TOEFL® essay sample: News editors decide what to broadcast on television...

[Dadimo]

Thanks to whoever will give me a piece of advice or some help,

Davide

News editors decide what to broadcast on television and what to print in
newspapers. What factors do you think influence these decisions? Do we
become used to bad news? Would it be better if more good news was
reported?

"To make news magazines, newspapers and TV programmes must present the most interesting und incredible stories, no matter how desperate, cruel and ominous they might be, the only goal of news editors is to give to the public what it needs the most: facts and characters to think over and over. But a question arises: is there a limit to the amount of bad news that an editor is disposed to release?

From the point of view of an editor, it is clear what the answer would be: the only limit is the audience's choice. Whenever a story or certain people are widely read and asked for, there is nothing that can prevent a good editor from letting published everything about it: it is the law of the market. Conscientious editors are very rare and the system is run according just to economical purposes.

Anyway, it is also true that people get used very swiftly to bad news, so no wonder that good news are not taken in as much account as bad ones. Nevertheless, it should be a duty of responsible information editors to take up the task of reducing the amount of low-quality, otherwise called junk, editing and broadcasting. It is indeed demeaning to think of the audience as a greedy creature seeking only for blood and gossip, not onsidering young people and kids who are the most sensitive, thus to defend and protect.

To sum up, it is hard to conceive broadcasting and editing systems freed from bad news, but a containment of the latter could be regarded as an economically sustainable and significant target to reach for the sake of our kids.

TOEFL listening lectures: A university lecture by a professor of American History