The Communications Fantasy Help Desk
Reviewed by Stuart H. Loory Posted Sat, Sep 15 2001
Thank you for calling Communications Fantasy. We appreciate your interest in the new age of information and are here to help. A basic premise of the Information Age is that we will all be brought together in an environment of greater understanding. We are creating the opportunity for more interchange of information and ideas. We can come to know each other better even though we never meet. We can enrich our own lives and those of all societies. We can make daily chores easier to handle. We can manage our expenses more intelligently. We can maintain our health more properly. We will bring more pleasure to our friends and loved ones.
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That, increasingly, is what the Information Age is all about. Instead of bringing those of us who live in faraway places together, technology is in fact creating huge obstacles to human communication. We place a phone call and can no longer get a person to talk to at the other end without an effort that drives many phone users to distraction. We try to use the Internet help services and find only prewritten answers to so-called frequently asked questions. No thought is given to the actual question asked.
Technology is used more to isolate those holding information from those who want it. We pay lip service to the idea that information is more easily available when in fact it is being concealed.
I’m sure that all of us, whether hard-core computer users or not, have by now suffered the frustration of trying to get some helpful information. Instead of the service that used to be available in the days when living human beings picked up a telephone, we receive anything from the press-a-key response to the computerized voice-mail robot that tells you the person you want to talk to is not in but if you leave a message your call will be returned.
Sometimes the call is returned, not necessarily by the person you called but by a surrogate. Sometimes the message is answered, not specifically but with a prewritten response designed to deal with key words in the query.
Why do I dwell on this? The news business is falling victim to the same advances in technology that have taken over in other industries dealing with the public. Unless this is understood and dealt with, the news business will not form the better connections with the public necessary to survive healthily. The tools and techniques marketed to bring the public and those who serve it closer together now in fact build obstacles that the public finds hard to breach.
Why dwell on a matter that does not seem directly related to the news business?
The most important challenge facing the news business these days is developing a stronger relationship with the public it serves. The Information Age does not make the public more interested in news although it does create a thirst for information. Most often it is information not related to news, current affairs or the editorial content of any particular media outlet.
News organizations have developed methods apparently intended to involve the public in news business activities. News-papers give a reporter’s e-mail address at the end of an article. Radio and television establish talk shows in which correspondents answer questions from the public. The problem is that most of the techniques contain little opportunity for members of the public to establish a dialogue with practitioners that would help give the news business a better idea of what the public really needs.
If there is a key problem in the Information Age these days, it is that too much of the data flows in one direction. And so the public remains untapped as a good source of what it wants and needs.
If you agree, press one.
If you disagree, press two.
If you would like to discuss this further, person to person, my phone number is 1-573-884-1599 in Columbia, Mo., and my personal e-mail, with no pre-formatted replies, is loorys@missouri.edu. And, yes, I look forward to talking to you about this and any problems affecting the news business that are on your mind in Ljubljana at the next IPI World Congress or whenever we might meet elsewhere.
Thank you for your time. Goodbye.
Stuart H. Loory
Stuart H. Loory, an international journalist, is Lee Hills Chair in Free-Press Studies at the Missouri School of Journalism and editor of Global Journalist. Loory worked for TBS/CNN from October 1980 to March 1997 as CNN vice president and Washington managing editor, Moscow correspondent, and executive producer, among other positions. Before joining TBS/CNN, Loory spent 28 years in the newspaper business. Among his positions were Moscow bureau chief for the New York Herald Tribune and White House correspondent for the Los Angeles Times during the last years of Lyndon Johnson and the first two of Richard Nixon. He was a member of the Nixon enemies list. He was later managing editor of the Chicago Sun Times where he supervised several award-winning investigative reporting series.