist." Clearly, both sides of the aisle have used fear-mongering as a tactic in the news media.
Finally, because media outlets are always competing with one another to break the latest story, many incomplete stories are aired without proper research, which leads to a lack of journalistic integrity. One of the most prominent examples of this is the July 2010 story of Shirley Sherrod. Blogger Andrew Breitbart broke an incomplete news story that was then picked up by Fox News and then by other media outlets. The story asserted that Shirley Sherrod, a Department of Agriculture employee, used racism to determine how much federal aid a farmer in need would receive. Sherrod was immediately asked to resign from her position. But if Breitbart or any other outlet that aired the story had properly researched the story rather than trying to perpetuate claims of racism, they would have found that the sound clip posted was not the entire story. Instead, Sherrod went on to remark that she realized the situation was not about race, but instead about the "poor versus those who have." And she went on to comment in her speech that, "I didn't discriminate ... If I had discriminated against him, I would not have given him any help at all because I wasn't obligated to do it by anyone ... I didn't have to help that farmer." Sherrod's story should have been a non-story. But journalistic integrity is sometimes sacrificed in favor of inaccurate examples of extremism in the competitive contest to be the first news outlet to the break news to the public.
The constant news cycle has failed in reporting accurate, non-biased news stories to the American people. Instead, media outlets publish incomplete stories and perpetuate fear of the opposing political party. By appealing to viewers' emotions and comparing current government officials and past candidates to historical evils, the media creates exaggerated caricatures of these figures. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear addressed these issues. After the rally, Olbermann suspended his "Worst Person in the World" segment to tone down some of his show's hateful rhetoric. This is one step forward and other news media should follow Olbermann's lead, remembering, as Jon Stewart said, "we live now in hard times, not end times."
Claire Shotwell's columns appear Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at c.shotwell@cavalierdaily.com.
Read More
EDITORIAL: Celebrating and reflecting on The Cavalier Daily’s independence
By Editorial Board | 4 days agoOur independence grants us the ability to ask the hard questions and to say what University representatives cannot.
ARRAS: U.Va. must revise the Sexual Assault Prevention Training module
By Aoife Arras | 6 days agoIn addition to its failures in interactivity, the module lacks details specific to the University and discusses key concepts in universal terms.
EDITORIAL: Pedestrian safety is an institutional imperative
By Editorial Board | April 15, 2024Amid a national crisis of pedestrian safety, Charlottesville and the University are also struggling to properly maintain pedestrian safety.
