Opinion
 

Appetite for TV news is non-existent

By Lynn Meyer

Spring Break is over and finals are coming. This means, for the next six weeks college, students across the nation are going to try and replace lost brain cells with a semester's worth of procrastinated assignments. Ruthless cramming in is the forecast; there will probably be little time for most of us to follow what's brewing in the latest media storm. But if you are 30 years old or younger, you probably wouldn't have followed anyway. According to statistics from the Pew Research Center, fewer than half of Americans age 30 or younger read a newspaper or watch a TV news show on an average day.

It hasn't always been this way. In the 1960s, results from Gallop Polls actually reflected that the college-aged crowd that was on top of current affairs. So why the change? America is once again engaged in a controversial war, and once again, it is our age group that is primarily involved in combat. Politicians still largely overlook issues traditionally important to young people, such as funding for higher education and environmental protection. Why is it then that our generation has traded information for entertainment?

I believe the underlying reason behind the change in young people's awareness today and in the '60s is the format by which we are exposed to politics. Newspapers are dying. The same medium that brings us Friends on Thursday nights and ABC's Monday Night Football is also responsible for cultivating our political minds. As TV has increasingly become America's primary news source, so has the demand for news decreased among Americans younger than 30 years old. Coincidence? Probably not.

Unlike printed media, TV coverage relies predominately on moving pictures and brief stories to captivate its audience. Straight politics rarely offers such glitz. Hence, TV turns toward individual candidates and the private lives of the wealthy for news rather than the ideologies that fuel political involvement.

This is TV's true disservice to democracy. When the media fails to describe the ideals behind the news, it is asking the public to trust that party identification is sufficient for describing political viewpoints. The result of such empty coverage is that only those with partisan identification have any motive to support the system. I believe this explains the change in young people's participation since the '60s. According to a Newsweek poll from 2000, 64 percent of Americans under 30 do not support either party, or we favor alternatives.

Ironically, while more information is at our fingertips than ever before, we are not accessing it as effectively as we have in the past. And rather than simply tuning out empty coverage, it is our generation's responsibility to actively find the alternative. We cannot just wish for change. The government will continue to govern whether we continue to have a voice or not.

Though we're amid finals and deadlines, and reading up on current issues may seem futile, we can effectively shape the future of this country by exposing ourselves to facts. This might impact our future more than any exam looming in May.

Meyer, an editorial writer for The Daily Cougar, 
can be reached via dccampus@mail.uh.edu.