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Food for Thought in These Tough Times. [1]
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Date: 2022-07-12
I came across a thoughtful article in the opinion section of this morning’s Washington Post, The title of the piece was, “I stopped reading the news. Is the problem me-or the product?”, by journalist Amanda Ripley, www.washingtonpost.com/... She confesses that even though she has been a journalist for two decades, she has avoided reading the news for years. She notes;
“But half a dozen years ago, something changed. The news started to get under my skin. After my morning reading, I felt so drained that I couldn’t write — or do anything creative. I’d listen to “Morning Edition” and feel lethargic, unmotivated, and the day had barely begun.”
Ripley states that her other journalist friends were avoiding reading or watching the news. She details how;
“The problem is, I wasn’t taking action. The dismay was paralyzing. It’s not like I was reading about yet another school shooting and then firing off an email to my member of Congress. No, I’d read too many stories about the dysfunction in Congress to think that would matter. All individual action felt pointless once I was done reading the news. Mostly, I was just marinating in despair.”
She notes how the US has one of the highest news-avoidance rates in the world. Something like 4 in 10 Americans avoids the news. She states surveys show how powerless people feel in the wake of relentlessly negative and dispiriting news. One example she cites is:
”Last December, the New York Times published an ambitious multimedia project called “Postcards from a World on Fire,” chronicling how climate change has altered life in 193 countries. It led with a graphic of the Earth in flames, spinning in space, and the words, “Cities swallowed by dust. Human history drowned by the sea.” I kid you not. This was a well-intentioned effort, but it was simply not designed for humans. I don’t know what species it would work for, but it’s not one I’m familiar with.”
She details that there are several ingredients missing in today’s news that make its present content so unappealing. One is a sense of hope. The second, and closely related, is the sense that collective action can make any difference (she calls it a sense of agency). And the third thing she cites is a lack of “dignity” which Ripley defines as treating the audience like they matter and listening to their feedback.
Ripley asserts that there is a way to communicate bad news that sparks both anger and action, hope alongside fear.
”A better theory of change...might be something like: “The world will get better when people understand problems, threats and challenges, and what their best options are to make progress.” ...have now trained over 25,000 journalists to do high-quality solutions stories all over the world.”
I work as a freelance journalist and am certainly not in favor of the pollyanna approach of glossing over serious problems. But I think Ripley has a point about how the grindingly negative news coverage turns off the public while downplaying constructive solutions. Would be interested in the community’s thoughts.
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