‘Office’ by Jaehoon Lee

I, too, was outraged when I heard about yet another school mass shooting. This was getting way out of hand! How many mass shootings have occurred in the United States? How is this even acceptable? How can we let this outrageous trend become a norm?

Frustrated, I began my research with Google, as many people would. I typed “school mass shootings 2018” in the Google search bar. Then, as accurately predicted by an SEO or any online marketer, I clicked on the very first link from the massive search result.

It was an article from CNN titled “There has been, on average, 1 school shooting every week this year”.

“This is getting really serious,” I thought to myself as I clicked the article. It was really shocking to hear that “there has been, on average, 1 school shooting every week this year”. How could we let this happen?

The article, however, turned out to be misleading. These so-called “journalists” included an incident involving a BB gun (still dangerous, but not a real firearm) as well as other smaller incidents just to get their argument across. Professional journalists are well aware that most individuals will scroll through these articles and only read the headlines. They understand that these articles will get shared and spread like a California wildfire. They understand that these clickbait articles will further isolate individuals on both sides of the US political spectrum. Yet, they have decided to type up a very misleading title. They must not realize that their actions are further widening the gap between the Democrats and Republicans. Or, they must tell themselves that it is okay because Fox News does it. But who cares?

Regardless of their justification, the nation becomes further divided as a result of the journalists’ decisions. Individuals become more defensive toward their opinions. No one is really listening anymore. The solution is out there, but everyone is only looking inside for a solution.

Many professionals get shunned if they make a critical mistake in their field. A surgeon with many malpractice lawsuits will find himself/herself looking for another hospital. A restaurateur who fails to produce good food will be bombarded with one-star reviews on Yelp. A marketer who fails to attract additional traffic for the clients will lose the majority of his/her clients. On the contrary, journalists are often rewarded by producing borderline “fake-but-kinda-true articles.”

In this day and age, journalists who produce pathetic (referring to emotions, pathos) articles are rewarded with more public attention. Such increase in exposure gives them a platform to thrust themselves even closer to the ever-wanted national fame. This, in the end, gives the pathos-centric journalists an additional leverage to make more money (by selling books, asking for a raise, giving a talk… you name it). Why wouldn’t a professional journalist set aside their integrity to gain fame, a wider platform, and more money? After all, the rules of the game, as depicted above, reward journalists who can walk the fine line between truth and perception. It is those who ignore the rules of the game who get punished the most: journalists who maintain their professional integrity.

There is an article written by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker back in 2015. The article, titled “Thresholds of Violence,” analyzes the current trend of school mass shooting using the theory of Granovetter’s progression. Readers of the article can get a glimpse of Granovetter’s theory:

Social processes are driven by our thresholds — which he defined as the number of people who need to be doing some activity before we agree to join them.

The association between Granovetter’s theory and the school shooting trend is quite straightforward. Students with a “higher threshold,” who would have otherwise not participated in school shootings, are now more encouraged to continue with their maniacal mass shooting plans. This article and theory hold more validity now than ever before. I would encourage the readers to read the article.

I only mention this article since Granovetter’s theory can also be applied to the current trend in the world of professional journalism. As journalists with “lower threshold” abandon their integrity, other journalists with “higher threshold” will begin to abandon theirs as well. Now we have a situation where journalists “no longer need to be deeply disturbed to contemplate” their action of publishing these borderline false articles.

All issues, regardless of their severity, require a degree of cooperation. Without cooperation, minor issues can become major, and major issues can become berserk. The trend of publishing clickbait articles is further parting our nation apart. Bipartisan cooperation seems to be no longer a viable option. Without cooperation and with Granovetter’s Progression occurring in journalism, the future seems much darker than we can all imagine.

While I do not blame the consumers for this trend, we, as consumers, need to hold the journalists accountable. Send them a letter, stop reading their articles, and participate in forums. We can still turn things around.