I love writing, and even more than that, I love writing about The Truth(the kind with capital "T's "). I've always had a passion for the craft, and seemed to find myself right at home when coming aboard Odyssey's creative team during my time at college.
Many took to to the forum with a slew of interestingly engaging articles, ranging from inventive "listicles" to pieces placing personal issues front and center, I found my niche writing about hot-topic issues in popular culture today, and made sure The Truth far overshadowed any personal bias I had walking into some perspective argument.
As such, it was no surprise when I depicted the racially-biased incident taking place in my old fraternity, an event that absolutely warranted attention and debate, if for nothing more than for the sake of learning from past mistakes, moving forward with new ideas, and coming to terms with issues long kept from the surface of pleasant conversation.
The following week, I went with a sort of spiritual successor to this idea by transcribing a brief history on, and then discussion about, the N-word. Both articles tackled intensely divisive subject matter and generated an equally divisive response, both of which I was more than ready for.
You don't go out taking risks, putting yourself out there, without the presumption that someone might not take a liking to what you are doing. I'd learnt quite a lot from the experience, but it all boiled down to one lesson: Media is ruining true, ethical journalism.
Without further ado, here's three major reasons why I believe the rumor mill that is the media hurts genuine truth-seekers:
1. News Headlines > News Articles
This problem was initially brought up as I realized more thought seemed to put into what the headline of a news article/story would be, than the story itself! Whether it be the evening news or a Facebook article shared about between friends and family, how many times are we likely to just read the headline, the little sentence or two underneath it (that's called the subheading by the way) describing the piece, and just running with that?
After all, articles are often shared with your friends' comments attached to the piece, thereby taking away the freedom to come up with your opinion on the piece. For news, I've found the headlines sometimes don't even match with the story!
Reading the story in its entirety before coming to a decision is the most worthwhile choice for those wishing to be an informed citizen.
Personally, you'll find some of my articles' titles are not always what I originally had them as. A little behind-the-scenes knowledge of the art that is media and information is knowing that a piece's title will fall under the umbrella of control that belongs to editors.
In these cases, editors can choose to create a more compelling, attention-grabbing title, as is their job, to increase views on your work, though it may not be exactly what the writer envisioned.
This, of course, is not to call anyone out, but to raise awareness that the writer/creator of a story may not have been aware of a title beforehand.
2. Bad News > No News
More often than not, people will claim how much there has been nothing but bad news to read and watch, and yet psychologists have long been proclaiming that, intuitively, we prefer to hear about the national tragedies and idiotic mistakes in politics because...it makes us feel good?
Don't think I'm just spewing nonsense over here, either, as Ohio State University psychologist John T. Cacioppo, Ph.D., researched how the brain reacts more strongly to news of the "unpleasant" variety than it does to good or even lack of any veritable data.
In the current Age of Information, we're so used to hearing from the rest of the world that, when it feels we are "disconnected", we enter a state of anxiety and unease.
An evolutionary concept, things that cause worry, harm, and negative emotional arousal are far quickly assimilated into our mental faculties because these are things of which can cause us harm, and are more important to be remembered.
Unfortunately, in present day, that constitutes as viewers reacting more powerfully to negative news stories, just like how one of my more popular articles was indeed focused on the racially-biased incident.
People's need for negative news over 'no news' instills a cycled search for similar stories.
3. Popular Culture > Truthful Culture
What's popular and cool in the moment, these fads we all are accosted by constantly, is much easier to write about than The Truth.
I could devise a piece on our foreign relations policies, or rather another article on how Donald Trump's hair JUST CANNOT BE REAL!
Focusing our attention on hat's happening in the here and now, and not what is important, is already proving to be detrimental to journalism as a whole. We now have disingenuous news feeds, stories sprung out of nowhere but with the Rumor Mill up and running, it's never fully erased from memory.
With odds like this, many hopeful writers seek to gain attention, and presume that writing articles blasting one ideological view or the other(as is common these days) is the way to do it.
Tell me, which is a more enticing article you might read:
"Liberals: Enraging, Entitled, & (Un)Employed"
or
"Conservatives: "Racism: New & Improved"
Both take an extreme stance for one ideological point while heavily leaning against another, thereby immediately shunning an entire audience demographic with your plainly biased views. Rather, if I were to tackle this issue, a more suitable subject that analyzes both critiques and even offers a solution could be:
"Party Foul: Why Political Parties Produce More Pain than Progress"
This keeps the writer's opinion neutral and unbiased, as well as taking a realistic look at both sides of an argument, before discussing why both sides' quarreling has only divided America further. In short, pop culture sells faster, but real news stays longer with readers after they've set the paper down.
