What is this human obsession called the News?
Let’s be honest. Do we really need to fill our daily lives with the latest in buffoonery and posturing from global politicians, shrill commentary from all manner of outraged experts, massive deluges of facts and figures meant to distort and overwhelm us, assorted infotainment to distract us from the real issues, voyeuristic views of the dramas and disasters from distant parts of the world, and the mindless gossip surrounding the antics of yet another attention-seeking celebrity? Aren’t our own life struggles and those of the people surrounding us far more relevant than any headline? Isn’t the news just avoidance and distraction, a daily ritual for boredom, and a form of schadenfreude?
The world is equal parts good and bad, but on balance it is a quiet, safe place to live. If this were not true, we would not make it past a year of living. Yet, more than 90% of all news headlines are negative, and stalk us like a frantic lunatic. Any outlet that tries to balance the stories with calm, positive news quickly finds out that their readership plummets. We like reading about disasters and bad people alone. Yet, that is not a representation of reality. Voluntarily exposing ourselves to a biased view of the world distorts our perceptions and generates anxiety, with consequences to our health and wellbeing. There is no justification to voluntarily participate in such a ridiculous and harmful exercise.
A protest now rises up in the inveterate news consumer.
We are global citizens, aren’t we? Don’t we need to stay informed and educated about world issues? Sure, there’s some terrible news outlets out there, but there’s some good sources right? Also, I am very selective and intelligent in what I read – I don’t click on click-baity headlines, I balance my views with a variety of sources, I weigh the arguments carefully – so what’s wrong with my daily news habit?
Yes, Maybe, No, and Everything.
Imagine that as you leave your house one day, a stranger grabs a hold of your arm and pours into your ears an utterly heartbreaking story about her dear old grandmother who broke her hip after a fall and had to be hospitalized despite her protests and all the trouble it has been to keep her there. You are a bit taken aback about being ambushed like this first thing in the morning, but you still listen out of respect, and you find yourself feeling for her. The next day the stranger spots you again and now you hear that she has clear evidence that one of the nurses in the hospital is being abusive towards the old lady in her sedated state. The sordid tale fills you with helpless outrage. A day later you see the stranger and inquire how things are, and find out that grandma is not doing well. To compound things, her dementia has worsened from being bedridden, and she can’t recognize the faces of her own visiting grandchildren. You are left saddened and unable to focus on your own day. Only, the stranger is a chronic liar and psychopath, and she pulls this stunt on everyone in the neighborhood every morning, assaulting them unbidden with her tall tales.
We voluntarily let the news do this to us every day. We exhaust our empathy on empty screens riling us up with some geo-political drama while we step right past a homeless person without as much as a nod of acknowledgement. The news industry is well aware that the two most reliable emotional triggers that drive views and clicks for their stories are outrage and fear. Hence, aside from the odd marketing piece disguised as infotainment or advertainment, every headline that is turned out in the news must reliably do one of those two things to us – anger us, or scare us. With the rise of internet news and social media platforms for their distribution, everyone’s emotional buttons can now be pressed by sophisticated algorithms that remember every click and view, every demonstrated preference, and keep learning (with the individual’s own willing cooperation, plus their closest friends and family pitching in too) exactly how to trigger maximum outrage and fear. If our news consists mostly of trigger headlines, which it undoubtedly does, then its consumption is a pathology.
People were once very physically aware beings, in touch with their bodies, and finely attuned to their environment. They did not wake up and check the news for instructions on what to think and how to feel. Today, we consult the media as if it is an oracle, and we have no idea what to think of the world and what is good for us without being told what to think of it. When we reflexively check the news and feel reassured by the info binge, it may be an automatic anxiety management system at play, which is another way of saying it is an addiction.
Oh, but some will argue that while they do check the news periodically, they’re not like all the other gullible folks. They cut through all the crap and go straight for the serious stuff, solid reporting that is fact-checked and from reputable sources. No fake news.
