I never expected I would have to give serious consideration to that question.
I grew up in the newspaper business; my father spent most of his adult life working as an editor and occasional writer for a daily newspaper. I earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism, attended journalism graduate school, taught a few college-level classes in reporting and news photography, worked as a reporter and photographer for five daily newspapers, and freelanced for several magazines and a number of other newspapers, including (just twice) the New York Times.
I've spent my life paying reasonably close attention to local, state, national, and international news. It has been my belief that every American needs to be aware of what's happening around them and might be affecting them soon. To me, awareness of the news is a key component of being both a good citizen and an effective defender of American democracy.
Before the previous President's election, however, the media business already was caught in a deadly maelstrom. People were canceling paid newspaper and magazine subscriptions left and right and choosing to focus on free information and misinformation from the Internet. The numbers of TV viewers also were declining, further impacting local and national advertising revenues. Printing presses were being replaced by websites. And many very good journalists, editors, columnists, and others lost their jobs and benefits when media owners rushed to cut costs and base paychecks on clicks, likes, retweets, comments, new subscribers gained, and other dubious benchmarks.
--Photo by Si Dunn
"Click-bait journalism" was well-entrenched even before the previous President rolled into the White House atop a turbulent wave of misinformation, conspiracy theories, real conspiracies, voter misinformation, election interference, and dark money from foreign and domestic sources. Click-bait media burst into roaring flames during that Administration's chaotic reign. Now, American journalism has access to a more open, calm, and earnest White House. And a wide world of untold, ignored, yet vital topics can be seen just beyond the edges of the glaring spotlights. Unfortunately, the media still seems to be trying to beat up each other and survive on "gotcha!" moments rather than serious journalism. Today's reporters keep playing amateur table tennis with the ongoing political, social, and economic chaos. Then they try to jockey for attention and "viral moments" by shouting incomprehensible, unanswerable, or merely inane questions during press conferences, sudden encounters with vapid celebrities, or the "perp walks" of recently arrested suspects.
"If it bleeds, it leads" is a famous old saying about newspaper front pages and their tendencies to focus on death, mayhem, and destruction. The saying remains alive in today's media even after many well-known newspapers have folded over the past decade or so. For example, the local TV news station I sometimes watch uses NBC's irritating "Breaking News" format: "Tonight, the world is on the brink of possible nuclear holocaust, but there's a two-alarm fire happening right now at a laundromat on the south side of town. Let's go now to our news crew at the scene. What's happening, Ingrid? Well, Jack, eyewitnesses tell us a bra, two pairs of jeans, and several T-shirts somehow burst into flames in a dryer. And one customer suffered minor injuries when she tried to put out the flames with a can of hair spray. We're still waiting to get comments from fire investigators on the scene."
When the pandemic hit and America went into lockdown, we were left with the risk of complete overexposure to our nation's 24-hour news cycle: breaking news every minute; breaking scandal every second; "fake" news every millisecond; and COVID death counts rising incessantly everywhere, faster than a speeding paid obituary. "But hey, multibillionaire rapper Bigggg Duhhh has just released a new album and a new clothing line and bought himself a second Lear jet. He's already nicknamed it King Leer."
The movie Don't Look Up makes very clear what condition our current news-consumption condition is in: essentially on a respirator and possibly brain-dead. Much of today's news media continues to focus too heavily on the District of Columbia, New York City, and Los Angeles/Hollywood and offer up heavy doses of attention-craving, shock-value output aimed at grabbing attention and more advertising revenue. And many Americans, especially in "flyover country," seem no longer to care what's happening in the world beyond their focus of shopping and "getting back to normal." Never mind that "normal" is gone and already has been replaced by several failed "new normals."
Breaking. This leads up to some news of my own: I've begun reading a book that I nearly dismissed out of hand: Stop Reading the News, by Rolf Dobelli, author of The Art of Thinking Clearly and other works. Stop Reading the News bills itself as "A Manifesto for a Happier, Calmer and Wiser Life."
Dobelli contends: "The moment you open yourself up to the torrent of news, your ability to concentrate will be swept away by the current. News will make a shallow thinker of you. Worse still, it will have a negative impact on your memory."
Essentially, he advocates avoiding almost all news media outlets and going directly to the websites of the sources, to see what various organizations, agencies, and experts have posted--before their information and conclusions got scrambled and remixed by click-bait journalists, columnists, editorial writers, and news presenters. All I can say is, I have tried recently to watch White House news conferences and network coverage of numerous other news events. What I have seen and heard has left me angry at the shallowness and pettiness of many reporters and news commentators supposedly "covering" the news. Indeed, I have cut down my consumption of news via the Internet recently. And I have almost quit paying any attention to network and local TV news broadcasts (except for weather reports).
Do I feel "happier, calmer, and wiser"? Yes, for the moment. Can I please see another funny animal video on YouTube? But once a news junkie, always a news junkie, I suspect. At some point in the future, likely a few seconds from now, I will again wonder what's happening in the world--and to the world.
--Si Dunn