Today’s piece is written by Linda Stowe. It is one of the most excellent commentaries I’ve read, and it belongs in the NYT or THE WASHINGTON POST. But here it is, for you, on Polly Goggles.
We As A Country….
By Linda Stowe
We as a country have been through a lot the past few years. I have been reading headlines about rampant depression and other mental health issues troubling our society. Many factors contribute to this, but two that come to mind are Donald Trump and COVID. These are bad enough, but their impact has been ramped up by the news media. There was a time when only tabloid media headlines were designed to grab attention (“Headless Body Found in Topless Bar”). Now everyone is doing it.
This came to mind as I was reading local news headlines from past issues of the Register-Herald. Admittedly, headlines back in the day were a bit boring (“Soybean Prices Drop”), but they were intended to inform. Now it seems that headlines are intended to impact us emotionally – to alarm, inflame, and scare us.
To illustrate, I just heard a discussion of a Fox News headline from 2021 that purportedly said “650 Cops Gunned Down This Year.” Clearly this is an alarming number, with nearly two police officers killed every day. The narrator did some research to put those numbers into perspective. His source was the Officer Down website. According to the narrator, there were actually 669 officer deaths in the line of duty in 2021. Of those deaths the number one assailant was COVID, causing 474 of the deaths. Additionally, 23 of the job-related deaths were caused by heart attack and 26 were from 9/11-related illness. Just 62 officers died from intentional gunfire.
Clearly this number of deaths from whatever cause is serious and shows that being a police officer is a dangerous job. My point, though, is the headline: “Cops Gunned Down.” That was clearly intended to anger and inflame readers. The motive of Fox or whatever media source to arouse emotions in readers is not merely to put them on edge. Rather their motive is to increase readership and to increase revenue. Apparently, it works because they continue to do it.
I don’t know the answer to how to turn this around, how to purge this tabloid type of journalism from infecting mainstream media. But we are paying a heavy price for this. We are becoming more skeptical of the press. We feel overwhelmed by a constant barrage of negative and alarming information. We don’t know what voices to trust.
When it comes to news headlines and stories, I often hear the phrase, “You be the judge.” My response to this is, why do I have to judge anything? Why do I have to do homework just to find out whether what I am being told is true? Why can’t I just trust it?
