ONA Issues

poynterinstitute:

How people who don’t work in news consume their news

Melody Kramer spoke with people about where and how they get news and what they dislike about news. 

Lynsey Smith, teacher and cheerleading coach, Portland, Oregon: “I hate how polarizing it can be and how partisan it can be. I also hate how some outlets ‘dumb down’ their coverage. I don’t want or need a watered-down version of what’s happening in the world. I think things like that contribute to feelings of apathy and disconnect, which are no good.”

Dan Angelucci, videographer, Philadelphia: “I tried to make a parody Web series that was like if puppets were running a cable news network, and one of the reasons that we couldn’t really get it to work after eight or so episodes was that we could never really bring ourselves to watch cable news. There’s nothing inherently bad about 24 hour news networks. There’s kind of a canard that ‘cable news is bad because there isn’t enough news for 24 hours,’ but that’s not really true at all. There’s so much news out there, and it’s not being covered. I imagine most people, myself included, feel they’re very under-informed about the news, and there’s always something going on that we could learn more about. The problem is that cable news absolutely focuses on the wrong things. Not to keep making this about a medium that I don’t even work in, but public radio doesn’t seem to have any problem filling 24 hours with genuine news content.”

Oliver Zhu, programmer and budding neuroscientist, Cupertino, California: “I actually happen to be reading Brooke Gladstone’s “The Influencing Machine” at the moment, and I’m tempted to just defer to Brooke on this question, since there are so many frustrating things about the media. Really shitty science journalism in mainstream media is definitely up there. Narrative bias, which insists that news stories have to fit some narrative structure with good guys and bad guys and causes and effects, is another thing that really bothers me.”

Vicky Parysek, teacher, Berlin, Germany: “Sensationalist reporting and the clamoring of news agencies to be the first to break the story – whether or not they have all the facts.”

Ellen Chisa, tech, Boston: “It feels transient. Something happens, I get an update, and then it’s gone. I feel like I almost never understand the resolution – it’s just like ‘oh it’s news!’ followed by a slow fade to nothing.”

Robyn Kramer, retired radiologist technologist (and my mom,) South Jersey: “I hate the repetitive format… The weather is not breaking news..it’s December..it’s cold..it snows.. This is not news. They lose me when the repeat the same things over and over.. I glaze over and don’t hear them.”