Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Coping With Depressing News

On the verge of paralyzing journalism induced depression, Clyde and I have gone on a news diet.

World events seem more depressing than usual lately. For a time of year that media outlets usually feature shark attacks because there's not much else going on, we seem now to be bombarded with news of unthinkable violence.

We no longer want to be constantly upset about Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, and Missouri, just to name a few. Al Jazeera and BBC no longer play on our TV all day. When you take in the same depressing stories multiple times in an endless 24 hour news cycle, it starts to get to you. Research shows that watching the same traumatic footage over and over affects you as if it were happening multiple times, even though it really only happens  once.

Instead of watching the endless looping on cable news networks, I'm getting information about world events  mostly through public radio where repeating footage is minimal. The Daily Show and Colbert Report round out how informed I am, if they're not on break. I catch the local TV news occasionally, but there isn't much information there, unless you want lots of weather and local crime.

I used to get a daily newspaper. It came to my front step early in the morning and kept me well informed without the disturbing video overload. I read the articles one time, occasional cutting out the ones I wanted to send to friends - sort of an old fashioned way of sending a link, and then added the leftovers to the recycling bin. I was fairly well informed during those years. But like many people, I quit taking the paper when the price went up and the quality went down, a victim of electronic media.

In spite of information overload, it's harder now to be informed than it used to be. Studies show that with so many news sources these days, people usually only pay attention to the ones which reinforce their world view. In other words, we no longer learn anything from news outlets. We just get our existing opinions reinforced. This is why the Republicans and Democrats in Congress and elsewhere are moving further and further apart.

We should know what's going on in the world. Informed citizens make for intelligent voters.

Do you value being informed? How do you digest information in the 24 hour news cycle? How are you coping with the summer's endless stream of bad news? Just leave a comment, here or on Facebook. I'll follow up in a future BillsWeek.