America’s Obsession with News: What These Search Trends Say About Us
Let’s discuss news, if you don’t mind—it’s the modern world’s lifeblood, or so we are told. We’ve been trained to believe that staying “informed” is a sign of adult responsibility. But if you pry apart the shiny exterior of journalistic integrity and look at what Americans are really taking in, things start to look really interesting. And by interesting, I mean hilarious and deeply concerning. Thanks to this infographic, we now have a clear look at the most searched-for news sites in every state across the nation.
Let’s tackle the obvious problem head-on: the 2005 artifact taking up space in various states. That place is called Yahoo News. In a time when nearly every bit of information feels like it exists at the very tips of our fingers, a site that seems to barely scrape together the look and feel of something resembling the current century is somehow winning the battle for our attention across multiple states. What does this say about us? Perhaps it’s saying that we can’t resist a look back, an invitation to retreat into a past nonetheless ruled by much-clicked-upon headlines partially shrouded in the delightful miasma of some unfathomable number of ads for, yes, car insurance.
The fact that states such as Alaska, Nevada, and Oregon maintain a firm foothold for Yahoo reveals something really interesting and kind of disturbing: In these parts of the country, people don’t seem to care much about the sort of journalism that has a long lead time and a big pay-off in terms of social good. You know, the kind of journalism that doesn’t always pay for itself but ought to. People in these states seem to prefer news that requires, quite literally, no effort at all.
America wouldn’t be polar, right or left, without a little political back and forth, would it? CNN and Fox News vie for audiences all across the map. Like, and unlike, all good borderlines, from sea to shining sea, there is a space where CNN and Fox News are preeminent—and both are overlapping more and more in the districts of our imagination. It’s not new news to say that we’re as ideologically segmented as we are in part because we have a vested interest in being ideologically segmented.
To be perfectly frank, you don’t visit CNN to get a fair-and-balanced perspective on any given issue, just as you don’t surf over to Fox News to get your beliefs challenged. These are not news operations in the sense of doing what used to be the first job of a newsroom, which is to tell the public what it needs to know. These are sites where you go to learn what you already know, only said more forcefully. And in going there, you contribute to the kind of society we now have, where half of us can’t comprehend why the other half sees the world as it does.
Seeing the HuffPost still exerting influence in 2024 is akin to seeing a VHS tape for sale at Best Buy. Yet here it is, making waves in places like Maryland, where it is as good as the law for forecasting the end of the republic. This tells me a couple of things: Some folks really get off on being lectured. And the demand for pieces as absurdly narrow in focus and unappealingly “woke” as those that the HuffPost serves up is alive and well. Indeed, with the “relevance” that the HuffPost purports to have, its very existence seems on some level to also be a shade insidious.
As anticipated, The New York Times reigns in media-saturated locations such as New York City. That’s uncontroversial. Meanwhile, The Guardian and the BBC have established footholds in regions like California and within the nation’s capital. This might appear to be an illustration of interstate rivalry among U.S. media. However, it’s something else—a manifestation of the international media’s reach and influence within the continental U.S. Certain demographics appear to be quite content with the international media’s take on the issues of the day.
This infographic truly underscores America’s preference for convenience. Appearing on it, along with several other platforms, is Google News, and with good reason. Google News is the world’s most popular news app, with roughly 120 million users who access it either directly or indirectly—in some cases, through Smart Displays. And despite what some people might think, often indeed for good reason, Google News does a pretty good job of serving its users.
The blunt reality is that we are now a society lazily consuming news. The outlets we seek aren’t selected on the merit of their doing-stellar, how-they-should news work. We go to the places we go in order to soak up the sort of unfussy, pre-digested, and, yes, just plain dishwater-spattered, assuming-thought-matters kind of news that we’re now divining as our American way.
This is a significant issue. Citizens cannot function democratically if they are not properly informed. And even worse, if they are misinformed. Yet, we seem to have arrived at the point where it is almost an arbitrary right to seek out, and only to seek out, interpretations of events that we already agree with or to interpret those events in a way that could only be pleasing if we already agreed with it.
What is the remedy? For one, we must cease treating information as if it were an on-demand servings of news, fit only for the quick consumer in a society that demands everything at fast-forward speed. We must prize deep thinking instead of our current supercilious contempt for it, and value slow, even labored, journalism that favors the story’s substance over the alluring surface of its headline.
Ultimately, this infographic is not merely a representation of search trends. It is a looking glass. And the image it imparts? We might as well say that it lacks beauty.
