Why are growing numbers of Americans ignoring major newspapers and network television news?
The question was raised here last week and an imposing number of you took the trouble to share your thoughts.
Was there a consensus? yes, and I think it was best framed by one of my correspondents who said for him journalism has become “boring, biased and extraneous.”
These views are worth sharing, so here are snippets of some of the letters, faxes, phone calls and e-mails we received.
From Cory Briggs of Sacramento: “Much of the information The Bee presents is incredibly useless to me. Let me illustrate: There is little or no information in The Bee that guides my decision-making process. The information presented does not improve my life in any way that I’m aware of. How does Hillary’s trip to Africa improve my life or make me a better person?….”
Mike Sarkasian, Sacramento: “The public serves as the check and balance on the press. Today, the individual citizen has ever-increasing access to primary news sources. C-SPAN gives us access to political news, unfiltered, unedited and uncensored by journalists. The World Wide Web gives us access to source documents and other primary sources. Armed with such sources, the public can check both for accuracy and objectivity.
“The press should take heed, for they are quickly becoming irrelevant. That, in and of itself, bodes disaster for our society. Fair and balanced reporting will bring the press back to relevancy. Perhaps the answer lies in the source from which journalists are hired. At one time, journalists were generally hired from the public at large and trained by newspapers. Now they are hired from a pool of relatively uniformly trained specialists, products of journalism schools…”
Laura Courtner, Sacramento: “I have a 25-year-old son in college. He doesn’t read newspapers because he says he doesn’t like being told how and what to think.”
M. Koehly, Chico: “Television news is so eager to be first that they often go on the air with half stories and rumor, making much ado about nothing. They also seem to be going for the tabloid news as well….
“The papers seem to be so politically biased. Our Chico paper is so right-wing, Rush Limbaugh seems liberal, so I don’t get it. I read The Bee, but noticed that since the Sacramento Union has gone out of business, The Bee seems to placate those readers in order to get their business.
“All the political news seems to be what one party is saying about the other party, when both parties are usually guilty of what they’re accusing. It isn’t worth reading….”
Gaylord Chapman, Rio Linda: “Until the advent of the Internet, we the people had to rely on our local media for facts, but thanks to the Internet this is no longer the case. As a result, I see almost daily the outright midinformation and distorted reporting printed in The Bee. In many cases The Bee ignores news if it is detrimental to the Democrats.”
Ruth Ann Friedlander, Citrus Heights: “I seldom glance (at the main news sections) any more except for the front page and the ‘Names and Facts’ part of the second page. Why? There is too much bad news, depressing news, news about who is doing what to whom, either one-on-one or in groups, either here are around the world, and I’ve had enough of it….I don’t want it stuffed down my throat day in and day out.”
Peter Humm, Susanville: “My personal trust in the news media is somehwere around zero, primarily due to the inability of news media reporters and editors to separate their personal biases from their reporting. I recognize that I have my own biases, but I do not pretend to provide ‘objective’ news reports to the general public, nor do I attempt to shape public opinion through my so-called ‘unbiased’ approach to the news.”
Dale Heien, a professor of public policy economics at UC Davis: “Coverage lacks depth. Almost every economic story I read in the main-line media gets it wrong and is superficial.”
Finally, a prominent Sacramento executive who asked that I not use his name: “The overall problem is another lamentable product of the ’60s. Today’s reportage is suffused with a political correctness and an obvious liberal orientation. It is evidenced not so much in politics as in the social issues. But the social issues are the true grammar of the contemporary discourse. Readers and viewers smell this a mile away. They sense an agenda….And they are too frequently correct….
“We are in the final stages of a declining journalism….It is limping off into inconsequence. There will be few mourners. It is not yet clear what will take its place, but inevitably, the new technologies will empower readers and viewers, giving them choices, eliminating the drab, cautious and sanctimonious middlemen who have provided so inadequate. I suspect technology will force improvement at both ends of the bell curve. Upscale information and tawdry information will grow in accessibility and effectiveness.”
This was no scientific poll. I heard from only a tiny fraction of Bee readers (my thanks to all of you for your trouble), and I don’t suggest their views in any way mirror the whole. But these are highly motivated and articulate people, many of whom obviously hold strong social and political opinions, often contrary to what they find in The Bee. Journalists expectably will (and should) quarrel with some of these views. but they can’t be blown off. These are the kind of readers any paper should covet: They care about what they read.
The readers to worry about are the ones from whom we don’t hear.
