I'm No Longer Watching the News

It doesn't make you smarter.

Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007) makes the analogy of our constant state of media terror to electric shock therapy. The Disaster Capitalism Complex, as she dubs it, is the big business of profiting from public disaster. Fear is a strong emotion and there’s plenty of money to be made while peddling it. Given the state of biased journalism, I’m not even sure if watching the news makes you smarter.

  My decision to stop watching the news has nothing to do with a desire to be uninformed. It’s the contrary.  When I was a kid I wanted to be an Anthropologist. Yes, an anthropologist. In fact, I was dorky enough to beg my mother to buy me a tape recorder. Already ancient technology as of the year 2000. 

Photo by Fernando Lavin on Unsplash

     She insisted that I wouldn’t use it but she was absolutely wrong. Curiosity killed the cat but satisfaction brought her back. Instead of asking my parents “why?” I had the power to discover for myself.

     As you could imagine, there weren’t many people eager to be interviewed by a four-year-old. I had to make do with what I could. A slightly older smart-ass kid on the plane going back from a family trip in San Diego. He made sure to let me know that there were absolutely no girl dinosaurs. Next was my Jehova’s Witness Great Grandmother who only a few months earlier was quite sure the world would shut down due to the computers changing over. It was cool that she stocked up on toilet paper, though. As I got older I interviewed the minority of first-generation immigrant kids in my school about their other cultures. 

    That little black box represented an intersection of both of my passions, technology and an insatiable quest for knowledge.   As I got older that tape recorder turned into high-speed internet, and I became quickly addicted. Message boards with crazy people, chatrooms, and entire web pages around niche fandoms were only a few clicks away.

I made a habit of checking the news every day because it was so easy, and a few clicks away. Most important, it was my duty as a good American to be up on the news. People who didn’t watch the news weren’t informed. They were low-class and they were a part of the problem. Smart people watch the news.

 I’m a glutton for knowledge and the internet gave me endless power. Like the tape recorder, I could review knowledge in front of me and decipher it for myself.  Like whether God was real or drugs were that bad. 

Apps like Citizen or Flipboard, have access to a constant stream of updates about all the things I should be afraid of in my community. I don’t even have to read a 1,000-word article because the title is sexy enough to gain my attention. Go to your favorite news site. Yes, right now. The stories will follow as so: shootings, terrorist attacks, war, economic turmoil, and rape. These headlines don’t energize me to take action. They paralyze me with fear. This shock is so strong that I feel helpless to even take any real action at all. That’s a problem.

Some may think that not watching the news makes you privileged. I would argue that having the bandwidth to keep up with the emotionally draining daily dramas of the greater society is a privilege within itself.

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

From last week on I am consuming news in long-form, well-researched media. I’ll read books and keep myself educated. However, I try to avoid news sites’ notifications and clickbait as much as I can. I unfollowed depressing subreddits.

This may not alleviate all my anxieties but at least I’ll have pertinent information to make my own decisions. I researched for tomorrow’s California primary election and plan to continue organizing within my community. I’d like to take real action without the feelings of powerlessness. I remember my great-grandma, afraid and alone with a mountain of toilet paper. So dedicated to anxiety surrounding the future that she didn’t live much life. Between fear and life, I’ll always pick life.