“… the newspapers fetches you the troubles of everybody all over the world, and keeps you downhearted and dismal most all the time, and it’s such a heavy load for a person.”
– Tom Sawyer Abroad
Having worked in the news business, I rarely get my fill of knowing what’s happening in the world, but there are times when it indeed can be “a heavy load.”
These days, I seem to hear more frequently that people are feeling weighed down by the news. Given the content of reports about terrorism and killer viruses, that’s not surprising, but I think it also has to do with the pervasiveness of news in our culture. No longer do we find out what’s happening from a daily newspaper dropped on our doorstep or through a single evening television newscast. Now, thanks to 24-hour cable news and the Internet, we have little time to digest anything we hear and see. A multiplicity of voices constantly beckons, teases, and even demands: “Wait till you hear“ and “You’ve got to see this.”
Response to this glut of information and imagery seems to take two forms: We can’t get enough or we can’t take it. Some love being continually connected to TV news or the Internet, often to the distress of those who live with them. Others take the opposite view, receiving only a minimum of news, if any, and staying focused on the immediacy of their own lives, either because they have enough bad stuff to deal with on a personal level, or because they want nothing to interfere with their state of blissful oblivion.
Given my own appetite for news and tendency to vacillate between extremes, I’d like to propose a middle ground in hopes of encouraging people to be aware of what’s going on while still maintaining some semblance of peace. After all, it’s true that we can handle only so much, but we also have a responsibility to know what is happening in our world and to respond as we are able.
To stay informed without losing our peace of mind, it’s good to be aware of how news is packaged today and why even a steady diet of it is not only unsettling, but doesn’t necessarily guarantee an accurate or complete view of what’s going on in the world.
First, news is not only omnipresent, but highly visual and presented in a way that bombards us with images, trivia, and sound that often take precedence over substantive content. Before you turn on the TV or look at your computer, remember that you are about to enter a highly stimulating zone in which a discordant multitude of rapidly moving pictures and noise will be competing for your attention. On TV, images will be jousting with voices, music, and the news crawl at the bottom of the screen. On the web, advertisements will pop up in the middle of news stories, forcing you to decide whether you want to shoe shop, keep reading about the Ebola crisis, check out the links in the text, or go to a related story. All this is hardly calming.
News is also coming to us from sources other than news organizations as Twitter, Facebook, and email have become vehicles for sharing news and rumors of the latest political scandal, environmental threat, or constitutional crisis. Most of us could spend hours reading what comes from these alternative sources, especially if we belong to interest groups and have friends who post stories on social media or send them to their email contacts.
So before jumping into the roiling sea of news and information, we need to brace ourselves and think about why we’re going in. Is it stimulation we seek or do we know where we’re going and what we hope to find?
Ask yourself what you really need to know about the place you live and the issues and people you care about and where you can best get that information. Find a few sources you trust and stick to those. If you lean toward a particular point of view, add a source representing the opposition to your mix, for the sake of balance, keeping in mind that no presentation of news is going to be completely objective.
Then, consider before clicking if what you are about to read or view is something you’ve defined as a priority in your life or if you’re about to waste your time on gossip or frivolity.
Remember, too, that even when reading about priority topics, there is a risk of over-consuming. Recently, I was caught up in an email exchange with friends who shared my concern about an international news story. We busily forwarded links to each other as we speculated as to what it all meant. By the end of the day, I was weary, as was one of my friends, who wrote: “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting burned out about this whole thing. I could spend entire days reading and reading all the current news about what’s going on, but I am limiting myself. I find that it does me no good, and often makes me restless and anxious. It’s like the nightly news. Some info is important to know in regard to what is going on, but the rest just gets rehashed.”
When something big is happening, many of us have a tendency to watch and read nonstop. At some point, though, as my friend said, we are hearing little that is new and only recycled opinion and fact. That’s the time to take a break.
As for when to consume news, each person has to find his or her own schedule and establish some limits. At our house, we watch a local TV newscast in the morning long enough to get the weather, knowing that the news content is likely to be short and shallow on substance and long and deep on anchor chatter and the latest from the sports and entertainment worlds. Apart from one cable TV news show we watch weekly, we have pretty much abandoned all but occasional TV news programming and instead read news sites online along with two national newspapers that come to our house. We also try to leave the Internet at least two hours before bedtime.
When the news is disturbing, instead of dwelling on it or fleeing, it can help to take some action. Call a legislator, write a letter to the editor, post a civil comment on a website, donate to a charitable cause, or find a way to share what you deem important with others, perhaps allaying fears and correcting misinformation. People of faith also can pray. As the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, who was very much in tune with the news of his day, wrote in his journal in 1960, “It is simply a time that I must pray intently for the needs of the whole world and not be concerned with other, seemingly ‘more effective’ forms of action. For me, prayer comes first, the other forms of action follow, if they have their place. And they no doubt do to some extent.”*
*From A Year with Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations from His Journals
QuietKeepers 
Thank you for identifying what so many of us are experiencing and some great suggestions for dealing with the news onslaught–especially prayer!!
You are most welcome! I think we all are struggling with this together these days. Perhaps we can help one another.
I love this post. I cut my news consumption by 90% in the last few years and saw a real, positive change in my moods and fear level. I really think we need more posts like this, reminding us of the effects of overdoing it with the news, and also reminding us of what’s accurate and helpful, and what’s addictive hype. Bravo for writing this!
Thank you, Lauren, for affirming the observations in this post and especially for your example of cutting back on news consumption!
Like you, I go from one extreme to the other in terms of how much “news” I consume. After 9/11 I developed a habit of watching cable news every day, sometimes for hours at a time. (I think it was rooted in fear of what was going to happen next.) I continued to do that for years afterward, until I realized what it was doing to me — it wasn’t adding anything of value to my life but was, rather, detracting from it.
In recent years I’ve cut way back, and now don’t watch cable news much at all. Until tonight I had NBC Nightly News set to record on my DVR and most nights I actually watched it. But after reading this post I deleted that recording and am going to redouble my efforts to find just a few trusted news sources where I can READ the news rather than be fed opinions and hyperbole by talking heads who are often chosen for their looks or their ability to stir up drama and increase advertising revenue for their employers.
I’ve always found it difficult to find the right balance — one where I’m an informed citizen but not overwhelmed by things that don’t really matter to my life. It’s a constant battle in these days of information overload, isn’t it? Thanks for writing this, Judy.
It’s nice to know someone else vacillates between extremes, Kim! Your decision to seek out some trusted print sources sounds like a good one and certainly resonates. I agree, too, that finding a balance is a constant battle in this age of information. It’s good to realize that we’re not alone in it. Thanks for sharing your experience.
Fine writing as always! I read a book a few years ago titled “how the news makes us dumb”. The constant jumps between Ebola and Miley Cyrus’s latest antics leads to a disconnected, uncentered life. I think one of the reasons I resort to books in addition to prayer and scripture is that they come out of long, deliberate thought. But I wrestle with the constant “news bites” on social media feeds and the nightly news. Thanks for naming this reality of modern life that we must discern and keep in its place.
Great comment, Bob! I think you are quite right about the jumpiness of media leaving us disconnected and uncentered. And I’ve always thought, too, that books and other forms of print are to be preferred because they invite us to engage and participate more than television, which allows us to remain passive. Thanks for your thoughtful words and for expanding on the post.