Why I’ve gone off Newspapers: Part One

Posted: 9th Jan 2013

I CAN REMEMBER very clearly when I first decided I wanted to be a journalist. I was twelve, and overjoyed at the thought it might be possible to write for my local paper and get paid for it. Until then, I’d spent my rainy holidays composing my own ‘stories’ about fictitious school children and their pets. All through my teens and into university, the dream persisted and every decision I made was with the goal of becoming a writer in mind. I loved words and word play, and conjuring up imagery based on that which flowed from someone else’s pen. Whenever I was immersed in the world of words, it was very difficult to get me to respond to anything else.

But just lately – well, over the past ten or so years – I’ve noticed a trend in journalism, particularly in newspapers, which seems to go hand in hand with the decline in their circulation. Newspapers just cannot help heaping on the misery.

By its very nature, news has always sought to inform us of weird, dangerous and potentially threatening issues and events, as well as light-hearted musings about cute creatures and bread toasted in the image of Elvis. But now, in a world where we have 24-hour news loops courtesy of the television, radio and the internet, there is a pressure for papers to keep up, and also to keep turning a healthy profit. They are resorting to desperate measures to keep us reading. The nationals especially are feeding on people’s neuroses. Never mind press ethics and the blame game being played out in the wake of the Leveson inquiry. How the media shapes and manipulates readers negatively by its clever use of language is right there in front of us every day in black and white.

Today I read six newspapers: Three ‘tabloids’ and three ‘broadsheets/quality compacts’. I set myself the task of noting down every word used in a headline or sub-headline which could be deemed negative – basically those capable of reinforcing in us feelings of fear, insecurity, anger and hopelessness. I found 161 words of this nature (not including the sport or business sections). Granted, there are several other newspapers available, and this was just one day. There were of course also positive words and humorous stories dotted among the bad.

But I am concerned about the effects of a constant drip feed of negativity on a daily basis. Seven times during my reading I encountered ‘warns/warning/warned’ and ‘fear/feared/fears’. There were five instances each of ‘Fail/failure/failed’ and ‘risk/risks’. On top of this was a smattering of negative words used two and three times, and a further 97 individual words inspiring negativity.

Can we honestly say that reading words such as extremism; dump; drunken; fat; fatal; fury; fired; fraud; fight; fiend; fiasco; or horror over and over again has no ill-effect on us whatsoever?

The content of reports is no more inspiring: they tell readers how unhappy everyone is; how squeezed the middle is; how feckless the poor are; how corrupt our politicians; how frightening the criminals and the immigrants. Meanwhile they laud and then destroy anyone who dares step up for five minutes of fame.

I would argue that many of those who have given up reading newspapers just cannot cope with this level of negativity. They want to enjoy life, not be reminded how awful it can be.

Some of those who still read them must either get a kick out of being scared all the time, or enjoy the schadenfreude. Others simply don’t think there is any other way to get their news, because it is the place they have always looked.

Conversely, there are people who have never picked up a newspaper because they have never felt the need to. The joy and wealth of information available on the internet is much more appealing to so many, and they don’t even seem fussy as to whether information comes from ‘official’ sources.

What this trend tells us is that a lot of people prefer seeking out information they think is relevant to them personally. And a lot of it, I would hazard a guess, is stuff that makes people feel good and happy.

On Twitter you can cherry-pick your newsfeed, following the exploits of those who most interest you – from film stars and writers to your own friends. Facebook makes it even more personal, creating newsfeeds from the lives of your nearest and dearest. These social media tools are not without their flaws (well documented elsewhere). But the point is that their power lies largely with the people who use them. If you don’t like the information being disseminated to you, you can prevent it coming through. Ditching negative newspapers is simply an extension of that rejection.

MY NEGATIVE NEWSPAPER SURVEY

Words occurring 7 times:

Warns/warning/warned; fear/feared/fears

Words occurring 5 times:

Fail/failure/failed; risk/risks

Words occurring 3 times:

sues/sue/sueing; hell; axed; killer

Words occurring twice:

Alert; attack; caged; conman; terrified/terror; scam; grim; misery; racism; quit; rogue; threat; tragic

Words occurring once:

 

Abused; alarm; addict; brink; blunders; bitter; ban; bad; backlash; arrest; collapses; cock-up; chaos; caution; cancer; bust; bungled; bullying; divide; ditch; denial; delays; defiance; debt; death; damages; cuts; cruel; cripple; criminals; cover-up; con; extremism; dump; drunken; fat; fatal; fury; fired; fraud; fight; fiend; fiasco; ill; horror; hellfire; hates; hatemob; grope; knockback; killed; jitters; jail; isolation; insult; inquiry; menace; meddling; lurid; loss; lag; protest; plight; peril; painful; outrage; mock; rape; rap; rages; shamed; sex attacker; scowl; scary; scared; sad; tensions; stabbed; steaming; spiral; snub; snatch; slide; skivers; shock; terrorist; thief; traitor; ugly; unfairly; unpleasant; victims; vigil; washout; waste; whitewash.