Out of sight out of mind.

The media decide what we think about, and if a story is not in the headlines we don’t pay any attention to it.

As I watched the season premiere of “South Park” last week, I was reminded of an issue I only forgot about because it was no longer in the headlines. The episode was a satire of the Snowden-NSA scandal, and even though this is a continuing story I didn’t remember it because it was no longer breaking. The news has a tendency to decide what is important for us. This problem also seems to reflect our interests as media consumers.

The news changes frequently, and it is easy to lose sight of what happened a couple weeks ago as time erodes the importance of these stories. But sometimes certain stories still have relevancy and fall out of the headlines to make room for a new story that some executive deems more important.

As readers we have the psychological tendency to pay attention to bold headlines and ignore the smaller stories. Obamacare and Syria are hot topics all over the headlines, but so was Miley Cyrus.

WSU instructor Mark Wadleigh said he doesn’t even watch the news anymore. If you know Wadleigh, then you would know he is someone who has undying respect for news media legend Edward R. Murrow and strongly believes in basic human principles.

However, he said the news has evolved into show businesses, which does a huge disservice to actual entertainment.

According to a recent Pew research survey, 65 percent of Americans said news organizations focus on unimportant stories. This is likely because even on a slow news day, news outlets can and should do better than publishing a story on a stabbing over a cheeseburger.

Fewer than one in four Americans are confident in newspapers and TV news, according to a Gallup survey. We are constantly fed useless information presented with an agenda. When comparing the subjectivity of our modern journalism to Murrow’s time, it’s absolutely black and white.

Murrow reported on stories that were important for people to know.

“His job as a news person was to illuminate an issue and give enough context so people could think for themselves,” Wadleigh said.

We unfortunately lost insight. Journalists now compete with each other to get a story first, and money plays a huge factor in the industry.

It is true that big news corporations have shaky principles, but I don’t think it would be fair to blame all the ridiculous content on them. News corporations tend to report on stories that would capture their audience’s interest. This is depressing because the content of the news is a reflection on the information we want.

If this is what we find interesting, then we need to seriously shift our priorities. It is pathetic that we care about Alec Baldwin’s rants and Lamar Odom’s DUI.

This infectious junk has nothing to do with our lives. If we need distraction or entertainment, fine, but it belongs on E! and not CNN. We need to change our perspective of what is important. As long as we continue to eat it up, the news will serve it.

News outlets need to give us information besides the stories they decide we should read. The media need to give us information by objectively. As for the consumers, we need to research for ourselves what is important and then decide our opinions about a particular topic.

We should not let the media decide what is and isn’t relevant; we should pay attention to more than just the marketable headlines.

-Alyssa Reynolds is a senior communication major from Ferndale. She can be contacted at 335-2290 or by [email protected]. The opinions expressed in this Column are not necessarily those of the staff of The Daily Evergreen or those of Student Publications.