I deleted the CNN app on my iPhone after the
school shooting in Washington State. I may have misdirected my anger at the TV
and aimed it at my phone, but I needed to react. Immediately after the
shooting, where five teenagers died (including the shooter who took his own
life), CNN was right on the scene at Marysville Pilchuck High School in
Marysville, Washington. CNN attacked the scene with every angle possible.

 

Here were the headlines:

 

Police: Lone Shooter Dead After High School Attack

Two Dead After Washington School Shooting

Homecoming Prince Identified As High School Shooting Subject

2 Dead, 4 Injured After Washington School Shooting

Washington State School Shooting: ‘Run, get out of
here’

Teacher Tried to Stop Washington School Shooting

Washington State Teen Shooter’s Family Living in ‘Nightmare’

Hugs, Tears at Gathering Following School Shooting

Third Student Dies in Washington School Shooting

Washington School Gunman’s Death Ruled a Suicide

Washington State School Shooter Lured Victims to Lunch

Washington School Shooter Remembered With Victims

Police Release Recordings from School Shooting

Third Victim in Washington School Shooting Dies

Marysville Pilchuck High School Takes Time to Heal

5th Teen Dies Following Washington School Shooting

 

There are 16 updates. They tell us two things: one about the
nature of the news and one about the way in which we consume this news. At
first, the suspect is important to us; we want to know his story, his name, his
motive. We also want to know about the dead; how many, their names, how they
will be remembered. We read all of these stories that are updated as more
details emerge because we want to know everything. The news is handing
us exactly what we wish: information that is quickly and easily understood. More
importantly: information that is fast—and we don’t care if it’s
accurate or not (think Boston Marathon).

 

The way in which we consume the news (as in, our constantly
updated newsfeed) may cause our shortened attention span, but it also might be
a symptom of it. Harvard Business School historian Nancy Koehn shared in an
interview, “The average American attention span in 2013 was about 8
seconds… in 2000
it was 12 seconds. …
The average attention of a goldfish is 9 seconds.”

 

Let’s take 9 seconds to take that in: goldfish have a longer
attention span than we do. Now let’s relate that to the news: we need
high-intensity on our screens to keep us engaged. Change forces us to be
focused. If we are rereading or re-watching the same information over again, we
will immediately move on. This is why the 24/7 news cycle works in America.

 

David Katz, M.D. and director of the Yale Prevention Research
Center, explains in his article from the Huffington Post, “Our
[Americans] attention span is notoriously short, and our ability to gauge risk
notoriously flawed.”

 

Katz’s point is represented in the reactions to the Ebola
epidemic. A reaction he describes because “we are more apt to
panic over remote threats we can’t directly control than deal
constructively with threats many orders of magnetite greater than we can.”
We are so inclined to fear what we cannot directly fix, like the fact that an
Ebola outbreak is occurring or a school shooting took place, instead of
planning to change for the future. As Katz points out, we should move forward
and reach solutions instead of dramatically pondering over the problem.

 

Users can flock to social media, like Twitter and Facebook, to
share a link or express their views on a certain topic going around the web. The
sometimes superfluous public contribution to the media adds to hysteria. When
fueled by hyperbolic stories, we react with strong emotion and do not hesitate
in sharing our informing our fellow media users about the issues. But with this
constant 24/7 news system, we don’t always wait to get all of the facts
of an issue. Rather we post to a site the moment we find out about something so
we can spread the chaos throughout the web.

 

Media’s addiction to report on events as
quickly as possible has also led to some severe mistakes. In the upcoming
premiere of the HBO hit The Newsroom,
the episode focuses on the Boston Bombing that took place in 2013. Incorporated
into the show is a real life incident in which CNN reporter John King
wrongfully reported that a suspect of the bombing was arrested. Immediately,
every news platform and medium was spreading the news to the public. In the
soon-to-be released premiere episode, the fictionalized ACN news channel
actually waits for conformation and significant evidence before airing any
information about the bombing.

 

However, we frequently see how the media doesn’t
choose to wait after an event. Rather, they throw whatever information they can
gather at the audience in the shortest time possible.

 

It is time that journalism reshapes its main goals and
standards. Stories shouldn’t be covered just because viewership
will go up. Rather stories should be covered because they are important to the
public. All journalistic fields must take the responsibility of uncovering the
truth of every story. The public doesn’t need details. We need answers to the
chaos going on around us. We need quality over quantity in terms of our news.