I admit it. Sometimes I avoid the news. I do not just fail to check it. I actively and strenuously avoid it. Why am I flouting what many once considered to be a hallmark of an educated citizen?
Too often the news plunges me into cynicism – not just the news itself but how it is presented. So many news articles are not news at all. They are just reports on what people said to each other. A recent CNN headline was, “Trump Blasts Gotcha Question.” The formula is: one person says something confrontational, and another person says something confrontational back. Each comment gets its own article with a headline trumpeting the polarizing remark. It reminds me of how in elementary school kids would get adrenaline rushes from verbal sparring, which went something like this:
\”Oooh, did you hear what she just said? Amy called Monica a cow to her face!”
“To her face? No way! What did she say?”
“She called Amy a skinny snob!”
“Oooh, low blow! What did Amy say?”
\”She said yo mama looks like a giraffe in a tutu!”
Do I need to go on? Scanning headlines transports me back to the third grade, only many news sources like CNN pass off childish name-calling as intellectual discourse. Talking heads appear on video discussing why a politician might have said what he said, which, broken down, is the spiritual equivalent of “Yo mama.”
“Now did he go too far in saying ‘yo mama’ and what exactly did he mean, and how might that, and especially the tutu reference, affect him at the polls in November?”
Not all of the news is name-calling. There is “respectable” news if you are patient enough to look for it, stories about Isis or what the Russian prime minister did, or the latest images of Pluto taken by NASA. And of course, there are murders. So. Many. Murders.
One of the main problems of taking a break from listening to the news is that I get behind on all the murders. There are so many of them, senseless tragedies that upend my day and leave me contemplating the savagery of human nature. They rise before my eyes as I try to write and make my stomach swoon. I would like to avoid anything that interferes with my digestive stability or my concentration in writing.
But getting behind on the murders can be embarrassing if a year later, someone you are with brings one up. “Remember, it was super grisly. Two guys, killed their parents with a bicycle spoke?”
“Er, yes, of course I remember.” Although murder illiteracy can be embarrassing, it does seem a little strange that I should feel civically responsible for keeping up with them.
Another factor that makes going to news websites unpleasant is visual splatter. Each headline seems to be screaming for attention, from the latest celebrity breast augmentation to a new “study” on weight loss. There are banners and ads, garish digital billboards inviting you to click, click, click.
But part of my dissatisfaction with reading news is personal. I am a writer and in the news there are no stories in a classical sense, not like fiction, which has a beginning, middle, and end. The news comes in fragments, thin layers of broken ice hiding depths of reality underneath.
Reading news stories is unfulfilling. I always think, there is more to this, and I feel like I should spend hours studying the history of, say, Afghanistan so that I can gain a full understanding of the reported events.
In college I won the department award for history, but studying a history textbook was more satisfying than reading the news. A history textbook has elements of fiction. Whether biased or objective, a historian makes the effort to give a “back story” for wars and revolutions. Effects have causes. Effects become causes of new effects. There are plots, struggles, and resolutions. A history, as the name suggests, is a story.
Though a story is an artificial construct that distorts reality, reading isolated news events does not satisfy my longing for order the way fiction or a textbook does. I recently wondered how other people deal with the information overload full of “studies,” random murders, governmental proclamations, and incendiary comments from politicians.
It came to me that many people who follow the news carefully impose their own order onto the events, creating their own stories to give the fragments meaning.
Some consult the news either to see if their party or religion is “winning.” They cheer if their team has done something right or successful and boo when the opposing team has done something to offend. There is nothing like getting offended by something the other side has done to make you love your team all the more.
I know this first-hand. When George W. Bush was in office, I followed the news more faithfully than I ever had in my life. I perversely enjoyed getting mad at George W. Bush. He was like a brilliantly drawn “love-to-hate” character in a movie. Everything he did was deeply disturbing in a way that made me feel alive. I went to the news every day thinking, “What did he do this time and what will he do next?” Or “How long until civilization ends due to his irrational and ill-informed decisions?”
It is because I understand first-hand the psychology of partisanship that I feel cynical when I see headlines obviously designed to incite political knee-jerk responses. There was a time when keeping up with the news was considered the hallmark of a responsible, educated citizen. It is hard to see that as being true in an age of click bait media, gaudy banner ads, and trollish comment threads.
Maybe avoiding the news altogether is an extreme act. I feel like it is not okay for me to drop out altogether. Can a democracy survive without an informed electorate? On the other hand, do I have to dig through endless articles of celebrity gossip and chest-thumping political provocations in order to be responsibly informed? Sorting through intellectual garbage consumes precious moments of my life in which I could be doing something I really enjoy.
There are times I need a break from the gabbling noise, the shocking headlines, the impassioned editorials, the roster of grisly murders, and the incessant debating that rarely ever goes anywhere.
I long to retreat into an intellectual hermitage to write or read fiction, with the only sounds being the purring of my cat or the quaint, distant sound of a train whistle.
Sometimes the news seems too much like the noise of a lot of gossipy, mama-bashing, insult-hurling third graders, and it is nice to block them out and enjoy, without distraction or apology, the company of my own thoughts.
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