As newspaper meets its inevitable death, television will rise to the forefront as people’s primary source of their daily fix for information. Although I admit it can be more convenient to press the power button on the TV set than to surrender 50 cents for the Los Angeles Times, television cannot possibly provide the unbiased and accurate information that a newspaper can.
What others see as an eventual crowning achievement, I see as a bleak future. Sadly, I foresee the news business lacking the basic professionalism of a newspaper to encompass the chaos of television.
The news given on the television simply lacks the attention to detail that a newspaper strives for.
For instance, I was watching CNN one morning and realized for the first time that most news coverage lasted approximately 30 seconds. The headline of a newspaper article became the entirety of the TV report. Unfortunately, the body of the article, the meat of the story, became lost in the television report.
I suppose to a society that has grown to have such small attention spans, which will likely diminish in the future, 30 seconds is more than enough.
However, if this is the case, it becomes a never ending cycle, as TV news will become intentionally shorter to accommodate people’s short attention spans, rather than encouraging a curiosity for news in society. If television will learn to neglect this basic part of journalism, its information will be flawed with inaccuracy.
What frustrated me even more was the over-sensationalized news presented on television. News from the television relies mainly on its visual aspect, rather than the content of the news, in order to entice its viewers. Better camera shots, better graphics and better looking anchormen win more viewers, while once again, the words and the true story are lost.
In a recent speech to a newspapers2 conference for young aspiring journalists at Cal State Long Beach, People.com editor, Michael Fleeman, recalled a time when a colleague praised him for being on television but could not remember what Fleeman had spoken about. His colleague was more impressed with the visuals than the content.
If television news has already lost sight of journalism’s true goal of reporting the best news possible, there is no doubt that the practice will sadly continue into the future.
That will be a tragic obituary.
The writer, Erika Oblea, is the winner of the Daily Forty-Niner high school editorial writing contest. Click HERE for more information about Erika.
