Fall 2005 PDF - Milton Academy

decrease in the amount spent on researchand travel. Yet the costs are up, and storiesare more expensive to cover. Just thinkabout Iraq. The presidential campaign isanother example. It lasts much longerthan campaigns in the past; the candidatestravel so much; and airfare to travel withthe president is one and a half times whata first-class ticket costs.”Another issue undermining the public’sconfidence—one mentioned by all the studenteditors at Milton—is the rise of newsas entertainment, rather than information.George points out that “when 24 hours ofnews is covered every day, that representsa lot of air time to fill. CNN, for instance,relies on repeated video clips and talkingheads; it feeds on the back-and-forth ofarguments. Coverage of the death of JohnPaul II and the election of his successor isa good example. Newsweek recognizedthose events as major news, and devotedtwo magazine covers to it. There werelong periods of time when nothing washappening that were filled with videoreruns and commentators giving analysisand predictions. Eventually the wholeprocess was treated almost as a festival.People in St. Peter’s Square were referredto as ‘the faithful,’ or ‘pilgrims.’ Whoknows if that is what they were? Theywere people who gathered there for manyreasons. The whole process could havecome across to the viewers as entertainment.They assumed that the public wasin favor of the notion that this man, as aChristian, was a great person, when thatwas not the universal view. They lost sightof the controversial aspects of his leadership;his views on birth control and HIV/AIDS were buried in the celebration of thecrowds.“Then of course,” George says, “there’s the‘news’ that is really only entertainment,like Michael Jackson’s trial, or MarthaStewart’s imprisonment.“Does the ‘news as entertainment’ issuespread to news magazines?” George asksrhetorically. It does, he acknowledges.Everything is competitive. Newsweek has3.1 million subscribers; the magazinemust cater to some extent to the massmarket.While the Milton student journalists complainthat the “mass market” is lethargicin its pursuit of the truth, the Pew“What’ll it be—entertainment newsor entertainment?”Research Center finds a large segment ofthe public active in consulting manysources for their information, conductingmuch of that searching and readingonline. George doesn’t see the public asapathetic, necessarily; rather he sees thecountry as much more divided than inpast eras. “They are less willing to readand try to understand what is differentfrom what they believe. News fatigue is abig factor, too. The presidential campaignwas exhausting, lengthy and divisive. It’sjust difficult to keep your eye on the ballof a troubling, divisive story. People grabfor the simple side of a story, and are notinterested even in listening to differentpoints of view.“The level of knowledge and professionalismin large news outlets is quite high,and the job of journalists is ultimately tosearch for, and be accountable for, accuracy.People seem to think that writing aboutbad things that happen during a war isunpatriotic, that any criticism is anti-American. But Newsweek, as is the casewith other major news outlets, is not fullof liberals or leftists. You can’t put a genericlabel on the press. The notion of journalismis to find out the news, to questionauthority, to look for things going wrong.Journalists have always operated accordingto the theory ‘It’s better that you know.’”Cathleen Everett8 Milton Magazine