Just a few days ago, CNN ran a story with the headline, "Steven Hawking: Trump 'is a demagogue.' In the latest string of intelligent people who won't endorse Trump, Steven Hawking, the noted astrophysicist, threw in his hat in opposition of the presidential hopeful.
What CNN, along with the New York Times, ABC, Huff Post and others, did not bother to report, however, was what Hawking said directly after that quip at Donald Trump.
ThinkProgress quoted Hawking as having gone on to say, “A more immediate danger is runaway climate change. A rise in ocean temperature would melt the ice-caps and cause a release of large amounts of carbon dioxide from the ocean floor. Both effects could make our climate like that of Venus, with a temperature of 250 degrees.”
I'm not going to steal their discussion on climate change. Instead, I want to focus attentions on the everyday American digestion of news outlets. What we read is what we know, and what we know is rarely what was truly said. Think about how often the media chooses to purposefully remove details from their breaking stories.
Some things aren't interesting or may lower their views. If you've ever seen the show, "The Newsroom," you know what I'm talking about. Honesty kills ratings.
Why, though? Why does honesty kill ratings? Why does reporting the whole story, with all its boring bits intact which actually make it a worthwhile story, make it so unworthy of being read?
In 2015, a study was done, which showed that the average attention span was roughly 8.25 seconds. In contrast, a goldfish has an attention span of nine seconds.
This same study also showed that fewer than 28 percent of people will have even gotten to this point in this article.
Now consider this: Average people will not finish a normal sized article, roughly 500 words. Yet, the average length of a video watched without interruption is 2.7 minutes.
It seems to me that there is something strange going on here. Why is five minutes too long to read, and yet more than two and a half minutes fine for watching something mindless? What has happened to our culture that we can no longer sit still and read and learn?
Why is it that we have become so obsessed with swallowing up headlines, as if they tell us the whole story, and paint the full picture?
Two years ago, NPR pulled a prank on readers by posting a story with the headline, "Why doesn't America read anymore?" The whole thing was a big joke, and if you were fortunate enough to see it on your wall, I'm sure you saw some people making a fool of themselves.
I suppose, though, that, so far, I've made two seemingly dichotic points. The first being that news companies choose to overlook the meat of a story in favor of the sweeter parts, and the second being that Americans don't care too much about what they read, but rather tend to skim articles or just read headlines.
My point is this: The American population is at fault for the fall of intellectualism. The lack of learning and of honesty and practical reporting in the media are intertwined. Our moblike mentality has made us foolish and gullible.
If we want the media to be honest and if we want to know what's really going on behind the curtain, we need to look. There must be a desire for the truth, and there must be a desire to learn. If we just bother to see what's really going on, we can start a revolution.
