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March 18th, 2009
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Bogus Trend Stories Taking Journalism By Storm |
A Once-Proud Profession Faces a Rising Tide of Loosely Researched 'Infotainment'
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The koala is fast becoming America's favorite pet. Or is it? |
Society - They can be surprising, amusing or downright terrifying, but they grab your attention with a tantalizing glimpse into the future. They're bogus trend stories, and more and more of them are appearing in the nation's newspapers, TV news shows and web sites.
These stories offer an insight into the constantly shifting forces of change, helping you understand where the world is headed. Or so it seems. Unfortunately, they're often carelessly researched and ill-supported by facts. They're written more to entertain than to inform...and they're quickly becoming the nation's dominant form of journalism.
It all started with the "epidemic" of oral sex among young teenagers, as Oprah Winfrey urgently described it on her popular TV show in 2002. Soon, every news outlet seemed to be stumbling on an alarming or exciting trend on an almost daily basis. If these stories are to be believed, koala bears are fast becoming the hottest new pet, single moms are converting en masse to Buddhism, and a growing number of hikers are crossing the Swiss Alps naked.
"We've seen a massive surge in phony trend stories over the past few years," says Wally Kovacs, spokesman for Perspective And Insight in Reporting (PAIR), a journalism watchdog group. "If this trend continues, before long there won't be much else."
Kovacs estimates that there were over 7500 bogus trend articles published last year in the print media alone. That's over 20 a day.
Factually, stories like these often rest on thin reeds such as quotations and anecdotes. When they do contain hard facts or statistics, they are often presented without meaningful context. Reporting that 25% of teens in a recent survey say they have had oral sex may sound shocking, but that doesn't make it an "epidemic" unless the number was lower in previous surveys.
These types of news items will often use vague expressions like "more and more" or "increasingly" to disguise their lack of actual data quantifying the supposed increase.
After glossing over the factual basis for its premise, the bogus trend story will quickly move on to the causes of the supposed trend, and then to its future implications. Like the premise itself, these notions need not be backed up by pesky facts.
Kovacs thinks that the changing climate of journalism is largely responsible for the increasing dominance of these stories. "The mainstream media now have fierce competition from the web, and the new media are small operations with narrow profit margins," he says. "They're desperate for attention, and they don't have the resources to do the research anymore."
The consequence, many believe, is a profession in a state of atrophy that fails in its sacred duty to illuminate the truth, leaving us all in darkness and ignorance.
Another common feature in these articles is that their authors often have trouble wrapping them up. Luckily, there are a number of stock endings that can be tacked on to just about any news item. In the business, they're known by nicknames, such as Clouds on the Horizon, Ray of Hope, Call to Arms, and Cliffhanger. The writer can just pick one of these options, tweak it a little, and call it a day.
These lazy techniques are all symptoms of a profession that has lost its way. Can it change course and steer away from flimsy stories on nonexistent trends - or is it already too late?
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