The recipe for irresponsible coverage
How new business models have encouraged problematic reportage on rape and sexual violence
It’s no secret that the news industry is going through a period of massive churn. With the internet becoming more and more accessible, the competition that legacy organisations face has only been getting tougher. The Hindu, for instance, has now installed a freemium model on its digital page; if you become a paying subscriber, you stop seeing ads.
As more and more platforms come about and vie for the same number of eyeballs, they are doing two things to differentiate themselves: either they are experimenting with different formats of presentation — listicles, short explainer videos or quizzes — or they are just relying on producing huge amounts of content. This latter trend is worrying, especially when it comes to reporting on issues of sexual violence, and what leads to irresponsible coverage.
Irresponsible journalism, for the purposes of this article, is a broad term that goes beyond reporting the act of sexual violence as it is, to add details that might either create an opinion of both, the perpetrator and the victim (for example, by stating where they are from or whether they were ‘functioning’ members of society), or endanger the victim themselves (for example, by mentioning where they work or live).
There are two lenses through which we can view the factors that allow irresponsible coverage to thrive — production (why are media houses producing this kind of content?) and consumption (why do we read this kind of content?).
Understanding the production disruption
Why do media organisations put out this kind of reportage? A possible answer lies in how business models have changed over the years, especially in the last 15 years or so.
Traditionally, print news depended largely on advertisements for sustenance. As the internet came about, legacy outlets started either moving online entirely or at least had an online division. Given the low cost of production for the digital space, several more independent publications (like Huffington Post) were born, which attracted newer, younger audiences. As the competition grew, advertisers started to move to the digital space as well; their revenue from print saw a decline, and the prospect of an interconnected network that cut across geographies promised more eyeballs than they could reach through print.
WITH THE POPULARITY OF SEARCH ENGINES AND THE TRAFFIC THEY COULD PRODUCE, MEDIA HOUSES STARTED CONCENTRATING ON PUSHING OUT AS MUCH CONTENT AS POSSIBLE. AND THIS IS WHAT HAS MADE JOURNALISM ORGANISATIONS SUSCEPTIBLE TO MISINFORMATION, DISINFORMATION AND IRRESPONSIBLE COVERAGE…
The bottom line then became about getting more viewers to your page; the more they view your page, the more money you make. But now, faced with intense competition, how does one actually stand out from the crowd? By either being everywhere (producing huge amounts of content) or by being unique (producing new formats of news consumption). With the popularity of search engines and the traffic they could produce, media houses started concentrating on the former — pushing out as much content as possible. And this is precisely what has made journalism organisations susceptible to misinformation, disinformation and irresponsible coverage; outlets chase eyeballs to secure ad dollars. There is a push for quantity of articles over quality.
The second factor that came in with some force was the entry of big business into the media. Lakshmi Chaudhry, part of the founding team of Firstpost, shed some light on how Reliance buying over Network 18 (Firstpost’s parent company) had an effect on everyday operations:
“The full consequences of the new ownership became clear just over a year later, when two Reliance-appointed board members ducked into the Firstpost office to deliver an unambiguous message to its stewards: It’s time to mind your manners. There would be no more “personal criticism” of the ruling party’s leaders on Firstpost. I tendered my resignation 10 days later.”
Journalistic standards and ethics have come under more pressure than ever to bow down to corporate demand. With big businesses entering the scene, managing the stories and day-to-day issues of media houses came under the control of corporate-backed appointees. This, mixed with the mantra of ‘more content’, saw editorial control slip out of the hands of those who actually reported the news. This also resulted in changes in the structures of media houses, especially with cost-cutting deemed as necessary. “The newsrooms that have traditionally provided most original journalism are radically shrinking,” says Margaret Simons, the director of the Centre for Advanced Journalism, University of Melbourne. Nick Davis, the author of Flat Earth News, further explains:
“After 20 years which have seen a great many cuts and occasional bouts of new hiring, average staffing levels across Fleet Street companies are now slightly lower than they were two decades ago. But the amount of editorial space which those journalists are filling has trebled. To put it another way, during those 20 years, the average time allowed for national newspaper journalists to find and check their stories has been cut to a third of its former level.”
With such pressure on journalists, the likelihood of producing subpar stories only increases. A journalist at one of India’s largest online platforms, who asked not to be named, said, “We’re constantly under pressure to produce stories from sources that are given to us. At this point, we don’t even have the time to verify these sources or properly fact-check what they’ve given us. I feel like journalists, especially entry-level ones, are simply content creators and aggregators and not journalists”.
IT’S PAINFULLY CLEAR THAT EVEN THOUGH WE MAY NOT NECESSARILY WANT IT, HUMANS ARE ATTRACTED TO SENSATIONAL NEWS.
The third factor at play here is that media organisations have become much smarter at targeting their audience; they know exactly which demographic of society can relate to which piece, and they actively try to tailor their journalism to cater to this formula. Similarly, they also know how they can alter a piece to get the most eyeballs — whether one reacts with outrage or just treat it as a casual read, it doesn’t matter. With the rise of aggregators — Google News, DailyHunt, Inshorts, etc. — and social media as disseminators of news, making the piece, and especially the headline ‘clickbaity’ has also become a common feature.
