America keeps up with the world happenings by watching, reading and listening to the news.
But, do Americans keep up with more in the entertainment and celebrity gossip realm or the news realm?
Thomas E. Patterson, author of “Doing Well and Doing Good,” says that most young adults are simply uninterested in daily news.
“About half of today’s young adults pay no appreciable attention to news. They do not read a daily paper regularly and do not closely follow the daily news on television,” Patterson said.
Patterson explains that the reason behind young adults being less concerned with breaking or political news is because “compared with 25 percent of older adults, 42 percent of those under 30 years of age express little or no interest in politics.”
Many in the media have seen that more and more viewers and readers prefer entertainment over news, and as a result, have created softer stories to appease the public.
“Soft news attracts millions of viewers and ranks among the top 3 news formats for about a third of the population,” said Markus Prior, author of “Any Good News in Soft News? The Impact of Soft News Preference on Political Knowledge.”
“Soft news informs and entertains, and at the same time appeals to people unwilling to give up on entertainment, even while they are watching news.”
The news stations cater to the want-to-know of today’s culture rather than the need-to-know, no longer focusing on the hard-hitting stories.
“Critics say that the news is based increasingly on what will interest an audience rather than on what the audience needs to know,” Patterson said.
Why entertainment trumps news for many, sociologists are unsure.
“I haven’t seen any research as to why fluff is seen as more important. I am at a loss as to why people care what the Kardashians do,” said UTM Behavioral Sciences Assistant Professor Dr. Darwin-Tamar Ramsey.
Fluff is not a need-to-know type of information. It is what the people of America want to know. It could be said that some entertainment might have its informative moments, but entertainment is not the informational guide to the serious matters of America.
News is important, but to some, it’s also depressing, while entertainment typically makes people worry less about life.
