As a former journalist, I have watched with great interest the evolution of the news into a medium that gave people a view of the wider world once or twice day into a technological Hydra that is as disturbing as it is exploitive and distorting. Media in America was never as virtuous as it often pretended to be or without it’s many agendas, but it had an ethic of service and caution and balance and it often permitted us to understand the world. We talked often about our responsibility to answer questions as well as raise them, to resolve arguments as well as promote them. And, for all the shouting, many of us cared deeply about the power of truth and the importance of fact.
In the past decade or two the news has become a disturbing and personal, psychological and spiritual challenge for each of us. It is frightening, disturbing, it promotes anger and division. Cable news has become a social and pathological cancer, closing the American minds to understanding and change, shutting the angry and narrow-minded into their intellectual cells – the “left” and the “right.” My friend Pam White, who is a spiritual counselor, raised this question about watching the news on her blog – blogs now perhaps the only place where you can ponder this issue – she said one of her spiritual advisers advises people to avoid the news, it is so unhealthy and aspiritual. Pam is not comfortable with that idea, she wants to know what is happening in the world.
Me, too. If you watch the news regularly, it is easy to forget that there are good people in the world, peaceful places, wonderful news and beautiful things. I believe it is imperative to come to an individual understanding about watching the news, in order to be peaceful, safe, healthy, and to have anything approaching a spiritual center.
I don’t think there is a black-and-white answer about watching the news, there is not one solution for all. We are all different, we all need to find our own way. In the past 30 years, almost all mainstream media has been corporatized, which means the primary ethos of journalism is to make money and reach the greatest numbers of people. The people on the “right” are trying to make money off of our fears and concerns, so are the people on the “left.” It is not about principle.
Cable news channels have become fear and anger machines, dividing the country, promoting rigid and enraged discord 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They have poisoned our democracy and tainted the well of civic discourse, all for money. They are a disgrace.
New technologies have made it nearly impossible for us to avoid this perverted idea of “news” – we are bombarded with awful images – shootings, beheadings, wars, fires, natural catastrophes, bitter argument and anger – all day every day, on our computers, at screens on gas pumps, in our smartphones and tablets. Bad news is in the air we breathe.
I have tried to be thoughtful and careful in my approaching to this new news, it can undo so much good, love and peace of mind.
– I understand that this news is “their” news,” it is not the whole story of the world, it is not my story. Their news is generally the most lurid, disturbing and sensational information that can be seen or heard, gathered to appeal to the lowest and most elemental emotions of manipulable people. The world has a lot of awful things happening right now, but this is by no means the worst or most dangerous the world has seen, historians will tell you that in many important ways, the earth is safer and healthier and more tolerant than it has ever been. If you think the earth is on fire, consider 1939, a conflagration that killed nearly 100 million people over years, the earth was truly on fire.
We didn’t used to see only the bad news, and we didn’t have to see and hear it 100 times a day, an evolution that is disturbing to the psyches of people, it promotes both anger and fear almost continuously.
An older friend down the road told me recently it was less disturbing to read the awful news of World War II every day for years than it is to turn on the television for five minutes today.
Modern news depend on presenting a product that is both frightening and disturbing – there is a lot money in it, as cable and weather channels learned some years ago. And we are a capitalist culture, we have become a Corporate Nation. There is really no other ethos or ethic involved than profit and loss.
– I do not wish to avoid all of the news in the world, like my friend Pam, I want to have a sense of the wider world. And this is the challenge, it takes some work to find news that is real and true and which actually informs rather than argues or condemns. I can’t just push a button and take what they give me. Once or twice a week I will check into publications, sites and sources that are less about screaming and argument and more about perspective and known truth. They can be disturbing, but they can also be grounding and informative. It is a very different experience to read an account of an honest journalist than some idiotic screaming anchor on television. It feels very different.
I never watch cable news, any media that promotes the idea of their being only two ways to look at the world, or news organizations that rely on horrific imagery to sell information.
– I make my own news. I look for the delight and wonder in the world every day. I try and take beautiful photos every day, talk to my animals for perspective and balance – they do not need bad news all day to survive, they do not need to argue and judge. I seek out the company of my friends, take a walk with Maria, read a beautiful book, listen to Roy Orbison or Van Morrison or Bonnie Raitt. I meditate, walk in nature, and celebrate the really big stories – births of children, I cleanse myself in the joy of creativity, poems and paintings and mindful thoughts from places my like Creative Group At Bedlam Farm on Facebook. I read Thomas Merton or the Dalai Lama or a poem by Mary Oliver. I cook a good and healthy meal, walk up a hill to celebrate my refurbished and pre-owned heart. I kiss my donkey on the nose, herd sheep with Red.
I will watch the news from time to time, I do not wish to disconnect from the world around me, it is not a good thing for a writer to. I will remember always that this is one narrow prism through which the world is seen, one often distorted for profit and gain. I will not succumb to anger or fear, ever. I have been on that path, it leads to nowhere. We all have to live with the news and watch it in our own day. We do not have to live in their news and watch and hear it all day.
Like all of you, I am confronted with change every day, and what I have learned is that I can accept and embrace change, but I will never become a prisoner of it. Ultimately, I am responsible for the news I watch. I make my own news.