Daily newscasts — an outdated calibre?

As part of our news media seminar we talked about daily newscasts, such as the Tagesschau or ZDF Heute. We talked about whether the time of the news shows is over and some of my fellow students appear to be very convinced of this. Some points of this discussion made me think about this topic a little more so I want to write a few words about my opinion on the daily news shows.

First, we discussed the thesis whether news apps and generally the Internet have replaced the daily newscasts as the preferred information medium. I think for my generation the answer might be a clear YES. If one wants to be supplied with the latest news constantly a news app is definitely the best choice since it offers instant services like push messages. The Tagesschau, however, provides a general overview of the day’s most important news.

I still refuse to call these newscasts superfluous and want to exercise criticism on some of the arguments that I have heard in the context of this discussion.

I want to start with the argument that online one could only read the articles that seem interesting to him. For me, this is a bad argument for the irrelevance of daily newscasts since they are aimed to give a general picture of the current events in the world and not just to report appealing stuff. In this context, I also think of the argument that some people do not watch the news because they show “terrible content”. This opinion even seems to be surprisingly common among some people. According to a representative survey by the FORSA Institute about 34 percent of all questioned people responded that they would watch more newscasts if there would be more positive reports. (See http://www.focus.de/kultur/kino_tv/gute-und-boese-news-tagesschau-und-rtl-aktuell-das-wollen-die-deutschen-in-den-nachrichten-sehen_id_4941883.html ). Again, all I can make is the argument that it is not the task of news shows to care for the emotional feeling of their viewers but to provide them with information and hard facts about the most important events in the world. In my view, someone who refuses to look at these reports because they could potentially lead to the worsening of his or her own mood than this person behaves very ignorant. We should appreciate that we live in a democratic country were we have virtually unlimited and uncensored access to the world’s news.