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The Burglar Alarm That Just Keeps Ringing: A Response to Zaller

It is hard to disagree with John Zaller’s rhetorical formulation of two news standards: the useful “burglar alarm” that alerts busy citizens to important events in their public lives, versus the needlessly demanding Full News standard that issues detailed reports on matters of little consequence. Surely none could argue with the sensible burglar alarm or advocate the stultifying absurdity of the Full News standard when they are contrasted like this: “the news should provide information in the manner of attention-getting ‘burglar alarms’ about acute problems, rather than ‘police patrols’ over vast areas that pose no immediate problems.” The trouble with this new standard for news is that, when specified more fully, it turns out to be a nearly perfect account of what the news is already doing. Yet, Zaller implies that the news is currently turning off citizens because it still clings to the progressive-era notion of the full standard—patrolling vast areas that pose no immediate problems. In fact, the trouble with news is precisely the opposite. What has happened to the news in the past twenty years is that it has shifted in the direction of soft news and sensationalism, resulting in the continual sounding of burglar alarms on any number of issues—often just because they are shocking—and turning citizens off in the bargain. In short, the argument that Zaller offers to endorse his standard is almost perfectly backwards. The news, in fact, is sounding burglar alarms all the time. This incessant ringing of alarms about dubious problems, unseemly scandals, and daily threats to health and safety discourages citizens from taking the press, politicians, and public life seriously. For example, Patterson shows that people who have left the news arena in recent years do so not because news is covering too much barren ground, but because it is too negative, sensational, and alarming (Patterson, 2000). Beyond this fundamental flaw in the reasoning behind the burglar alarm standard, there are several core problems with the argument that take it away from its opening and fairly agreeable—but rhetorically loaded—formulation and into far less compelling terrain. The first problem develops from my opening point: Nearly all of Zaller’s examples of ideal, burglar alarm news involve news practices that already exist. The trouble is that a large volume of this alarming news is regarded by citizens, scholars, and journalists as