Since the origin of language, journalism has been an integral part of human society. The collection, dissemination, and exchange of news has kept people informed, developed social ties, and fed the insatiable human desire for novelty over the course of several millennia. While technology in the field of journalism has evolved at an exponential rate since the advent of the printing press in 1440, the biological structure and function of the human brain hasn’t kept pace, which has resulted in a modern digital age of news saturation and information overload. Our culture has conquered the obstacles of time and space with repeated technological progress, but has also endured the repercussions on objectivity and truth-telling as a result of the democratization of information-sharing in an increasingly polarized and omnipresent online community.
Pre-literate societies were able to transmit their news through word-of-mouth, symbolic rituals, or other forms of signals, but once they began assigning messengers and criers to deliver specific news, their information transactions became more efficient and effective. As Mitchell Stephens (1997) explains in his book, A History of News, “This [preliterate] news gained speed as dawdling and detours along the route from source to receiver were reduced; it gained power as discipline and devotion were applied to its circulation” (p. 21). Other major sources of news in societies without mass communications included the marketplace, pubs, and coffeehouses, where, as Stephens describes it: “the beverage pulls people in and loosens their tongues; the place fills with news” (33). These types of oral newsgathering are still very much in practice today, but have certainly been offset by technological developments in the field of journalism, such as the printing press, telegraph, radio, television, and internet.
For hundreds of years, the printing press established its foothold as the premier purveyor of news in the world. In the American colonies, journalism exploded in the 18th century with the development of daily newspapers such as the Boston Gazette and The Daily Advertiser, which focused primarily on political and economic news leading up to and following the American Revolution (Stephens, p. 161). However, as Stephens puts it, “The written word, through its ability to last, can preserve the past and regulate the future. Journalism, however, is concerned with the present, and writing had a great deal of difficulty keeping up with the present” (p. 46). With Samuel Morse’s invention of the telegraph in 1844, things started to change.
Patricia Dooley, in her 2007 book, The Technology of Journalism, states, “the telegraph allowed news publishers to gather and send news with greater speed because they had been freed from the constraints of previous communication systems” (p. 1). Some people, such as media theorist Neil Postman, saw this conquering of time and space as a potential threat to the overall knowledge and general discourse of the news-consuming populace. According to Postman (1986), “the telegraph is suited only to the flashing of messages, each to be quickly replaced by a more up-to-date message. Facts push other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation” (p. 70). This critique draws striking parallels with the Niagara of information that floods across our phone and computer screens today. Dooley (2007) proposes that the telegraph led to more objective news reporting in the 20th century, and quotes communication theorist James W. Carey: “the telegraph replaced [the letter-writing correspondent] with a stringer who supplied the bare facts” (p. 139). Journalism took on a new business model during this time, centered around cooperative news agencies. In order to disseminate news as fast as possible to the widest number of outlets, stringers often left out contextual information to keep the stories succinct (Dooley, p. 139). However, in an article from The Atlantic, Megan Garber (2017) discusses Postman’s fears that stripping news stories of their context would only serve to trivialize the events being covered, and would lead to “a media environment that abandoned sustained narrative for more episodic delights.” Eventually, the telegraph led to the sensationalism of yellow journalism in the United States in the early 20th century (Garber). Furthermore, Garber elaborates on Postman’s prescient concerns about the rise of television in America, saying, “[Postman] worried that television—an environment where facts and fictions swirl in the same space, cheerfully disconnected from the world’s real and hard truths—would beget a world in which truth itself was destabilized” (2017). Following World War II, the television would prove to be the most powerful conduit for journalism since the invention of the printing press.
Prior to the 20th century, with word of mouth and the printed word as its only mediums, journalism and the news relied on active consumption from its audience. People had to seek out their news and deliberately read or listen to what was being directly shared with them. But the advent of radio and television led to a rise in passive news consumption, where people take in their news as they are exposed to it, rather than actively seeking it out. Nicholas Fuller (2010) demonstrates this phenomenon in his book, What is Happening to News: “One useful study found television more successful in communicating information that the audience is not already interested in, while newspapers and magazines are better at communicating information about subjects the audience is interested in” (p. 67). Fuller goes on to explain how the style of news-gathering shifted during this time period, when there were only a few television channels available. He explains, “In the pre-cable era, [political scientist Markus] Prior argued, large numbers of people got exposure to news, just because it was on. They came to know about public affairs through by-product learning; they learned without meaning to” (p. 67). Over the next few years, television coverage of the United States’ international conflicts created a spectacle of war for its viewers; presidential candidates were increasingly judged based on how they looked in debates rather than the content of their talking points. As television became more popular, so did news coverage, with the introduction of the 24/7 news cycle by CNN in the 1980s (Dooley, p. 164). In the thirty years that followed, the rise of the internet gave people increasing access to news, from desktop computers to portable laptops to pocket-sized smartphones. While the practicality and convenience of these internet devices left the population starry-eyed, this would prove to be the most complex transition in history for news producers and consumers alike.
