Network news viewership is down dramatically, from 60 percent who said they regularly watched in 1993 to 41 percent today. The conventional explanation is that Americans can now afford to be bored with the news. The cold war is over and the economy is booming. But the boredom is obviously selective. The relentless overplaying of the Albert story is surely an indicator of changes in news judgment.
Reeves is probably right about the growing avoidance of complexity.
Few of us have the time or the patience to unravel stories that can't be told simply. This includes journalists. Hillary Clinton's health plan was so complex that many reporters didn't bother to study it in depth. One result is that a devastating New Republic article on the plan won a major press award and got the author, Elizabeth McCaughey, elected as lieutenant governor of New York. Yet many analysts, perhaps most, now think McCaughey's article was totally wrongheaded.