Sensational journalism is the junk food of our news diet
Sensational journalism is the junk food of our news diet
Yellow journalism has been around much longer than social media, and it's our duty to fix it.
On August 25, 1835, a new newspaper called The New York Sun published an article announcing the discovery of life on the moon. The story featured a British astronomer’s “findings” and it became wildly popular for several days, suddenly thrusting the newspaper into the spotlight.
From the day the first moon article was released, the newspaper‘s sales rose and reached for the sky. Viral content in those days, and readers lapped it up.
The only problem was that it was a hoax. The story was soon proven to be a lie and all the pictures had been fabricated.
But even though the story proved to be untrue, the paper dramatically increased its distribution and remained very popular.
The thing about sensational stories is that we love them. Sensational stories are the junk food of our news diet, the shawarma you eagerly wash down with Desperados even though you know it’s unhealthy.
Later, in the 1890s and early 1900s, a man named Joseph Pulitizer—yes, of the Pulitzer prize—founded a publication called New York World and got into competition with another newspaper, New York Journal, owned by another man, William Randolph Hearst. The fierce competition for sales drove both publishers to develop growth hacking techniques to win over readers with wild conjecture, sex, crime and graphic horrors. These techniques came to be known as yellow journalism (or sensational journalism).
Such content appealed to the masses and New York World catapulted into the limelight, reaching a million copies sold daily. Its tactics created the blueprint of pulling in readers through provocative headlines and sensational content neverminding journalism ethics, as long as they pulled readers.
More recently, in 1983, the editor of the New York Post, Vinnie Musetto printed the headline “Headless body in topless bar” on the front page of the newspaper. But despite the sensational headline, there was no single mention at all of any toplessness in the body of the story and headlessness wasn’t even mentioned until the third paragraph.
Sensationalism or clickbait isn’t a new concept, as audience behaviour has always driven content production, even centuries before the internet. The only difference is, the world is a lot smaller now and so the effects of sensationalism, like every other sociocultural concept, have been magnified and are more intimately felt.
Whatever the time period or medium, sensationalism is unavoidable. And this is because humans are naturally wired to be alert to sensations. The thing about sensational stories is that we love them. Sensational stories are the junk food of our news diet, the shawarma you eagerly wash down with Desperados even though you know it’s unhealthy.
The mainstream media landscape in today’s world has a (dis)trust problem. And so when new entities come up with provocative stories pulled out of obscure rabbit holes, to shock and excite the audience, the public which has yearned for truth for so long, desperately latches on to the clickbait hoping to unravelling “revealing” connections to conspiracies.
Therein lies the problem. Most people don’t know they’re being served half-truths. In a country on the brink like Nigeria (and with its education problem), media sensationalism promotes the spread of (dis)information to less-literate and less self-aware audiences.
An argument I often see is that the internet—more specifically social media—has changed human behaviour. I don’t think it’s that simple. I’ll argue that social media has merely turbocharged human behaviour. It’s easier now than ever before to consume information. And the media industry has had to adapt to heightened consumer sensitivity.
The same consumers who once bought their favourite publications directly no longer feel the urge to do that, with so many free options on the internet. Social media apps like Instagram, Tiktok and YouTube top the list of favourite destinations for news consumers without producing any news content of their own. And so media companies and publications have had to make their content cheap or free on these apps.
Last week, a foreign media giant reported on the alarming flooding problem in Nigerian cities and it generated snide comments like this from Nigerian Twitter users.
Such comments are interesting because a quick Google search would reveal several Nigerian publications which have run extensive coverage of such issues. It’s hypocritical to complain that there’s no real news when the audience’s attention is focused on other forms of content.
Important news stories are being missed because they are drowned out by all the noise competing for attention, as social media remains one of the most important points of contact with consumers. I wrote about outrage culture last week, as it drives engagement—which is a pretty important driver of media production and distribution. Keep in mind that outrage, the emotion, is often a major response to sensational topics and a key driver of virality.
And then there’s the question of the business side of reporting. Journalism, while it has its ethics and noble causes, is primarily a business. And businesses have to make profits. The democracy of the internet and social media has made media publications one of the hardest industries to build and grow, especially with ethical considerations in mind. Journalists have to be paid decent money. Those powerful stories the audience claims they want to see, who’ll fund them?
Fake news does not appear in a vacuum. Media outlets and social networks are not just supported by the page views generated from salacious news headlines; they build on a common culture of engagement and public support. If the audience would rather support and engage with hyperbolic headlines, partisan rhetoric, and an increasing appetite for “vawulence” content, then more important, ethically produced stories will wallow in obscurity.
We live in a wildly capitalist world, and there will always be players capitalising on the gullibility of the masses. Sensationalism and journalism of half-truths will never go away unless we consciously reject problematic storytelling and the creators who push them. Each one of us has a role to play in shaping the relative profitability of quality ethical journalism vs rogbodiyan journalism.
As long as we give our time, energy, money and engagement to sources of sensationalism and half-truths, they’ll only continue to thrive. Just like in old times. Just like in current times. Instead, we can be deliberate about reading, sharing and supporting news and commentary produced by responsible media outlets and journalists.
The media started it no doubt, but it's following the Demand and supply rule now.
I blame the media nonetheless. Their inadequacy has allowed these sensationalist journalists thrive. Again, people like a good story, so I think style of writing matters.