The Perils of Pack Reporting

Alicia Mundy, writing in MediaWeek, compared reporters engaged in pack reporting to "seagulls [jumping] on a french fry and pecking it to death." Though at first the comparison seems strange, since frying kills even the hardiest potatoes, it still rings quite true. Like birds pecking at junk food, the journalistic pack feasts on the greasy mass of an often manufactured story, unconcerned that the scraps aren't worth the effort and contain little substance. All that matters is keeping up with the feeding frenzy of the moment.

The pack mentality among news gatherers persists despite frequent, eloquent criticism. No one likes pack journalism, and few would admit to practicing it. Pack journalism leaves the news-hungry public misinformed or poorly informed about important developments in their communities and around the world, since "the news of the day is concerned with trivia."

The mammoth resources of media empires concentrate on whether former President Clinton had an extra-marital affair, or worry that a telegenic 6-year-old Cuban boy in the country illegally could be sent home to his father. While these stories deserve coverage, it's hard to see how the public is served by providing up-to-the-second minutiae on subjects of little consequence to most viewers while ignoring big-picture issues that affect everyone's lives.

One somewhat valid argument holds that it's not the public being served by commercial media - it's the media owners, who count on readers and viewers drawn by these broadly appealing, titillating stories to boost profits. While the practice works out well for them, the problem of pack journalism goes deeper. The very structure of American-style "objective" journalism leaves the press open to pack tendencies. Furthermore, these tendencies are easily exploited by special interests, meaning that the public can not only be misinformed, but misinformed in line with a certain agenda.