Is Objective Journalism Dying?

There is a disturbing trend in the media, and it's getting worse. Over the past several months, CNN's ratings have been declining. Why? Two reasons. One, fewer people are getting their news from TV, regardless of the network. The culprit to blame there is the Internet, as that is the fastest growing news medium. Secondly, CNN has continued to try to do what it's done for the past thirty years, which, for most of that time, made it king of the cable news shows: it continues to engage in objective journalism.

This is quite sad, really, because objective journalism as we have known it appears to be dying a slow and painful death. Just take a look at the nightly network news ratings. They are abysmal, as the viewers of those programs are overwhelming older and quite comfortable still getting their news in the objective style of reporting that dominated the latter half of the 20th century.

Now, people have more options. There is the Internet, where there are hundreds of thousands (millions?) of "news" blogs where people can get information. Even so, many people do not get their news from the Internet exclusively--at least not yet. The Internet, then, is a contributing factor, but the real medium to blame for this impending death is cable news.

It was Fox News that first seized on the idea, in the mid 1990s, of providing one-sided information that hardly qualifies as news. MSNBC caught on a few years later. Now, both of those networks provide the same style of coverage, Fox from a conservative standpoint and MSNBC from a liberal standpoint.

CNN, apparently, has been left out in the cold. They don't have anyone that resembles O'Reilly or Olbermann, but rather continue to provide real news in an objective way.

This is troubling, as it is definitely one reason to blame for the increasing polarization of our country. Beyond that, the media's job is to inform the public and for years, poll after poll has showed that CNN viewers are among the most knowledgeable on national and world events (by the way, National Public Radio listeners always lead the way in that regard). Now, as CNN's audience continues to shrink, one has to wonder whether Americans' overall knowledge of the world around them will shrink as well. It's not making a big assumption to think that it will. That is scary, especially considering that we live in a democracy, which Thomas Jefferson famously said, requires an "informed electorate."

So why are people continuing to to leave network news and CNN in droves? I think the two biggest reasons are entertainment and, quite frankly, laziness.

People constantly feel the need to be entertained, even when they are acquiring information. The hosts on these cable shows are quite entertaining, although many of them can become very annoying, very fast. It's easy to see why people tune into Beck or Hannity: it's not for their smarts--both are college dropouts--it's for their ability to hold an audience.

Americans are also increasingly becoming lazy when it comes to news gathering. We want fast-paced, headline-driven news. Compare the average length of a newspaper story 50 years ago to today. You will be astounded. Instead of being given objective journalism and using that information to build on an increased knowledge about our surrounding world, people turn to Fox News and MSNBC where they can be spoon fed material that reinforces their political beliefs. Why listen to Wolf Blitzer when you can flip over to Beck and have him stoke your paranoia (which he probably created in the first place).

It will be quite interesting to see what happens to objective journalism in the next ten or 20 years. Will nightly news shows still be around? What about newspapers? Perhaps there will be a backlash against subjective journalism. What is clear is that subjective journalism is very strong today, and it is making us less knowledgeable and more polarized--an incredibly scary combination.