Trivia Pursuit: How Showbiz Values Are Corrupting the News

Julie Rekai Rickerd is a Toronto-based broadcaster and public-relations
consultant.

After an illustrious 50-year career in the “news business,” veteran
journalist and broadcaster Knowlton Nash is disillusioned. The
profession he once admired is mired in a frenzy of “shrieking
headlines, sound bites, slogans and modified truths.” Big business and
rapid technological change transformed the news from a conduit for
information into a vehicle for outlandish, sleazy “entertainment.”
Nash cites the chaotic coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial, the death of
Princess Diana, and the President Clinton debacle as among the worst
examples of yellow journalism.

Journalistic sensationalism is nothing new, Nash points out. The
Canadian papers of yesteryear were filled with “stories of two-headed
cows, African cannibals, mad dogs and ‘Murder and Arson in the Indian
Country.’” Cynicism, advertising, circulation, and market share have
always been the driving forces of media organizations. What Nash fears
is that the all-pervasive and constant barrage of misinformation, devoid
of context and analysis, will lead to a breakdown of society and
democracy.

Despite his pessimism, Nash holds out some hope that once the novelty
of cyberspace and the 500-channel universe wears off, the media will
return to their former mandate of reporting the truth; in other words,
“bewitching by sensationalism” will once again take a back seat to
“news as education.”

Nash calls his book “a personal cry of pain.” Beyond that, Trivia
Pursuit is an important and well-presented overview of the sorry state
of the media today.