Theories abound about why, with so many tech tools at their disposal and so much time spent connected and tuned in, Americans seem to be losing touch with significant news and current events. We’re losing the Rub Off Effect.
Cartoon by Christo Komarnitski - PoliticalCartoons.com (click to reprint)
Just as ink used to rub off on the hands of newspaper readers – before the advent of soy-based printing materials – the news itself tended to rub off on people who had a paper delivered to their homes, even if it only sat on the kitchen table. Sound far-fetched? Consider the many ways in which we formerly came in passing contact with the day’s news, and don’t anymore.
Radio stations used to be required by law to present public service content which, in most cases, took the form of news. My first job out of college was in the news department at WABC in New York back when it was still a rock ‘n’ roll powerhouse. Despite the likelihood that our audience resented it, we interrupted Cousin Brucie and the other D-Js every hour for five minutes of no-nonsense news. Some listeners switched stations, but most stuck around; and the news rubbed off.
Today, music stations provide barely a smidgen of information, often limited to traffic and weather. For millions of listeners to satellite radio, inadvertent contact with news is even less likely unless they specifically seek a channel devoted to current events.
The situation was pretty much the same on TV, where almost every broadcast station stopped for news once or twice each night. Nowadays viewers can watch cable and satellite 24/7 without ever running the risk of hearing anything that could even loosely be called news.
Walking down the streets of most cities back in the day, news was always nearby. It was stacked up at newsstands and even shouted by vendors. People carried transistor radios whose messages resonated in the pre-earphone era. And it tended to rub off.
Many would argue that although these old-fashioned formats have largely disappeared, they’ve been replaced by faster, omnipresent computer devices that keep us better informed. But about what?
Vast numbers of young people don’t even bother with e-mail anymore. They skip home pages of Yahoo or AOL, preferring Facebook for messaging and dwell on Internet pages that skip over news of the outside world almost entirely.
While information buzzes around us more than ever before, it has never been easier to tune out.
A strong counter argument to this rub off theory would seem to be provided in a lengthy report just released by the Pew Research Center, headlined: “Americans Spending More Time Following the News.” After surveying 3,006 adults by telephone, the Pew study concludes, “instead of replacing traditional news platforms, Americans are increasingly integrating new technologies into their news consumption habits.” As a result, “total minutes with news” has climbed from 67 per day in 2008 to 70 minutes today.
But very little explanation is offered about what constitutes “news.” It may be that society’s definition of news is changing even faster than its habits about how to get it. The tip-off comes in a footnote from Pew indicating, “The public struggled with a four-question current events quiz – just 14 percent answered all four correctly.”
News need not be like bad tasting medicine, and it shouldn’t be forced on consumers or slipped into their diets. But it helped when a little news rubbed off on people, and it’s another troubling sign of our times that it doesn’t happen much anymore.
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Peter Funt may be reached at www.CandidCamera.com.
©2010 Peter Funt. This column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons, Inc. newspaper syndicate. For info call Cari Dawson Bartley at 800 696 7561 or e-mail Cari@cagle.com.
Peter Funt is a writer and public speaker. He’s also the long-time host of “Candid Camera.” A collection of his DVDs is available at www.candidcamera.com.
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