NEWS vs NOISE

 Reflecting on the barrage of media postings, blogs, vlogs, and podcasts, etc., it occurs to me that there is a strong need to step back and take a more critical perspective. Decades ago, the primary source of media news reportage came in the form of print media and TV news programming. The newspapers only had a number of pages per edition, so there was some editorial constraint upon what to print. Is it reliable, is it newsworthy, is it informative or just pandering? Now, the base of such reporting includes thousands of "sources" that are neither accredited nor professional, and editorial standards are akin to: "what story will garner the most attention, regardless of its veracity or informative value."

A similar progression can be seen on video media, where the plethora of video clips have overtaken and forced out thoughtful and professional journalism. And this is not about a liberal vs conservative orientation, it is about the fundamental purposes of the fourth estate, and the reason it enjoys constitutional protection. One aspect of the deterioration is the wholesale broadcast of material known to be fraudulent, false and deceptive. The Rupert Murdaugh case involving a settlement of nearly $1 billion for conducting a knowing and strategic campaign of false reporting intended to deceive the public and drive-up ratings.  

Perhaps a more basic problem is the "truckload" strategy. As a young litigation attorney, we encountered a practice by defense firms [one in particular] of responding to document discovery requests by delivering truckloads of mostly disorganized papers. While the required discovery was in the pile of documents somewhere, it was a serious challenge for plaintiff's counsel to find the relevant documents among the heap of papers. In the present context, the problem is that there is so much unreliable and irrelevant "news" being published that the public cannot discern the reliable and relevant information from all the noise and rubbish. 

A more critical and perhaps cynical view of the practice could be detected. If a concerted strategy were used to flood the published arena with false and deceptive reports, the result would not only be confusion, but a deterioration of trust in media generally. This a could explain reports of the numbers of the younger generation turning away from or simply ignoring news media. there are few consistent and reliable indicators to guide the public, even when they try to adhere to the admonition to always check multiple sources before drawing any conclusions. Decades ago, one knew that the National Enquirer was 90% unreliable garbage, and the Washington Post was probably 80% reliable. Now, we see that formerly trustworthy sources such as the Wall Street Journal and New York Times are approaching the 50% reliability level. We know that any source labeled "FOX" is not only slanted toward right wing agendas but is also likely to contain falsified and deceptive "information."  The problem effectively created by this strategy is that when so much of what we hear and read is unreliable, there is a tendency to believe none of it. And the result is an uninformed and easily misled public. With all of the NOISE being broadcast, through unprofessional neglect and cynical destructiveness, the NEWS and relevant information get lost.