Tales of our Times
By JOHN BARTLIT
New Mexico Citizens for Clean Air & Water
A onetime newspaperman in World War I had canny instincts. He wrote: “Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.” His insight has gotten truer since social media swamped the airwaves.
I would say the news has a very special, limited purpose. News focuses on the unusual, not the normal. News pursues exact facts at specific moments, with little time for history, background, or context. So we get slivers of what is going on
These effects cause no problem if people remember what news is, but we all need reminding. On occasion, I have written reminders. It is time for another one.
Reminders impart background. It began back in 2006 with our grandkids on a visit to Albuquerque’s Explora! Science Center and Children’s Museum. Off by a window stood a clear plastic jar. It was a good size vessel for old-time licorice sticks in a candy store, but instead held one million small colored beads, the label said. I read that most of the beads, some 89 percent of the jarful, were blue; 10 percent were yellow; and 1 percent were red. This means the jar had 10,000 red beads among the hundreds of thousands that gave a mainly blue and yellow look to the contents.
The label said the jar also held 1,000 white beads, 100 pink beads, 10 green beads, and a black bead.. The jar intrigued me. I thought about human quirks in the public issues I write about. The beads in the jar are like items in the news. Most events in our world-size jar are blue or yellow events. As a result, most of them get lost or overlooked in the sea of blue and yellow. One blue or yellow bead more or less is neither notable nor interesting. Each is just a spot of more sea to see. What could be less newsworthy? Nothing to report.
By contrast, one of the 1,000 white beads draws more interest than the blue all around. Finding one of the 100 pink beads makes the finder halfway proud. Spotting a scarcer green bead is more exciting still. Sighting the black bead would be a plum, like a prizewinning news story.
A picture of the news begins to take shape. News is made of uncommon events, which are termed “newsworthy.” News is the 1,000-plus white, pink, green, and black beads out of a million. Never will we hear, “This just in: The sea is chiefly blue.”
Indeed, a few select news items are exceptions. These items aim to report the scene as a whole; think context. Beyond context, comparable notions are background, perspective, or proportion. The select news includes stock market indices, ball scores, team standings, and compared disease statistics. Each aggregate conveys more than a “fact,” more like a survey of facts. These small histories remind us to compare now and then, this with that.
Yet by far most news is picked for novelty or shock value, which means skipping over the blue, yellow, and red beads. From the news alone, we would conclude the jar contains almost no blue or yellow pieces. Yet the real jar is mostly full of them. The happenings in the news avoid most of the things happening. In some ways, we well understand why. In other ways, think how strange this picture is.
Don’t get me wrong: The classic power of the “fourth estate” is still a vital hallmark of democracy. The customs of the craft serve their purpose if we simply remember that news crafters strive to stir us up.
When we forget, news passes for the full picture of things—the jarful of colored beads—rather than being what news is—the notable exceptions therein.
So our problems grow.