There is no need to call some news fake and some not. Facts whether true or not are a distraction from the real fraud going on. All news stories pull off a massive deception via agenda setting. They pick the headlines, topics that we did not choose, and then present all manner of opinions on it to create a semblance of balance. When a politician says or does something controversial, the papers instantly fill up with headlines on both sides of the fence, debating whether he is right or wrong, but they never talk about why we are obsessively analyzing every idiotic utterance from the narcissists that we elect into power. Which is another way of saying, they never talk about how we ended up with a world where every day we waste the public’s precious awareness budget and swamp it with a flood of floating trash. The biggest issues hide under the information deluge. Take for instance the constant drumbeat of debates between Republicans and Democrats in the US media. This distracts us from the fact that we are stuck with a duopoly where both parties hog our attention and hold power equally, one on account of being in office and the other on account of being the opposition. Similarities are far greater than any differences between them. Together, they squeeze out any third ideas and parties from ever taking root. No surprise, no matter which party reigns, problems persist. They’re just taking turns to fuck the public.
The news is not a charity. It is a business, every single outlet out there. Content is free, so something else must be being bought and sold. This is true even for outlets with paid subscription business models, which is simply a facade chosen to assume an air of fairness and unbiased respectability. We pay them in the precious currency of attention, over vast chunks of our lives. Our eyeballs and our brains are the commodities up for grabs. In return, the news media pour in commercial junk and mass opinion-formation for their clients. Sounds like a win-win, doesn’t it? The news is in the disinformation and distraction business. And it is all perfectly legal. Nobody goes to jail for it.
The news, tales of mind-control told in three main themes: mindless trivia, disaster porn, and info propaganda
Half a century ago in the United States, there were 50 dominant media corporations. Today there are 5 left. These five conglomerates own about 90 percent of the media in the United States, including newspapers, magazines, book publishers, motion picture studios and radio and television stations. As of 2020, the five media giants are AT&T (Time Warner, CNN, HBO), Comcast (NBC Universal, Telemundo, Universal Pictures), Disney (ABC, ESPN, Pixar, Marvel Studios), News Corp (Fox News, Wall Street Journal, New York Post) and ViacomCBS (CBS, Paramount Pictures). These five aren’t competitors – they have dozens upon dozens of shared directors on their board and hundreds of joint venture projects. It is not a coincidence that one can reliably find coverage of the exact same issues in every media outlet, day in and day out. The real news is what they leave out, what they don’t talk about. And the news industry consolidation is global.
The share of news companies owned by private equity increased from 5% to 25% in the last twenty years. Essentially, this means that what might have once been centers of journalism are now just mercenary outlets for hire, with aims ranging from pushing propaganda to commercialism. If one includes the ownership stake of large financial corporations, almost all of the news industry is controlled by those whose interest is not in providing us with unbiased information, but in making us the product and influencing our minds. And what about those public news channels, which enjoy a reputation of fairness and untouchability because they are public and publicly funded? Well, the donors list consist mostly of charitable foundations funded by the usual suspects, corporate donors. Which is another way of them saying, let’s influence some people, people.
Imagine a test. A personal experiment. We turn off all the ways that the news gets to us, for a day or two, a week, a month, maybe longer. We find that we do not turn into useless, uninformed, unopinionated humans. If anything, freed of clutter and somebody else’s agendas, the senses come alive. We talk to people instead – all sorts of people – with curiosity, and without judgement about which side of the fence they are on and what opinions they carry. We hear what they are paying attention to in the world, via the media of course. So we still get the news, but filtered through people. We hear the essence of what excites and bothers them. We connect with them more deeply than if we had simply read some packaged opinion and came ready to battle with facts. Chances are, we become a lot less anxious, with more balanced and unbiased views, and are able to hold the tension of ideas and opinions that we may not agree with. Ultimately, and paradoxically, we grow more connected with our world. Isn’t that an experiment worth trying, to find out what kind of human beings we are without the news being inside of us?
The news is mostly not good, but no news is great.
