Increasingly, people are tuning out the news — but likely not for the reason you think

Nobody likes journalists.

Hardly anyone one trusts them. Their work feels like an unending cascade of plagues, war, floods, and fire. And it’s gotten so bad that more and more people are now avidly avoiding the news completely.

All this rings true. But journalism and journalists aren’t the main bad guys. The real problem is not news itself, but the way our society consumes it — and the danger it represents is not just for the news business itself, but for our entire society as it becomes less informed about the critical issues of the day.

A report by Axios published this past week shows time spent on all forms of news content “plummeting” in the first half of this year. Many readers and viewers are simply dropping out. According to a Reuters study, they find the news overwhelming and hard to follow.

But — and this is no secret — the news has always been bad.

The New York Times recently revisited the crises and catastrophes of the last few decades to argue that, in many ways, today is actually better than yesterday.

The course of human events — and reporting about it — has usually been something less than an optimist’s paradise. What’s really changed is how people learn about those events.

News has always been neatly packaged for consumers, in one way or another. A physical newspaper is a package, a defined number of pages with a defined number of stories. The most important news is on page one, and gets less urgent as readers move through that day’s edition. Network evening newscasts — where stories are actually called “packages” — sum up all a viewer needs to know in 22 minutes.

That packaging is a kind of artifice, journalism’s way of trying to create for their consumers a sense of order on a random world. Network newscasts still end on an uplifting personal feature; newspapers have entire sections devoted to sports and the arts. This produces a neat and tidy portrait of life’s variety. “And that’s the way it is,” Walter Cronkite said in his sign-off each night on CBS. His viewers agreed.

But this news delivery method is in sharp decline. The big half-hour news programs lose more viewers each quarter. Subscriptions to physical newspapers keep falling. 

In their place is a growing jumble of headlines, updates, notifications, and tweets on smart phones and tablets, unmoored from any other update or notification coming along moments later. It’s an “unpackaged” news environment — and that makes it hard to for consumers to develop a comprehensive picture of politics, the nation, or the world.

Cable channels are one culprit. The 24/7 flow of programming hits viewers like a factoid-laden stream of consciousness. The need to keep an audience engaged all day means that every bit of breaking news is treated with the same importance and urgency. Constant live shots and analysis fill time cheaply and instantly, but don’t allow reporters breathing room to develop context or genuine perspective on any particular story or development.

As a result, television news is now America’s second least-trusted institution, just after Congress.

But the real villain is an entity that, admittedly, has become everyone’s favorite punching bag: social media. Most people don’t subscribe to a newspaper, not even digitally. According to one study, readers say the cost isn’t worth it when so much news is available for free.

In many cases, “free” means social media: shares from friends on Facebook, short videos on Tik Tok, time spent on Twitter. These apps throw alleged information around like rice at a wedding — it hits both people looking for it and not. It comes from legitimate news sources and illegitimate or unknown sources. It might look like real news or home video. A consumer can try to figure it out, or simply give up.

Readers and viewers would benefit from a return to readily accessible packaging from free reliable news sources. NBC Nightly News makes itself available each evening on You Tube, where it reaches close to 600,000 viewers — many in You Tube’s younger, male-skewing demographic. Other newscasts should try that. The networks all have free streaming news services, but they can be hard to find. Promoting these outlets more — and making them more visible — would help.  

And, in a radical move, perhaps national newspapers could rethink their high-priced subscription approach. Internet superpowers like Netflix are moving into a lower cost advertising-based format to attract people put off by rising subscription rates. But meanwhile, some online news outlets seem to downplay digital advertising — and focus mainly on subscribers. Digital ads can be a difficult, slow-growth business. Still, it’s possible to change the dynamic if more resources and creativity were devoted to that model instead of subscriptions.

Something needs to change. Right now, audiences — dazed and confused by contemporary news delivery systems — are walking away.

The last several years has shown how dangerous it is to be mis-informed in a democracy.

Living un-informed is no better.

Joe Ferullo is an award-winning media executive, producer and journalist and former executive vice president of programming for CBS Television Distribution. He was a news executive for NBC, a writer-producer for “Dateline NBC” and worked for ABC News. Follow him on Twitter @ironworker1.