Newspapers should be black and white, not yellow

Outside the Ferguson bubble, birds still chirped, dogs still barked and parents cooed their young into blissfully ignorant slumber. While debate in the Midwest raged on, the sun still rose in the east and set in the west.

I am talking about Ferguson halting the circulation to and from information hubs, and overshadowing news outside of Missouri.

The nation as a whole is blind. If a story does not run on the six ‘o clock news, then it doesn’t merit acknowledgment.

This is wrong. The sensationalism of the modern day impugns the honor of journalism, it tugs on the thread of integrity and it unravels the very fabric of respectable reporting.

Moreover, yellow journalism – exaggeration-based journalism for the sake of money and views – is eroding the intellectual bedrock of reputable broadcasting as hard-hitting investigative stories are replaced with skewed evidence and misleading headlines.

Here is a perfect example: Early October, CNN published an article titled “Ebola in the air? A nightmare that could happen.”  It sounds interesting, until you dive in and find you are drowning in a half-wit piece about a statistically small anomaly.

The headline hints that Ebola could become airborne when in reality there is a greater chance of being struck by lightning. The biggest takeaway is that news organizations have significant effects on the public and, as such, have even greater responsibilities for clarity.

Monika Krause reports in her analysis “Reporting and the transformations of the journalistic field: US news media, 1890-2000” that the evidence for local TV news is more mixed and that the “boundary between PR and journalism has become increasingly blurry.”

More and more, reporters ignore concrete facts and substitute falsity to generate attention-grabbing stories. 

It is important to know that falsity in the media stems from photojournalism as much as print and TV.

The digital era has increased the role of citizen journalists, where spins and biases are inevitable. Photoshop and other photo editing suites have blurred the lines between reality and fantasy.

Dave Hochanadel summed it up perfectly when he said, “the reason news photos are powerful is not because they’re perfect; it’s because they’re real.”

Slander, gossip and altered photography make for second-hand, half-wit news stories that generate controversy, not truth.

Regrettably, U.S. media takes for granted the opportunity and, more importantly, responsibility associated with our constitutionally protected rights as American citizens and journalists.

The United States has relatively low policy regarding media in comparison to other countries – North Korea comes to mind.

While the U.S. can’t decide whether we want more dash cams in police cars, Hong Kong protesters crowd the street for simple democracy; Finland becomes the 12th European nation to legalize gay marriage; and Mexican information surfaces of roughly 20,000 missing persons due to drug violence.

Remember, the job of a journalist is to inform, not solely to entertain. It is crucial that vital information, essential to the public, is readily accessible.

The unfortunate fact of the matter is that news is not an inert object; it is considered a commodity of monetary gain. Political and social spins equal controversy and views; controversy and viewers equal increased profits and filled pockets.

If reporting continues down this path, there is no telling what the future holds for news and media related markets.

There is an eventual breaking point. This is 2014; if journalists fail to take responsibility for their reporting it is not a question of if, but a question of when we reach completely tautology and incongruity.