[The Editors' Verdict] 'News Avoidance' Is a More Urgent Issue Than Leaving Portals

The proposition that "people do not watch the news" has often been cited as an example of the crisis facing the media. However, this is now an outdated notion. It is not that people do not watch the news, but rather that they are avoiding it. Just as one would avoid stepping on dog poop by taking a detour, people are deliberately steering clear of the news. This is the so-called phenomenon of "news avoidance." According to the "2023 Digital News Report" published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 67% of Koreans reported experiencing news avoidance (based on 2002 data). Although this was slightly lower than the average of 69% among surveyed countries that year, the rate of increase in news avoidance has been rapidly rising year after year.

There are various reasons for news avoidance. These include anger caused by delayed justice regarding crime and immorality, depression when hearing only about others living well while one struggles daily, and irritation when encountering fake or false information rather than real news. There is also criticism that NEWS is no longer about new information. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, said on October 4 last year on X (formerly Twitter), "I hardly read news produced by legacy media." He added, "What’s the point of reading a 1,000-word article about something that was already posted on X days ago?"

[Image source=Pixabay]

Changes are also being detected in Korea’s abnormal situation where news was overconsumed through the "national platform" of portals. The proportion of people who check news via internet portal sites has recently dropped to its lowest level in the past seven years. According to the "2023 Media Audience Survey" report recently published by the Korea Press Foundation, 69.6% of respondents said they had used portal sites or search engines such as Naver, Daum, or Google to access news in the past week. This is the first time since the survey began in 2017 that the percentage of people using portals for news has fallen below 70%.

The group that should most painfully accept the spread of news avoidance is the news providers themselves. In the above-mentioned "2023 Media Audience" survey, when asked to rate the seriousness of domestic media problems on a 5-point scale, "clickbait articles" and "biased articles" scored the highest at 3.83 points. Abusive articles (3.82) and false/manipulated information (fake news, 3.80) followed closely behind.

This year, the media must continue to self-discipline while persuading readers who avoid the news. As CEO Musk pointed out, it is undeniable that certain facts and information can be produced and distributed faster through channels other than traditional media outlets. However, this alone does not entirely negate the existence and significance of legacy media.

Information pouring in from all directions and from everyone is fragmented and scattered. It is closer to a "mass of text and images" than to news. When encountering information, legacy media strives to verify its source and authenticity. They seek context and analyze the before and after of the information to reconstruct fragmented information in a multidimensional way. It is precisely because of these efforts that content which could be conveyed in 20 characters on social media ends up exceeding 1,000 characters in legacy media. This is why news is still necessary in the "age of news avoidance."

Kim Dong-pyo, Head of Content Editing Team 2

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.