The news cycle of 2020: ‘We’re drinking out of a fire hose every night.’
Commuters wear face masks while walking through the World Trade Center's transportation hub in New York on Tuesday (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
Last month, I spoke with “NBC Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt about the news cycle in 2020.
He told me, “Once upon a time there was a thing called a Slow News Day. It just feels like we’re drinking out of a fire hose every night. … There are some days where we say, ‘We’ve got three leads tonight.’”
Yesterday was one of those days. Today is one of those days. Tomorrow is one of those days. Every day is one of those days. I can just say a word and there’s a major story associated with it.
Trump. Biden. Election. Coronavirus. Vaccine. Thanksgiving. Afghanistan. Hurricane.
There is plenty to talk about when it comes to President Donald Trump. There are his baseless protestations about the election. There is his refusal to concede to President-elect Joe Biden. There is his neglect for the job he still has for another two months. There is how his stance is delaying a smooth transition to Biden, and thus potentially putting the country at risk on many fronts.
Yes, these are all important stories. They impact the country. They harm our democracy and put our safety in jeopardy. They shouldn’t be ignored.
However, the other story seems so much more critical. That’s the coronavirus. Numbers are spiking at an alarming rate all over the country. Deaths are piling up again. We seem to be in the worst of this pandemic and everything points to it getting much worse before it gets better.
Coronavirus, Trump. Trump, coronavirus. Our heads spin.
To be clear, the media is fully capable of chewing gum and walking at the same time. That is, it can appropriately cover both the coronavirus and Trump and all the other stories that need to be covered, and it can do it simultaneously. And it can do it really well.
However, at this point, I’m not sure news consumers have an appetite for either story, as important as they both are. I say that, especially, when it comes to the coronavirus as you will see in the next item below.
But, first, I mention all this for a couple of reasons. One is to marvel at the incredible work being done in journalism — from the big TV and cable networks to the local stations, from national newspapers and websites to local papers and radio stations. The work being churned out by journalists has never been more impressive and never been more important.
I also know, because I’ve heard from some readers, that not everyone can absorb this much news, this much bad news, this much depressing information every single day. They need breaks, and I’m here to say that’s OK, too. Some days, news consumers need to spend their evenings watching “The Bachelorette” or “The Voice” instead of CNN or Fox News. Sometimes it’s better to read a John Grisham novel instead of The Washington Post.
And when you’re ready again, hard-working journalists will be there. Just like they have been every day, drinking out of a fire hose.
So, now about that news fatigue ...
Cases up, interest down
Medical personnel don PPE while attending to a patient at Bellevue Hospital in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Coronavirus cases in the U.S. are going up. Online interest in the virus is going down.
So says the latest poll from NewsWhip, which was written about by Axios’ Neal Rothschild and Sara Fischer. Rothschild and Fischer write, “Over the last two weeks, news articles about the pandemic have generated 75 million interactions on social media (likes, comments, shares), according to NewsWhip Data. The last time it was that low over a two-week stretch was in early March.”
And there’s more. The online interest is mostly about how disruptive the coronavirus has been to everyday lives as opposed to the health dangers of the virus.
Rothschild and Fischer point out that the media is still giving the virus much attention — covering it at about the same level as when cases spiked over the summer. But audience engagement is the lowest it has ever been. It’s true that the election has dominated the news cycle in recent weeks, but it appears many people are simply tuning out coronavirus, perhaps out of fatigue.
A clear picture of Real Clear Politics
The New York Times’ Jeremy W. Peters is out with a piece about the website Real Clear Politics. Peters describes Real Clear as “well known as a clearinghouse of elections data and analysis with a large following among the political and media establishment.”
However, Peters also accurately notes, “But less well known is how Real Clear Politics and its affiliated websites have taken a rightward, aggressively pro-Trump turn over the last four years as donations to its affiliated nonprofit have soared. Large quantities of those funds came through two entities that wealthy conservatives use to give money without revealing their identities.”
Peters adds, “As the administration lurched from one crisis after another — impeachment, the coronavirus, a lost election the president refuses to concede — Real Clear became one of the most prominent platforms for elevating unverified and reckless stories about the president’s political opponents, through a mix of its own content and articles from across conservative media.”
That has been evident especially in the past two weeks as Real Clear continues to push stories that question the outcome of the presidential election.
Check out Peters’ whole story to see the shift at Real Clear Politics.
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