THE NEWS READABILITY PROBLEM

Abstract

The low readability of news has often been attributed to production and format features, such as deadline pressures and news story organizational features. This study, however, puts the blame elsewhere. News stories written by nine high-profile journalists and later revealed as deceptive were more readable and contained more direct quotations (another readability indicator) than authentic stories generated by the same news organizations. Because the stories were written under similar production and format conditions, these findings indicate that low readability is due to the challenge of journalism to convey information only about the real world. Not so constrained, deceptive “news” portrays a simpler world.

Keywords:

• deception
• ethics
• journalism
• plagiarism
• readability
• writing

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the students in the second author's graduate seminar in content analysis, Fall 2005 and Fall 2006 semesters; students in the second author's undergraduate mass communication theory course, Fall 2006 semester; and students in Paula Poindexter's undergraduate mass communication theory course, Fall 2005 semester, for help collecting story samples and/or generating data used in this study.

Notes

1. For a review of the psychological factors affecting perception, attention and retention, see Severin and Tankard (2001, pp. 73–90).

2. For additional information about the reporters, news organizations and stories analyzed here, please contact the first author.

3. Although the stories analyzed here were considered “deceptive,” no claim is made that the authors of these stories intended to deceive. Also, the label “authentic” news is not meant to imply that these stories are necessarily accurate and fair but only that to the time of study they had not been recognized as deceptive.