Popular Culture Review Vol. 8, No. 2, August 1997 | Page 132

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Popular Culture Review

reach of the great metropolitan dailies. (Sperber, 131132).
Subsequent events have revealed that radio, then television,
became the primary sources of news for Americans. Newspaper
circulation surprisingly increased during the Persian Gulf War.
Why? One newspaper analyst, John Morton, gave this explanation in
the March 1991 issue of the Washington Journalism Review: "The
most obvious reason is that people like to read in detail about what
they have seen on television" (56). Nonetheless there is a prevalent
opinion among print journalists that TV has killed off newspapers. It
is largely this resentful and revengeful mentality which prompts
print journalists to point out electronic media's journalistic
shortcomings. How often does one read a scathing review of a
particular newspaper's work in the criticism section of another paper,
even a competing paper? The makers of buggy whips could certainly
have slanruned automobile manufacturers, but their criticisms could
not have stopped the flow of progress. We have seen another
journalistic threshold crossed, and it does not bode well for print
media. The day after the first aerial attacks on Baghdad, USA
Today's entire front page was given to recounting the television
coverage of the night before.
Another form of disapproval was listed by Greenfield, that
of knowledge overload: " . . . there may simply be more information
available than most of us can possibly deal with without succumbing
to an overwhelming sense of stress and confusion and frustration and
exhaustion" (Greenfield, 7). It could be my own broadcast journalism
background causing my reaction, or it could be a Jeffersonian mindset.
My own preference is for all the information possible without the aid
of an intermediary, however well-meaning his or her motives. Let
me decide what is important to my well-being and that of my fellow
citizens. A lack of data can cause me to be even more stressed,
confused, frustrated, and exhausted. This response is similar to one
expressed by Murrow in 1939:
I have an old-fashioned belief that Americans like to
make up their own minds on the basis of all available
information. The conclusions you draw are your own
affair. I have no desire to influence them and shall