This past Thursday and Friday, my romantic literature class went on our excursion up to the Lake District. On the way up there, Lauren and I decided to split the cost of a newspaper. We settled on a copy of The Guardian, but the only reason that we knew it was a reputable newspaper was because last year, I had heard that The Guardian was the publication that had broken the Snowden story. If I had not known that, I might have passed right over newspaper, thinking it was just a worthless tabloid.
After purchasing the paper, we sat down next to Dr. Camilleri. When she noticed that we had bought the paper and we explained to her that we were keeping up with British news for the sake of our Grady Seminar, then she started to list off other reputable news sources that we could go to. She obviously named The BBC, but she also mentioned The Daily Mail and The Huffington Post, which was surprising to us.
Most of us at the table clearly had negative perceptions of those two papers. The only time that any of us had encountered either of those news sources was when they showed up on our Facebook feeds in the form of gossipy entertainment articles or overly-opinionated opinion pieces.
Now, obviously Facebook filters out what it puts on our feeds. All the time I spend reading buzzfeed articles might lead Facebook's program to think I want to have those opinion pieces promoted on my feed; or perhaps one of my friends just might think the 350th opinion piece on marriage that the read was absolutely the one that they needed to share. However, Facebook's programming and my friends' inclinations are another conversation for another time. The thing that I realized in this conversation with Dr. Camilleri is that the context in which I am presented with a news source greatly affects my opinion of that news source.
The fact that every Huffington Post piece I read was an opinion piece shared by some guy from my high school caused me to read it with a grain of salt, especially if I didn't agree with the opinion. But, I read an article from The Guardian that I didn't agree with and I gave that article a thorough read, finding myself open to the comments, because my preconceived notion of the publication was that it was very reputable.
It's clearly to the disadvantage of The Daily Mail and The Huffington Post to be shared on social media so liberally, or at least, it's a disadvantage when they're trying to gain me as a reader. However, should it be this way? They can't necessarily control where they are shared, and a censorship of their Facebook trending material would likely lose the publication a lot of readers. So what is the answer - or do they even need one? That is my question.
Pat, I agree that the context in which we are presented with a news source affects our opinion of that source. I am not a very avid Facebook user, but since reading you post a few days ago I have realized similar trends on Twitter. When I scroll through my twitter-feed I see similar articles as the ones you described in your post. But unlike with Facebook (where you are bombarded with comments) it is easy to scroll past the posts I’m uninterested in on Twitter.
ReplyDeleteSurprisingly it is not only my friends that retweet these gossip-entertainment articles and opinion pieces. I have noticed fairly reputable news sources like ABC and CNN retweet their opinion counterparts – urging hard-core news consumers to read about Kim Kardashian’s lack of clothing. My guess would be that these news sources are retweeting these pieces for a reason. And if they weren’t gaining followers and readers/viewers they would stop.
I agree that you and me (and probably everyone in our class) are turned away by these gossip-opinion pieces, but I don’t think we represent the overall population. We are educated young people, who have specific knowledge in the field of journalism, which significantly changes our views on these stories. We prefer news instead of junk – but does everyone? Although I wish that everyone could be educated in media consumption, not everyone is. Some people really do prefer junk instead of news, and I think that is why our friends and followers retweet and share these articles.
-Ashlyn
My experience with The Daily Fail has also been somewhat negative. In all my dealings with soccer (football) rumors especially surrounding transfers, the daily Mail is probably one of the least reputable outlets for trustworthy content. They're often the first to report on some nutty rumor about some player making a huge move to a different club but I ALWAYS read their articles with a big grain of salt.
ReplyDeleteAlso as I'm sure you know, some of my perceptions of The Daily Mail come from the Radiohead song with the same title that totally decries them as frauds :)
But then again I hardly ever read anything from them that is actually hard news so I really have no idea about their trustworthiness when it comes to that type of stuff. So like you said it's been drilled into my head that they're an untrustworthy publication so it's difficult for me to get past that when I'm expected to take them seriously.
It really is all about perception. I've also had experiences where people post solely liberal opinion pieces from HuffPo when I know they're better than that.