Journalism: Reading Beyond The Headlines

The headlines say it all: riots; looting; unrest; attacks against the police; police brutality; masked attackers; violence on the streets. Journalism, the mass media, is designed not just to inform and advise, but also to sell, whether it be advertising space or information, online or printed. Journalism is not there just to give the facts of an event, but also to give opinions and recommendations, depending on the bias of the publication, and what the journalists themselves – and their editors – believe they can get away with. A good headline sells more content, regardless of what the actual content is, because so many no longer read beyond the first paragraph, no longer have the time and patience to scroll further down the page. Time is of the essence, and information needs to be digested quickly so that the next article can be seen, if not read, and so on. Mass media knows its public, and its public wants quick and easy information, even if that which is shown is clearly misinformation or a content-selling distortion of the facts.

The headlines in many European mass media publications last night and this morning – online and offline – highlight the violence surrounding the Gen Z demonstrations in cities across Germany. They refer to the violence witnessed in France, but give very little space to the reasons for the protests, why Gen Z, and others, are taking to the streets to show discontent with their governments. The German and British (BBC) and other European (France) headlines highlight looting and violence in Frankfurt am Main and other cities, that masked rioters threw stones and pyrotechnics at police, that people were injured, and several arrests were made. This is the highlighted section, the panic-making, opinion-making reportage. The is the major part of all journalistic efforts covering the demonstrations in the popular mass media, to attract attention and influence quick opinions. Further down, for those who scroll or read beyond the headlines, there is a different story.

Here, in the main text, under the fold – as it used to be said in printed media – we read of a few shops having their windows broken and of a small number of looters stealing. Here we read of a few pyrotechnics being thrown, but no reports of injuries. Here we read of tens of thousands of peaceful protesters marching through the city streets, singing songs, waving flags and banners, of extreme left wing infiltrators determined to cause violent confrontations. A different picture to the headlines, to the opening paragraphs. The damage, though, has already been done.

There is a clear bias in journalism today, and probably has been in all such publications since the advent of the first newspapers. This bias is both political, and mercenary. It fulfills the need of some to paint others in a bad light, to highlight minor problems from external sources as major internal splits between what is a professed aim and perceived reality. Above all, it fulfills the need, through panic-making headlines and misleading information, to hold a viewer to a web site, to a publication, long enough that advertising can be loaded and made to pay, or somehow be brought to the reader’s attention. It attempts, often with a sadly high degree of success, to underpin the induced and inborn prejudices of a portion of the reading population, to bolster their belief that others – often fighting for their interests too – are inherently bad, infiltrated by extremism, and should be beaten down.

The first major reports on the mainly peaceful demonstrations in many cities across Germany yesterday, concentrate on the few examples of violence and crime. The underlying reasons for so many tens of thousands of people to be out on the streets on a public holiday – and of all ages, not just the so-called Generation Z – are missing. That funds are being removed from education, that the humanities are being cut back, that social and welfare services, hospitals, community centres and libraries are experiencing existence-threatening financial cuts, that housing rental has skyrocketed through loopholes allowing unscrupulous landlords to raise prices merely to make a larger profit gains barely a mention.

There are good sides to journalism, but they tend not to be found in those reports which hit the newsstands and internet portals within a few hours of events. They are the longer, more considered commentaries, often from serious news sources as much as from dedicated political publications, which do not need the clickbait headlines. Sadly these are precisely the commentaries in publications more threatened by a lack of readership, simply because they do not subscribe to the mass selling tactics of misinformation, bias and falsification, and are more likely to be periodicals than daily publications. They are written by journalists more likely to take facts into consideration, to look at the whole picture, from cause to result, to read the press releases from various organisations, and to access with a careful eye how many attend, how many cause violence.

But it will be one to three weeks before these articles are published; consideration and research takes time, clickbait headlines do not – and by then, for many, the violence around the demonstrations will have been lodged in reader’s minds, and a new news story will have taken its place. We live in a society that is fed with misinformation; which has no patience for anything longer than an announcement, a headline; which has succumbed to the dumbing down of education by countless financial cuts from government ministers whose only interest is to be seen to be doing something, and to be re-elected at the next elections.

It is time for change, and to be hoped that the peaceful, younger generation marching on the streets in our cities across the country, are able to grow into informed, socially-aware adults capable of turning the many missteps of previous governments around, and returning Germany – and other countries – to the ideals of the democratic past. There are enough recent examples of how this could happen, peacefully and against government violence and oppression, and this may well be the future in Germany, perhaps in France, but only if we read beyond the headlines, beyond the fluff, bias and misinformation and realise where the underlying problems are that we need to combat and reform.