I see what you’re doing, but do you?
I see what you’re doing, but do you?
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This month, I turned 50.
As a child of the ’70s and ’80s, I remember a time before mobile phones, when there were only four channels on the TV, and you had to get up to change them. A time when there was no 24-hour news, and your local news came from the evening paper, your local radio station, or regional TV.
In 1994, I went to university and searched the internet for the first time. By the time I finished, internet access at home was becoming the norm. Combined with satellite TV, this brought a barrage of news. Then mobile phones and social media appeared, and the number of news sources seemed to triple overnight. Competition increased, and many smaller companies and news teams were either swallowed up or went out of business.
This brings us to the situation we have today.
Local news isn’t local anymore. Local newspapers have, more or less, been replaced by regional websites. Local radio stations often have their news piped in from a centralised head office team. Big stories are posted on social media to draw you in and make you read the article.
Why are they so keen for you to read their articles? Well, that’s down to advertising. We don’t like to pay for news, but someone must fund the team that puts it together, and that’s where advertising comes in. I don’t have a problem with that; everyone needs to earn a crust.
What I do have a problem with is misleading headlines designed to make you click a link. More importantly, I have an issue with articles that target specific towns and cities, feeding off the natural human desire to moan about where we live.
You know the type I mean: “The 15 places that aren’t in [Town] anymore” or “Council removes [X] from city park”, deliberately omitting the reason why until the last sentence of the article.
Everyone loves a grumble, it’s human nature, but these articles feed off that instinct, amplify it, and spread negativity. Worse still, they can genuinely hurt businesses, and hurt them badly.
There’s a quote often (wrongly) attributed to Albert Einstein: “Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
The same principle applies here. If you are constantly highlighting the negatives of a city or town, the world starts to believe them. People stop visiting. More articles get written about the “decline” of that place, which leads to even fewer visitors. Businesses looking to invest will only see the negatives and be put off, and the cycle continues.
I’m not arguing that negative stories should be suppressed. But I would like to see an end to articles that are essentially just lists of faults, not actual news, and an increase in positive, constructive reporting.
So, what do we do about it?
Should we boycott those outlets? Refuse to read their articles? Withdraw advertising? No.
I have an issue with cancel culture, too. Everyone’s just trying to feed their families, and I would never recommend trying to take that away from anyone.
I’m not 100% sure what the answer is. I’ll leave it with you — to decide how best we can stop the damage being done to our towns and city centres.
I’ll sign off with a message to those media outlets guilty of this kind of journalism: “I can see what you’re doing. I understand why. But do you see what you are doing?”
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