Why watch the news
Paddy Morgan investigates why the general public is watching more traditional news during Covid19in 2020
Pandemic
Our life were turned upside down in March 2020. The outbreak of corona virus hit Ireland and restrictions were put in place with everybody being told to stay at home. Since March 2020 due to the pandemic we started to get obsessed with national news. It shows that Covid-19 had a big impact on the viewers of the traditional news. The figures rose significantly by more people tuning in for daily figures and statements from former Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar. TV News stations are getting great mileage out of corona virus, this story takes up half of a news bulletin.
Watching figures
In May 2020 RTE reported that 600,000 watched the Six One News each evening. Also in May 2020 BBC reported that 4 million people tuned into the six o clock news. Sharon Tobin from RTE said “the latest figures that people listening to news on TV and Radio has grown during the pandemic.” It is shocking that more people are either watching or listening to more news now just because there is a pandemic. In my opinion the reason that News figures have increased because people are at home now when each news is on where as they wouldn’t be normally with been in work or doing social things.
Live TV
News on every hour
There seems to be news on at least one channel each hour in the day. In my opinion I’m only noticing it more because I’m watching more live TV now with been at home more. If you watch news on one channel then look at another channel with news on you start to question yourself about the truth in stories. In my opinion they have to cut back on their news bulletins to provide more accurate information. I do understand that the general public are reading more news online than watching it so this could be why there exaggerate stories to get more people watching it.
Survey’s
A survey on BBC explaining that 75% of people watching news are over the age of 40. A poll in 2016 on RTE explaining that only 36% of the public believe that news was true. Sharon Tobin from RTE also said “audience were up for most media news organisations on the public tuning into trusted news sources.” The public have more time on their hands now and are watching various news channels like tuning into 5:30 news on Virgin Media One then also looking at Six One news on RTE and it gets a bit confusing. Older people in general are more reliable in watching news than younger people because they have more free time during each day than under 25s.
Mobile phone’s
people turning into phone junkies. In the last 5 years people can’t go 1 minute without looking at their phone. Since then all news can be viewed online. Everybody has either a smart phone now or an iPad. This has put an negative impact on traditional news. There has even been an increase in younger people downloading news apps onto their phones. This is turning young people away from watching, reading or listening to traditional news. Only for elections or outbreaks traditional news figures would be way down and they need a radical change in how each news is presented.
This information was in a report published on childwise website and it could be viewed from January 2020. The report stated 53% of young people have their own mobile phones by the age of seven. Most teenagers spend about 3hours and 20 minutes each day on their phone messaging, playing games and been online. 39% of the teenagers said they could not live without their phones. Sharon Tobin also said “news organisations are using multi- platforms to deliver their service to younger people.” This is worrying because in years to come you won’t be able to have a conversation in person, people will be dug into their phones so much. It is good that news stations like RTE have an online platform but I think that people are either reading that or logging onto their social media account rather watching their live version. This could be one of the reasons why young people are using their phones so much rather than tuning into live TV.
Newspapers
Since 2010 every newspaper company have online versions. Since then less people are buying newspapers on a daily basis. Newspaper companies had to keep up with the rapid increase of technology in the last 5 years. Reading a newspaper is a life skill you pick up and I feel this could be missed in years to come with so many apps and devices out there.
In 2019 according to newsbrandsireland 3 million people in Ireland were reading online versions of newspaper rather than print. In 2017 a survey on statistics in Holland showed that 65% of people interviewed rather read a paper online than in hand version where as in 2019 the figure decreased to 47%.