The24-hour news cycle (or24/7 news cycle) is the 24-hour investigation andreporting of news, concomitant with fast-pacedlifestyles. The vast news resources available in recent decades have increased competition for audience and advertiser attention, prompting media providers to deliver the latest news in the most compelling manner in order to remain ahead of competitors. Television, radio, print, online andmobile app news media all have many suppliers that want to be relevant to their audiences and deliver news first.
A completenews cycle consists of the media reporting on some event, followed by the media reporting on public and other reactions to the earlier reports. The advent of 24-hour cable andsatellite television news channels and, in more recent times, of news sources on theWorld Wide Web (includingblogs), considerably shortened this process.
Althoughall-news radio operated for decades earlier, the 24-hour news cycle arrived with the advent ofcable television channels dedicated to news[1] and brought about a much faster pace of news production with an increased demand for stories that could be presented as continual news with constant updating. This was a contrast with the day-by-day pace of the news cycle of printeddaily newspapers.[2] A high premium on faster reporting would see a further increase with the advent ofonline news.[3]
In 2015,Time magazine noted that the 1995O. J. Simpson murder case was a significant early example of the 24-hour news cycle.[4]
According to former journalistsBill Kovach andTom Rosenstiel, 24-hour news creates wild competition among media organizations foraudience share.[5] This, coupled with theprofit demand of their corporate ownership, has led to a decline injournalistic standards.[5] In their bookWarp Speed: America in the Age of Mixed Media, they write that "the press has moved towardsensationalism,entertainment, andopinion" and away from traditional values ofverification,proportion,relevance, depth, and quality of interpretation.[5] They fear these values will be replaced by a "journalism of assertion" which de-emphasizes whether a claim isvalid and encourages putting a claim into thearena of public discussion as quickly as possible.[5]