Smartphones, powered by the internet, have become absolutely essential in our daily lives. As Nicholas Carr wrote in a recent article for The Wall Street Journal, “Imagine combining a mailbox, a newspaper, a TV, a radio, a photo album, a public library and a boisterous party attended by everyone you know, and then compressing it into a single, small, radiant object…No wonder we can’t take our minds off it” (2017). While this medium provides the opportunity for active news consumption, more often than not we find ourselves passively receiving the bombardment of information that comes hurtling through those small glowing screens. Major news stories can be (and often are) at the mercy of their successor. Politics, entertainment, sports, and other topics are constantly reported on within the same news platforms until the lines between these actual realms of society become blurred.
Due to increased accessibility to multimedia technology and the wide reach of social media platforms, citizen journalism has seen a huge increase in the past decade. Fuller (2010) notes that journalists have complained about a decline in news quality during the digital age, but argues that the modern news environment is so competitive that outlets must give audiences what they want or risk becoming irrelevant (p. 69). Many modern news outlets, it would seem, are now simply competing for our attention, rather than our trust.
In his book, Fuller (2010) discusses the “attentional searchlight” that humans have been using throughout our history to make sense of the world around us. He writes, “One group of brain researchers put it this way, ‘Humans have an evolutionarily determined readiness to let their attention be captured automatically by emotionally significant stimuli lurking in the psychological darkness outside the spotlight of conscious attention’” (p. 64). A primitive hunter would’ve used this searchlight to assess an unknown rustling in the bushes near him. Today, we use it to navigate through incessant digital notifications of calls, texts, emails, social media messages, advertisements, and breaking news stories. Fuller addresses this, with a nod to Marshall McLuhan’s famous theory of “the medium is the message,” by writing, “Today it is not only the medium that is the message; it is the media altogether, the ways that messages from everywhere pound away at the senses, trying to force their way into our ancient brains…an era of ‘continuous partial attention’” (p. 60)
Because of this continuous partial attention, it becomes very difficult to dedicate time for reflection or deliberation on the content of the news each day, let alone the medium that we are receiving it through. Now, these news stories, advertisements, and other messages have become personalized and tailored to fit our past online activity. As Fuller puts it, “Today’s distraction is not heedless of us, like noise in a factory. Today it calls our name. This makes today’s messages very difficult to tune out” (p. 58).
In the midst of this whirlwind of information, the very foundations of objectivity and truth-telling have been shaken, as many people have turned to hyper-partisan news outlets for their daily dose of sensationalist stories and drama packaged as news. Fuller (2010) offers an interesting explanation for this: “Value judgment and subjectivity cannot be excluded through journalistic discipline; they are in the very structure of narrative. Increasingly wise to this, people doubt professional journalists even more than opinionated bloggers because of the journalists’ claim to neutrality” (p. 91). However, he believes it’s important that journalists continue practicing objectivity in their reporting, claiming, “The method is objective, not the journalist” (p. 150).
The legitimization of news in the coming years will heavily rely on its audience’s ability to understand the methods of news delivery. Distinguishing between clickbait articles, native advertising, and trustworthy news may become increasingly difficult, but awareness of these issues in journalism will certainly help the cause. In the introduction to his book, The Shallows, Nicholas Carr (2011) writes, “What both enthusiast and skeptic miss is what McLuhan saw: that in the long run a medium’s content matters less than the medium itself in influencing how we think and act…a popular medium molds what we see and how we see it—and eventually, if we use it enough, it changes who we are, as individuals and as a society” (p. 3). From printed newspapers to radio and television broadcasts to social media updates, each medium has had a profound effect on the American culture as it has been integrated into the daily lives of citizens. In these fast-paced digital times, news consumers must step back and contemplate how they are receiving their news, and what effect that might have on their perception of the world. In a country where the president openly attacks the free press on the same platform that countless journalists use to disseminate news, the future integrity of the journalistic profession depends on it.
Bibliography
Carr, N. G. (2017). How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds. The Wall Street Journal.
Carr, N. G. (2011). The shallows: what the Internet is doing to our brains (Norton pbk. [ed.]). New York: W.W. Norton.
Dooley, P. L. (2007). The technology of journalism: cultural agents, cultural icons. Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press.
Fuller, J. (2010). What is happening to news: the information explosion and the crisis in journalism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Garber, M. (2017). Are We Having Too Much Fun? The Atlantic. Retrieved fromhttps://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/04/are-we-having-too-much-fun/523143/
Postman, N. (1986). Amusing ourselves to death: public discourse in the age of show business. London: Heinemann.
Stephens, M. (1997). A history of news (New ed.). Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College Publishers.
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