Fox News’ John Roberts sheds light on how to let viewers down easy
By Hayley DeSilva
When the pandemic first broke out in 2020, our eyes were glued to our screens.
Trying to get whatever information we could, trying to predict the unpredictable, trying to figure out ways to keep ourselves and loved ones safe.
Soon after, we saw a summer filled with violence after the murder of George Floyd sparked civil unrest across the country. Up next, a highly controversial election that had us all on the edge.
As we all know, so much more has happened since. Currently, we find ourselves in the wake of another horrendous mass shooting in Uvalde, TX–and all the news that comes with it.
Simply said, the past two years have hardly been a time of ‘good news.’
The New York Times published a study last year that revealed U.S. media had the most negative coverage of Covid-19 compared to any other source, such as scientific journals or international publications.
The study found that this was true across all national networks, from MSNBC to Fox News.
For so long, everywhere we turn, there is something new to punch us in the stomach.
As a journalist, you get paid to readily receive and dissect those low blows.
While many in our country have been encouraged to limit their news intake for their mental health, those in our profession can’t afford that luxury.
So, in the midst of trying to make sense of the seemingly endless atrocities happening all over the world, how can we do better for our audiences? How do we give them the information they need without sending them into turmoil?
John Roberts, co-anchor of ‘America Reports’ on Fox News and a former senior national correspondent for CNN, believes that it comes down to providing more context.
“Myself and Sandra, and our team for America Reports, try to give people added value, context and perspective on whatever the big story is,” Roberts said. “So, it’s not just, ‘Oh, here’s the horrible news.’ It’s, ‘Here’s what the news is now. What does it mean to you? What can be done about it? How do we change things?’”
Roberts further believes that viewers broadening their media horizons, so to speak, can be another way to avoid being inundated by negativity.
“In this day and age when people have access to so many different streams of information, awareness is becoming more and more important…You need to be able to take a look at something whether it’s online or whether it’s a report from somewhere or wherever you get the information and compare that to other things that you have heard otherwise,” Roberts said. “It’s very easy for you to get drawn down a rabbit hole. So, the broader your platform of information is, the better able you are to have an understanding of where you sit in the universe and what’s really going on in that universe.”
But journalists don’t have to go down that rabbit hole either, according to Roberts.
“Just like anybody who deals with a lot of data, whether they be a stock trader, or whether they be the CFO of the company, they’re being inundated by figures every day,” Roberts said.
What he suggests is that we do our best at compartmentalizing our information, focusing on one subject at a time.
“If you’re trying to grasp everything all at once, you can feel overwhelmed, but if you put it in silos or buckets…it’s much easier to digest and focus on and much easier to compartmentalize,” Roberts said.
One of the authors in the Covid-19 media coverage study, Bruce Sacerdote of Dartmouth University, shared that the issue wasn’t with accuracy, the negative things being reported were true. The issue, he believed, was with what facts were being emphasized.
Perhaps, if we can keep ourselves from feeling overloaded by the news of the day, we won’t feel the need to over-emphasize. Maybe if we try to see the whole picture, good and bad, our audience can too.
-30-