With so many newsworthy events to learn about, such as updates on the upcoming presidential election or the progression of the impeachment proceedings, who really has the time or desire to waste precious minutes of their lives reading about someone quitting their job? Social media is a main offender in this sense as clickbait titles still attract quite a few clicks due to shear interest. The chances of an article delivering on its catchy title are not very high when it comes to certain types of online publications.
Case in point – in a recent incident a producer on a TV show side hugged a fellow employee. She felt uncomfortable and brought up to HR, requesting he complete a sensitivity training. The producer willingly complied. She said she’s happy with the outcome. The end. A wrong social media headline could ruin a person’s reputation as many people use these titles as a form of news rather than looking deeper into the actual article.
A story like this probably should not get any attention but editorial calendars have to be filled up. Without newsworthy events happening it is up to the social media department to intrigue followers to maintain healthy website traffic numbers. There are so many noteworthy events going on globally that media outlets are failing to cover. Social media has shown immense unrest in Hong Kong but international news that has a confusing background can be difficult to generate attractive headlines for.
With all of the human rights violations and people that need help around the globe, the media is doing a disservice to the public by not covering these important stories. The lives of many people in the public eye are ruined and their credibility questioned due to these bogus headlines created then shared on social media. In this age of information, the fact that more in-depth fact-driven news is not produced is truly a shame.
A person complying with training and then a person eventually leaving a studio is nothing that denotes newsworthiness. This sort of thing happens every day in HR departments around the world. What would be news is if the person refused to do the training, but this is not the case at all. This is your basic HR success story, which happens at every company, every day. Thousands of people sharing this on social media can lead to a media whirlwind that completely is unjustified for the situation.
The aspect of this story that also needs to be discussed is CBS is a media outlet which is extremely profitable as well as a competitive industry. The fact-checkers that tend to hound certain stories seem to be very lenient when it comes to facts in a story about an executive at a rival media juggernaut.
With all of this being said news should cover some less important and serious topics. Large political events both domestically and globally should not be the only events covered in our news cycle. Social media and online media publications need to have more credibility which starts with covering real news.
The consumer wants to engage with content they enjoy on social media and possibly have a conversation with someone with similar interests. The consumer is also flooded with content as ever before so they need to be pickier with what they spend their time reading. Social media and media outlets can/should do better as certain publications are beginning to be seen as spam rather than a legitimate news source.
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