Did the headline catch your attention? Good. That just proves how quick journalism can shift your perspective on things — with a single, bold headline.
Journalism is turning into an outlet just to distribute specific, targeted rhetoric. There are some news outlets that have shifted to pushing politically targeted agendas, opinions in their favor, or anything that can attract their readers’ attention. This can be seen with everything from bold headlines, charged connotation, or even subtle fear mongering. Ethical journalism should be centered around factual reporting, not the growing use of exaggeration or lies to promote certain agendas or to exclude opposing perspectives.
The psychological priming of the audience in order to attract readers is known as sensationalism. As journalists, we can share the blame — oftentimes, sensationalism is subtly woven into our articles, even without realizing it. And oftentimes, sensationalism is not always done with malicious intent, as journalists often want people to read their articles. After all, it validates the hours of research, interviewing, writing, and editing to achieve the final draft. However, using journalism to fit a specific agenda can go too far if unchecked, and can become, to put it simply, redesigned propaganda. As David Berube, a communications professor at North Carolina State University puts it, “Once you get someone’s attention…you can weave your way through a very convoluted and probably implausible argument and make it appear more reasonable.” This is known as the door-in-the-face effect in psychology: the blaring headlines and outrageous diction, however ridiculous they may seem, grasp the reader’s attention and help the writer emphasize questionable facts with a little more grace afterwards. The media controls our perspectives, and this phenomenon makes it clear, showing why even subtle sensationalism usage can shift perspectives easily.
This is the truism of sensationalism, and as a research paper from two professors from Radboud University further states, “the nature of sensationalist features has been explained by the assumption that humans are evolutionary predisposed to survey the environment for anything that may be threatening. As a consequence, they will automatically respond to negative information…” It may seem obvious in practice — this principle assumes that sensational news will keep viewers glued to the screens, will fully allow the writer or reporter to twist their way through an argument or lead to a complete change of thought, and long-term research supports this. However, research further mentioned in this research paper states that negative content and tabloid-style information made to reel in an audience doesn’t actually stick information in memory. Instead, sensationalist news leads to a sudden burst of shock, a quick emotional response associated with the negative stimuli — in this case, the negative news that is being presented. This shows that the responses to news are strong, but not necessarily a strong sense of understanding. A response doesn’t necessarily indicate that sensationalism has made an impact on helping someone shift to believe a negative perspective immediately, but the response itself is what indicates that sensationalism has done its job. This phenomena targets emotion over understanding, lowering critical reasoning and building emotional appeal. The emotional impact delivered as a result, though, can push people to believe what was written in the article.
It is important to explore examples of media that employ sensationalism. Fox News is already a well known example of this: it is known to be a sensationalist news source, with shocking headlines and a strong right-wing bias that is disapproved of by many leftists. This is often due to negative language and a bias favoring the Republican party, but to go in detail about this news source and its strong connotation would be to beat the dead horse. Although a popular news outlet among many older adults, it holds a reputation for using sensationalism outright. Furthermore, it does not reveal insight on the newer ways sensationalism is being interwoven into newer generation media. After all, sensationalism doesn’t have to be shown outright to still operate on fear, lies, and misinformation: it can be subtle as well. The “Covington Catholic Boys” incident is an example of this. CNN reported on the news of the boys harassing a group of Indigenous protesters in Washington D.C., and the outrage as a result of this reporting led to the boys being doxxed and harassed online. Only until other news outlets stated that this was a misleading headline was it revealed that this story was false, and that the boys had not harassed said indigenous protesters after all. Sensationalism, in this case, went beyond just a casual bold headline and a few exaggerated words — it threatened livelihoods. This instance shows how a subtly false article can have devastating consequences for jobs, lives, and the common population’s perception of the media.
Sensationalism in the modern context occurs through fear mongering: as the global political climate feels unstable, people often find themselves desperately googling for answers. The new age of sensationalism feeds off of this though, incorporating a new type of rhetoric as well: fear mongering. This one is less obvious because it is becoming more common in recent years, and is harder to spot because it feeds off fear. For the most part, mainstream journalism has shifted far from flat-out lies, charged connotations that could be akin to propaganda — that does not mean it doesn’t occur. Point being, fear mongering is the most common type of sensationalism in the modern context
Reporting feeds off uncertainty, and though this is a new, negative phenomena, it matches up with the agenda of mainstream journalism. After all, reporters rely on people to search for answers, to worry: it leads to growing viewership to sustain their newspapers. Overall, although sensationalism is a negative phenomena due to the push away from factual journalism, to some extent, it will continue to exist. Journalists rely on reader viewership in order to monetize their stories. Some perspectives state that sensationalism can be used to motivate positive causes. Karen Slattery, a professor of journalism and media studies at Marquette University, believes that sensationalism can be used in articles (especially those covering social issues) to require the public to respond and bring upon a change as a result of sensationalist reporting. She also states that sensationalism can be applied to a smaller extent, or even integrated into media. However, her argument usually only applies to older media where sensationalism was used to a smaller level: in public affairs, sensationalism’s usage went from 10.7 percent in 1968 to 29.7 percent in 1996. The extent to which the media used sensationalism back then versus now differ greatly from each other. So while sensationalism can be used to motivate towards positive causes, or even often advocate others to fight for change based on awareness, it is also true that it does not often do so. Since the level of sensationalist reporting seems to have risen, it is important to consider the fact that although sometimes sensationalism remains inevitable, too much of it is a bad thing. To further counteract Slattery’s claim, it is also important to know sensationalism can lead to awareness but no actual change in policy or opinion, seeing how media patterns have changed and how we operate now.
What do we do with this knowledge? First off, it is important to consider the impact of sensationalism. It targets emotion and can often override knowledge, which is why it is such a problem. As readers, we have the responsibility to separate emotional response from the reporting in the article. Despite this being difficult to do, it builds a sense of critical reasoning skills: being able to look at an article from an objective lens is a skill that demonstrates understanding over emotional responses. And during uncertainty, it is important for people to collect their thoughts before reading an article, as well as to understand that news remains ever changing. During a time of fear mongering, sticking to the facts remains important, as well as choosing credible news sources to consume information from. While it’s true that large news corporations cannot often be 100% credible, there are some sources that are more credible than others. Reading the news is important, transforming our perspectives on the world and driving a course of action based on observation and reasoning.
And remember, the next time you see a headline that catches your attention, ask yourself if the article provides insight into a situation, or if it’s just meant to rile you up. And in the long run, none of us are fully safe from the emotional phenomena of sensationalism, so self reflection after fear mongering media got to you couldn’t hurt either.
