I entered the newsroom on a mission.
It was my first job after graduating from college. My first time interacting with the big, bad world of adulthood. And I was as idealistic as I was young.
I viewed my new role as an evening TV news producer in West Texas with purpose and responsibility.
I would be providing information to improve the lives of my station’s viewers. What could be more important than that?
Sure, I had heard the doubters and the naysayers. The ones who stated that news was nothing but garbage. I was determined to prove them all wrong.
The path to this objective turned out to be a jagged one. I had my fair share of bumps in the road.
There was the time I bungled some breaking news. There was the election night coverage felled by a graphics mishap. And there was the time my boss chided me for featuring too many crime stories.
But I learned from my mistakes. I iterated. I improved.
By the time I left that job, I’d figured out how to handle breaking news. I’d successfully produced an election night newscast — during a presidential election year, no less. And I’d diversified my news coverage beyond a parade of mugshots.
Ultimately, my desire to stay in the media dwindled, and I left the industry behind.
Yet, I never blamed the media for my decision to leave it.
I never questioned the devotion of the reporters, anchors, and producers who poured their hearts into their work. I never questioned the integrity of journalists who often brought home smaller paychecks than Walmart associates. I never believed the claims of bias and corruption from the naysayers.
For years, I would continue to defend the media against all comers. But those days have come to an end.
The Fourth Estate.
It’s an old term for the role of the media. So old, in fact, that many have not heard of it.
The term comes from eighteenth-century England. In those years, there were three estates of British society: the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners. The press — the Fourth Estate — disseminated information between all three.
Of course, the colonists in North America didn’t think much of this system. They broke away from England, forming a nation that separated church and state. They also removed the formal distinction between nobility and commoners in favor of representative democracy.
And yet, the fledgling nation left the Fourth Estate intact.
The role of the media has been cherished ever since America’s earliest days. Journalists have been given the liberty to disseminate information and hold power to account. And they’ve been largely protected from censorship.
Journalism has chronicled the growth of this nation. It has helped expose corruption. And it has even restored our dignity at times.
But it also has an insidious side. And that element has never been more apparent.
March 2020 was a surreal month.
A deadly virus spawned a global pandemic. And in America, life as we knew it abruptly stopped.
As Americans sequestered themselves, many turned to the news for assistance. With so much fear and uncertainty percolating, the Fourth Estate would be our truth-teller.
But the truth we were provided came with an angle. A dark, insidious angle.
As the lockdowns set in, there were endless reports of overrun hospitals. There were harrowing tales of medical professionals reusing contaminated protective gear. And there were the chilling images of refrigerated trucks acting as makeshift morgues.
The sights and sounds of the first wave were jarring enough. But as we sought further guidance, the media provided us with little reassurance.
The point of the lockdowns had been to limit interpersonal contact. Public health officials believed this would keep the virus from spreading and hospitals from getting further overrun.
Journalists seemed to latch onto this message. And, as we sought guidance for everything from getting exercise to grabbing groceries, the media pounced.
There was the example of the young woman who defeated the virus, only to drop dead after a run. There were all the tutorials about the safest way to scrub down groceries. There were all the other anecdotes of someone doing something menial and ending up on a ventilator — or worse.
The underlying message was supposed to be clear. Stop trying to play the angles. Follow the public health guidance. Stay home. Stay safe.
But the grizzly examples used to drive this point home were outliers. And they painted an alarmist picture, causing undue dread. Even I, the media veteran, had a panic attack after scrubbing down groceries.
There was no denying it. The Fourth Estate had failed us.
Back in 1906, the media changed forever.
That was the year muckraking journalist Upton Sinclair published The Jungle — an insider account of conditions inside meatpacking plants.
The revelations in that book were horrifying. So horrifying, in fact, that they led to a spate of new regulations on both factory labor and food processing.
By showing how the sausage gets made, Sinclair had reformed major swaths of society. He had proved that the media could do more than bear witness. It could affect positive change.
That revelation proved true, time and again. It was the media that exposed the Watergate Break-In. It was the media who showed police brutally beating civil rights demonstrators in Alabama. It was the media who held the government accountable for its bungled response to Hurricane Katrina.
Each of those bombshells had us looking on in horror. But the collective outrage forced our country to move forward.
And yet, I don’t view Sinclair’s work as a net positive. At best, it was a mixed success.
For while The Jungle might have ushered in a new age of investigative journalism, it introduced a new element to the mix.
Sensationalism.
No longer was reporting the facts satisfactory. To be sensationalist, the story had to spark emotion.
After all, that’s what the reader — or listener or viewer — wanted. That’s what would grab their attention and keep them coming back for more.
There is no doubt that the media became more sensationalist in the 20th and 21st centuries. If it bleeds, it leads has been a well-known adage for years. And when I was cutting my teeth in the news industry, I was constantly told to find stories with a good hook.
But now, in the wake of a global pandemic, it feels like media sensationalism has hit reached a tipping point. The overpromotion of cautionary tales and the incessant parade of gloomy headlines has crushed the psyche of millions. It hass heightened anxiety, sowed distrust, and even led to despair.
In fact, I believe our society will emerge from this pandemic worse off than we could have been, thanks to the work of the media.
I’m not the only one with these views. A scholarly article from the National Bureau of Economic Research identified a negativity bias amongst journalists. And even The New York Times took note of its findings.
I found some of the explanations for this phenomenon to be lacking. No, people don’t want incessant negativity in the stories they encounter. If they did, Disney films would never have become a commercial success.
But the main point of the research still rings true. The media has failed us with a barrage of sensationalism. They’ve exploited our emotions too many times. And they’ve left a trail of psychological concerns in their wake.
The Fourth Estate has failed us.
It’s time for the media to change its tune.
It’s time for journalists to treat readers, listeners, and viewers with the dignity they deserve. It’s time for the industry to recognize the damage caused by playing to emotions. And it’s time for the media to handle that power responsibly.
The Fourth Estate can be great again. For our sake, it must.