Re: Style gettting in the way of clear reporting

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 12:40 AM 7/8/96, James A. Donald wrote:

>When news media were concentrated into fewer and fewer hands during
>the twentieth century, the appearance of neutrality, objectivity,
>and authoritativeness became a major selling point, and so media
>adopted a tone and manner of neutrality, with an accompanying
>"just-the-facts" style, though in reality they became far less neutral

An interesting point. You are probably right that journalism is becoming
more florid as "amateurs" flood the market. However, I don't quite buy the
concentration argument, as things were pretty concentrated in the Hearst
era, and the explosion of magazines in the past few decades has not been as
concentrated. (In any case, these are hard things to quantify without more
research, which I for one am unlikely to pursue.)

>Now that everyone can grab the megaphone, people are not so worried
>about objectivity.  If something is unfair to Nazis or blacks or evil
>polluting capitalists, they know they will hear about it from the
>Nazis, the blacks or the evil polluting capitalists.
>
>As a result, people no longer value the superficial appearance of
>neutrality and objectivity.  Suddenly colorful and openly biased
>reporting has become popular.

I still think of "The Wall Street Journal" and "The Economist," two of my
favorites, as being _careful_ in their reporting (careful is different from
unbiased). But my main focus in this thread was on the _styles_, and this I
think is more explained by faddishness.

And advertising. To get "mind space," as with "shelf space," the packaging
must entice, fool, and trick the reader.

>This has led to some people engaging in florid excesses of colorful
>style and concocting totally phony attitudes., just as when word
>processing programs first gained the capability to handle a wide
>variety of fonts, some people produced memos that looked like
>ransom notes.

Yes, and many of the newsletters we're seeing--as many are cc:ed or
forwarded to our list--are the kissing cousins of "zines." Same faux style,
same emphasis on "flash" over substance. (Not all of them of course.)

--Tim May


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