Newspapers

I recently got into a discussion about popular media. I mentioned that I didn't read the papers, and mentioned that I didn't really want to read about how some guy beat up his wife, or some guy robbed a quicky mart. The reply I got was "but what about the women who are getting beaten?"

Well, at the time it seemed a good point, and I couldn't exactly express why that point of view didn't work for me. Am I just too flippant about the world around me? Do I not care about women's rights? Don't we need to be informed about what is going on in our world?

Now that I've had time to reflect, it occurs to me that what bothers me about this sort of news is that when an issue is brought up, it is done so in an anecdotal sense of individual example with stress on the sensational, and not on the facts.

You see, I don't care to know the details of who hit who, what their names were, how the police got involved, how the neighbors feel, etc. It bears no relation to my daily life nor society in any tangible and meaningful sense, other than to tell a story: it is entertainment of marginally social value. I can get better from good fiction, and it doesn't make me as sad.

What I would love to see in a news publication is news presented in a format that allows me to make a difference in my immediate world. I don't care that John hit Sally (or vice versa) specifically because it is a past event that is already being handled by the current laws. It can only lead to reactionary policy that is driven by the emotions of the story. Not a good way to do anything.

We end up concentrating our energy on politicians who have to summarize a suggested solution that will fit in a sound bite because we end up so uninformed on the issue as to be unable to discuss it in a public forum: we lack the terminology, background, and concrete data. A politician can't present a good solution because we are too uneducated to understand it without that person writing a book on it. A catchy sound bite becomes the only option for the distracted (but entertained) masses.

Instead of a John beat Sally story, I would love to see articles that gather information from peer reviewed sources and present them in a way that helps me make informed decisions about things like policy and law.

I don't want just statistics; I want information about the kinds of things that are happening (not anecdotal instances), what is currently being done about them, and some reasonable evaluation of how well that is working. Does jail time stop the beatings, or is treatment more likely to help? What solutions do other countries pursue, and how well do they work?

We occasionally see stories with this flavor, but I have yet to see one that I find credible outside of a select few magazines and research journals. Credibility, unfortunately, doesn't seem to sell well.