Doomsday updates — that is what our national media has boiled down to these days. Scrolling through today’s news sites is akin to reading a 4th grader’s poor attempt at writing a horror story: bold, scary blurbs in massive capitalized 40-point font masquerading as headlines on front pages. Lately, CNN’s homepage has been blaring hysterical Ebola updates while Fox News’ headlines scream of the threat of ISIS, in spite of the fact that neither seriously affect the wellbeing of the average American. News coverage has devolved into flashy red tickers, fallacious metaphors and alarmist language; a media that always tends to bring out the worst of situations.
Just last week, American journalism was put to shame by the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s coverage of the Canadian Parliament Hill shooting in which a Canadian soldier died while watching over a Canadian monument. The British newspaper The Telegraph noted that “while CNN's heading was "Terrified capital," in Canada they stated: "Soldier dies after Parliament Hill attack: gunman also shot dead." While CNN was busy speculating on the background of the shooter, Canadian news networks were hard at work sifting the rumors from the facts. As Peter Mansbridge, broadcaster for CBC, put it on the day of the shooting:
“And so, the situation is, as we say, tense and unclear. And it's on days like this — we keep reminding you of this and it's important — it's on days like this, where a story takes a number of different pathways, a number of changes occur, and often rumors start in a situation like this. We try to keep them out of our coverage…”
Broadcasters like CNN did precisely the opposite; instead of first analyzing details carefully, they immediately projected the image of chaos, using alarmist words like “terrified” to describe the shooter and the situation. Far more emphasis was put on the details of the shooter rather than the victim, and empathy for the soldier’s loss was pushed aside in favor of alarmist, flashy reporting. In this specific case, there was no misreporting, but often the media is sensational to the point of being plain wrong: misinformation was rampant during the Sandy Hook shooting and the Boston bombings. There is a new sickness in American journalism that harkens back to the days of yellow journalism, but instead of scandalous local news, we get poorly reported prophecies through speculative one-liners.
While it may seem inconsequential for news sites to publish sweeping, eye-catching headlines, they can have seriously harmful effects. The current Ebola media hype is just one stark example — the incessant reporting on the disease has led to it becoming incorporated in ridiculous and uninformed arguments and decisions. To take one example, Navarro College in Texas decided to deny international students admission to the college based on the premise that “Navarro College is not accepting international students from countries with confirmed Ebola cases.” This profoundly ignorant decision was made on the basis of a misinformed admissions office, and while it is clearly the staff’s fault for making the choice, the media’s exaggeration of the Ebola threat no doubt influenced the staff. The Ebola hype has also caused a sly form of xenophobia to permeate media outlets; in one alarming instance, Fox news broadcaster Andrea Tantaros suggested that all flights to Ebola-stricken countries be completely canceled, blurting that people from these countries “do not believe in traditional medical care” and implying a perceived threat from Africans. One CNN TV headline read “Ebola: The ISIS of Biological Agents?” in an attempt to tie together two flashy news topics, unfortunately showing a clear ignorance of how the disease spreads (since Ebola is not an airborne disease, it would obviously be a useless biological weapon, as was pointed out later on the same network).
Fortunately, many have begun to pick up on the last few months of unusually sensationalist reporting. The Daily Show host Jon Stewart mocked the Ebola hype created by the media by ironically wearing a yellow hazmat suit on air in a recent episode, while news sites like Mother Jones remind us about the virtue of calm and careful reporting. But this value is slowly dying in face of cutthroat competition in journalism — breaking news first has taken a priority to breaking quality news. As font sizes grow bigger and stories get smaller, American news reporting is losing the essence of true investigative journalism. Only by striving toward serious and professional journalism can we expect an informed and educated populace.
Hasan Khan is an Opinion Columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at h.khan@cavalierdaily.com.
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