No News is Good News
How should a news addict react to a moment in time when the news seems mostly bad and increasingly overwhelming? I’m asking for a friend. It could be temporary, but ratings and anecdotal accounts suggest some people are tuning out. Here’s Ginia Bellafante in the NYT (Gift Article): The Liberal New Yorkers Who Say They’re Tuning Out the News. “These were high-information voters who mainlined political coverage through every available 21st- century platform; a month ago they would have been able to give you the over-under on statehouse races in rural Ohio. But now they questioned whether consuming so much news was good for them, whether it was really a civic virtue or something to be fought like any other addiction.” (Does one limiting news intake even read an article about tuning out the news? Those are the kinds of questions one asks to avoid the very real conundrum he faces.) Believe it or not, I’ve always advised readers to do as I say not as I do and try to be informed without being overwhelmed. As I wrote in my book, breaking news is breaking us. News notifications in particular benefit no one except the senders:
“The notion that you need to know about world events right when they happen is a marketing creation of media brands. And yet, those news stories mingle in the same lock screen with the personal reminders and calls from your mom. The stuff that has something to do with you is now almost impossible to distinguish from the stuff that doesn’t. Trust me, that news alert can wait until later. Like most things on the internet, it can wait until never. You’re not Batman. You’re not going to do anything about the news alerts, so they can wait. As a general rule, you don’t need to be immediately notified of any breaking news that’s happening more than about eighteen feet from where you are right now. At most, your alerts should only cover your locality. Even Bruce Wayne only covers Gotham.”
(There’s a big difference between being informed and being inundated. There’s really no point in spending all day swimming in content that distresses and depresses you. Especially when you still have me to do that…)
+ Susan Glasser in The New Yorker: “Donald Trump has already so thoroughly owned the news cycle that I’m not sure anyone even recalls that Joe Biden is still President … One of the themes of this year’s campaign was the apparent mass amnesia among many Americans of just what the Trump Presidency was like. Every day since Trump won has been a crash course in remembering: the cryptic all-caps social-media posts at all hours, containing major government announcements; the erratic decision-making that stuns even his most senior advisers; the casual shattering of norms, rules, and traditions, any one of which would have provoked days of controversy for another politician. Scandals were endemic to the first Trump Presidency. But this many? In just the first two weeks of an incoming Administration? No, there is no precedent.” Benjamin Franklin famously described America as “a republic, if you can keep it.” These days it feels more like “a republic, if you can take it.”)