It is a combination of all these factors that results in what has been described here as irresponsible journalism, especially with respect to stories about sexual violence. Newslaundry’s Manisha Pande came up with a great analysis that showcases irresponsible journalism;
TOI [Times of India] decided to disclose the survivor’s identity and basically make a case to suggest she was ‘asking for it’. TOI’s headline leads with the detail that a “Nagaland woman” had alleged rape. In its report, TOI goes into details of what preceded the rape. We are told the girl had been “pub-hopping” and that she ended the night of “revelry” at a restaurant. None of these details are related to her rape, but they do add to the image of someone who doesn’t conform to the image of a “sanskaari nari”. The report also slipped in a completely-inconsequential detail that she worked at a spa. Appallingly, not only did TOI give out details of the area in which the woman lives, but also the location of her workplace, making it painfully easy for anyone to identify her.
TOI also gives completely unsubstantiated details on the victim’s elder sister who had accompanied her to Hauz Khas Village.
Why are we attracted?
The second lens through which we need to try and tackle this conundrum is through that of the consumer. Why do we want to read news like this? What about this kind of coverage attracts us to it?
Newslaundry’s Manisha Pande unwittingly touched on the three key aspects of the human psyche — gossip, violence and a penchant for sensationalism — that media organisations target while covering such issues.
For the former, Yuval Harari — in his book Sapiens — argues that it was when we started to gossip that we actually became a superior species. Before this, Homo sapiens (our species) were in the middle of the food chain; we were not even the strongest of the diverse group of human species. Gossip enabled us to build bonds with our group and to know the other members’ relationships, which improved our cooperation and our competitiveness. In doing so, Hariri underscores and to an extent, provides some rationale for why ‘gossip’ attracts us.
With violence, although it is widely debated, there is a strong school of thought that believes we are attracted to it. In a study conducted on mice — the mouse brain is thought to be analogous to the human brain — it was found that the brain reacts to aggression the same way as it does to other rewards. It found that mice actually sought violence for no other reason than a feeling of reward. This study could shed some light on why humans are attracted to brutality — from experiencing it entirely (in the form of say, brutal sports) to experiencing it indirectly (like reading violent details about a crime). The study team said that we seem to crave violence just as much as sex, food or drugs.
A cursory glance at the excerpt above is enough for one to recognise just how sensationalised the article was. But again, why is that something we are attracted to? Evolutionary psychologist Hank Davis answered this question through an evolutionary perspective in his 2003 study:
“From an evolutionary point of view, the emotional impact of these stories makes sense. Our ancestors would likely have increased their reproductive success by gaining certain kinds of information about the world around them. Thus, stories about animal attacks, deadly parasites and tainted food sources remain salient topics, even millions of years after their likelihood of occurrence has become marginal in industrialised nations.”
NYU journalism professor Mitchell Stephens’s A History of News speaks to Davis’s study; sex, violence and conflict appeal to wide audiences because it “strengthens the social fabric”. Readers also remember news that is sensationalised; in a 1997 study, Christiane Eilders asked readers to reproduce some news stories in their own words, and she found that they remembered more details of stories that were “controversial” and “personalised”.
ON ONE SIDE, [JOURNALISTS] ARE BEING PRESSURISED TO PUT OUT MORE CONTENT IN LESS TIME. ON THE OTHER, WITH THEIR AWARENESS OF AUDIENCE BEHAVIOUR, THEY KNOW SENSATIONALISM WORKS…
Marc Trussler and Stuart Soroka take this explanation a step further and found through their study, the presence of “negativity bias”, i.e. our collective want to read, hear and remember bad news. It’s painfully clear that even though we may not necessarily want it, humans are attracted to sensational news; a study conducted by Luca Stanca, Marco Gui and Marcello Gallucci in 2012 on television viewers showed that people are more attracted to programmes that are more sensational in nature, even though they might not derive satisfaction from them.
With all this audience behaviour knowledge at hand, mixed with cut-throat competition and a volatile business landscape, it does not seem so surprising that a few organisations would cross the line. For journalists, the issue is two-fold. On one side, they are being pressurised to put out more content in less time — even a good, well-meaning journalist might slip up at some point. On the other, with their awareness of audience behaviour, they know sensationalism works, so they twist facts, add unnecessary details, create an atmosphere or subtly imply things to gain more attention, much as was demonstrated in Manisha Pande’s analysis.
And there you have it, the recipe for irresponsible coverage.
Countering these elements is not going to be easy. With the media industry still trying to adjust to a world where traditional business models are broken down, everybody is worried. Despite this, some things have to be sacrosanct. Endangering, and shaping public ideas about, victims of sexual violence to gain more eyeballs is thoughtless, for lack of a better word. The fourth pillar of democracy must take a step back, introspect and radically evaluate whether, quite literally, an extra eyeball is worth someone’s life.
Sourya Reddy is the Founder and CEO of The Bastion, a development journalism organisation that works in the areas of education, environment and sports.
