Journalism Over the Years

A major story doesn’t find itself, but rather it takes a man or woman with motivation and determination to go out and share with the world what he or she has found. This is a job journalists take on each and every day. It doesn’t matter if it is a reporter for the local Fox station in Los Angeles, a newspaper writer for the Washington Post or a radio talk show host in Chicago, all three have to find something that would interest the public; over the years these findings have been called news. However, the news that is delivered to the public is a lot different than it used to be. Over time, Journalism started to change from one kind of news based on actual news stories, such as World War II, the Holocaust and the civil rights movement to another type of news based on stories such as Paris Hilton going to rehab or Britney Spears losing custody of her child to Kevin Federline. There are a number of dates in history that experts can point to as the turning point of journalism, but one event that undoubtedly shifted the change in the type of news desired by the people was Watergate. Pre-1974, there wasn’t a lot of pressure amongst newspapers or television stations to find and deliver the “big story,” but Watergate changed all of this. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post first broke the story of Richard Nixon and his aides conspiring to bug the headquarters of the Democratic Party in Washington D.C. It was "the single most spectacular act of serious journalism [of the 20th] century," said media critic Ben Bagdikian (American Journalism Review). This may have been a true example of serious journalism, but it was also a turning point of journalism. Because of Woodward and Bernstein, other newspapers and television stations were being pressured to first report the next big story, which has led to an increase in sensational journalism and in turn, journalism that is no longer based on its straight facts and validity, but instead on its timeliness and intrigue to the national public.

Once Woodward and Bernstein broke the story of Watergate, every network set out to find something new about Watergate that hadn’t been released. It didn’t matter if the information found had a credible source or even no source at all, it just mattered that the network find the information and be the first one to do so. Competition arose amongst the networks and managers started to realize that news could become highly profitable; this is when journalism turns into networks feeding rumors to the public. After the Congress and the courts started to expose the unlawful acts going on in the White House, the media started finding whatever it could. For example, CBS anchor Walter Cronkite “falsely implicated White House aide Patrick Buchanan in money-laundering” (American Journalism Review). A writer for the New York Times, Jeff Gerth, “claimed that Nixon’s supposed financial ties to Mafia financier Meyer Lansky and Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa meant that ‘organized crime…put its own man in the White House’”(American Journalism Review). Both of these examples show how the validity of the reporting is not as important as being the first to get the information out to the public.

In today’s era, it is much harder to report news that hasn’t been verified because if you are wrong, a lawsuit could arise, and in the case of a television station, it could lose its license. However, while it may be risky to release information to the public that hasn’t been verified, if the news is something that wouldn’t harm the network to a large degree, attract a lot of viewers and get ratings, it will be released. The drive for ratings has changed the type of journalism we see in today’s world. Because of the fear of lawsuits, networks are no longer focused on stories such as Watergate, but instead on stories that have more leeway in terms of their validity. For example, accusing George W. Bush of cheating on his wife and being wrong could ruin a network and bring it to the ground, but accusing Britney Spears of the same charge wouldn’t harm the network. This is why celebrities have become the focal point of today’s news. News executives are no longer focused on finding the “hard-hitting” story, but instead on getting a story that is interesting in the public’s eye.

One of the main reasons why the “hard-hitting” story is no longer as popular in today’s news is because of the way our society has changed as a whole from one that is willing to wait for the “big story” to one that wants the news instantly. “Who, today, is willing to wait a month for breaking news? We want our news now” (Nieman Reports). Whether it is text messages with the latest sports scores of your favorite team to one push of a button on your Blackberry to get on the Internet, people want the latest news as soon as possible. I even became a victim of this myself last week when waiting for the O.J. Simpson verdict. I watched the verdict being read live but I wanted to see how long it would take for CNN.com to post the verdict. It took three minutes before the page had updated. Twenty years ago, someone would have laughed at the idea of news on the Internet only three minutes after it had occurred. However, our world has changed so much over the past two decades that it would reflect negatively on the network if the breaking news weren’t updated immediately. This need for news right away has brought about the concept of a 24-hour news cycle, which has introduced “the fact that there is no deadline, or that every second is a deadline” (American Journalism Review). News channels such as CNN and Fox News were created for the sole purpose of giving news every minute of every day. It is impossible to find a new story to report every hour, so stories that would have the potential to last longer and be talked about for weeks or months became prominent in news. A few examples of this happening were the O.J. Simpson murder case and the Elian Gonzalez story (The Columbia Journalism Review). These cases may not be about health care, the economy or other huge issues in the world today, but they do have a spectacle to them. The Boston Globe put it perfectly when saying, “The past few decades have also seen a shift from stories with in-depth coverage to those with “speed and spectacle” (Boston Globe). It takes time for a big story such as Watergate to develop, but it takes five minutes for someone to see Paris Hilton on her way back from rehab, call the news station and then send a helicopter to the scene to follow her. As unfortunate as it is, the desire of people wanting news immediately has led journalists to become more like the paparazzi than a Pulitzer winner.

While timeliness has become one of the key factors in the type of news being covered, another factor is the intrigue of the news itself. An expert in health care may be thoroughly fascinated by the subject, but he or she doesn’t want to hear about it for thirty minutes. However, a story like Hurricane Katrina or the Dow Jones dropping below 10,000 for the first time in over four years is something that all people are interested in. There is one story that is found on “both the front-page and the evening news: a human-interest story” (Columbia Journalism Review). Human-interest stories may be something as important to our lives such as a hurricane or the economy, but it also could include stories such as a man having the ability to become pregnant. This exact story was on the cover of People Magazine last April. Now, while this story may not be as hard-hitting as other stories, it is intriguing in the public’s eye. The fact that it was on the cover of People Magazine, a magazine with its own website that had 51.7 million hits on the day after the Oscars in 2007, proves that the editors of the magazine felt like it would attract enough people to read it. It has the shock and startle factor that is interesting and makes people want to know more. Moreover, while the timeliness of a story is crucial in getting people’s attention, it also has to have the human-interest aspect.

There are many differences between our world today and the world we lived in thirty years ago and this clearly shows in the field of journalism. The introduction of the Internet and cable news has forced the journalism industry to adjust in order to keep people interested. News stories used to sell themselves and some still do today, but because of the way our society has changed over the past few decades, the media has to do more to sell its product. Whether it is making the news released to the public timelier or adding a human-interest aspect to it, it definitely takes something extra today to get people interested. Twenty years from now, the journalism industry definitely won’t be the same and there will be something new and exciting that gets people interested. Someone living twenty years ago would have balked at the idea of news alerts via text message or Internet on a cell phone, but this just shows how journalism is continuing to change. As we reflect back, journalists were defined as reporters who delivered solely factual news, while today many of them are viewed simply as sensationalists whose intent is to provide news with dramatic and artistic expression, while the question arises as to what the future of journalism will hold and how it will be defined.