During my “Black Women’s Voices” elective my junior year of high school, my teacher had us take an online quiz on areyoupressworthy.com (alas, the website is no longer active). The premise was that we would answer a bunch of different questions regarding our race, gender, socioeconomic status, etc., and from the given information, the quiz would calculate how much coverage we would receive if we went missing.
Six. If I ever go missing, I am worth six stories. While one of my closest friends, who is a white woman, is worth a whopping 120 stories. My existence and all aspects of my identity had been quantified into a fraction of someone else’s humanity. And according to the news industry, that fraction was the entirety of my worth. I am not “newsworthy.”
News intake is not only about what is reported, but also about what is not reported.
Even if we go beyond the realm of missing persons stories and into journalism as a whole, there is an ingrained problem regarding selective visibility in the news. The industry expends so much time and many resources on stories they deem “buzzworthy,” “breaking-news” or “controversial,” while the stories that don’t fit into those classifications in the minds of these editors-in-chief are thrown to the side.
Currently, the front page of The Washington Post mentions “Trump” 20 times. But if you want to know that Texas judges can now refuse to perform same-sex marriages, you have to tune into Fox 4 News Dallas-Fort Worth.
Exactly one minute after Charlie Kirk was killed in Utah, a 911 call reached responders in Colorado because a 16-year-old student opened fire at Evergreen High School, shooting two of his fellow students and then himself. While national news publications — even The Observer — published piece after article after op-ed about his death, the unfortunate aftermath of the gruesome school shooting did not garner the same attention.
“Trump” is a name that guarantees clicks and engagement. Journalism has created a way to monetize outrage through polarizing content; what better way to practice that model than through a man who thrives on division. Any think piece on Charlie Kirk ensures a TikTok analysis, a redundant Twitter thread and a Truth Social rant. The media has perfected a system of leveraging the people’s tendency to react to spectacles, not suffering. Spectacles provide us an almost movie-like narrative: a villain, a hero, a twist, an emotional payoff. It is digestible in a way suffering is not.
But changes to marriage rights or yet another deadly instance of gun violence are just as significant. What must a missing person or school shooting or law-change do to be considered “newsworthy” enough?
When the news cycle is defined by what is loudest rather than what is most important, we develop a distorted sense of reality. We learn to underestimate systemic threats that disproportionately impact marginalized groups while simultaneously overestimating stories designed to enrage, inflame and distract. That is not to say that pieces about Trump or Charlie Kirk are unimportant but rather that public attention is steered toward some lives and away from others.
So, I implore you to take the time to read your local newspaper. Even further, go to the second page! News does not become more important because it is more visible. We owe it to both ourselves and our society to engage — to simply engage with the pleasures and horrors around us. The world does not end with the front page news.
Sophia Lekeufack is a freshman from Boyds, Md. currently living in Lyons Hall. When she's not studying political science or crying doing her Program of Liberal Studies readings, you can find her crocheting, walking or playing BS. You can contact Sophia at slekeufa@nd.edu
