Battling the Braindead

I was paging through my journalism textbook today after I had finished the assigned material, stopping and reading anything that caught my eye. (Yes, I am that nerd who reads things out of their textbooks when they don’t have to. Have pity.) As I was scanning the articles a little box of statistics caught my eye, one line in particular:

Percentage of journalists who say they avoid running stories readers think are important, but dull: 77

Yes, you read that correctly. I did a double-take too. I was so sure that the number was faulty in some way that I looked up the source in the back of the book: The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press; and then Googled it. Lo and behold, there it was.

http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=39

It just screams "The Braindead Megaphone," doesn’t it? Here is concrete proof that the question now is not "Is it news?" but "Will it stimulate?" News stories are being overlooked because they are deemed "too complicated for the average person" or lack audience appeal. What is this, sweeps week on NBC?

My New Year’s resolution of sorts was to stay up to date on current events. I’ve done tolerably, scanning the headlines and reading some pieces from the New York Times online. You want to know something though? Usually I stop when they get boring, I just move on to the next one. Same thing if I don’t understand. This was a big wake-up call. I’m a person who is making the statistic a reality. I’m adding to the problem.

So, what to do?

Like Saunders urges, we need to be aware of what is going on around us. The news is being dumbed down, and to get the whole picture, we, as an educated and concerned audience, need to be ready to do a little digging. We may have to suck it up and read things that may be "complicated," or >gasp< "boring." We may not understand everything right away, it may take us a while before we do, but that’s okay, because we’re getting the real news and fighting that idiot with the megaphone.