“You are young yet, my friend,” replied my host, “but the time will arrive when you will learn to judge for yourself of what is going on in the world, without trusting to the gossip of others. Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.” --Edgar Allen Poe, 1845
I just can’t get enough of the news. Been a news junkie from when I was old enough to read, an omnivorous consumer of all things current events.
As a newspaper boy in my tweens and teens I’d sit most mornings in my driveway as the sun came up, after having delivered sixty copies of the daily broadsheet that reported in my part of the world. Then I’d read about it all, cover to cover, starting with the comics and ending with the obituaries. In college, I’d pick up a copy of the New York Times every day and sit in the coffee shop at the state university I called home, gulping a supersized cup of coffee, making my way through it, trusting in that newspaper’s motto: “All the news that’s fit to print.” At that same school I became a working journalist, writing a weekly newspaper column on politics and culture, something I still do to this day, more than forty years later.
Oh…I also listen to public radio at home and in the car and on my ear buds as I walk, for three or four hours a day, tuning in to the news and talks show and interviews. Then there’s the internet, this news addict’s dream come true! With a click or tap, I can enter an endless black hole of news, commentary, photos, blogs, essays, whatever floats my boat in pursuit of what is going on in the world right now.
But lately? I’ve kind of had it with the news.
Maybe I get too much news or what seems to pass for the news. I’m exhausted by the news, angry at the news, confused by the news and overwhelmed by the news. I hear the same thing from friends and family, from readers too. News malaise that comes from the intense times we live in. When we go to our favorite news site or turn on the six o’clock news or hear the “ding!” of another news notification on our phones, so much of the news is well...just bad news. Hard news. We’ve got another COVID variant to deal with or more politics as blood sport, or someplace burning up or some hero’s fall from grace.
Or we turn to the news and it’s not really news, just the facts. Just answering who, what, where, when and how. Instead, so much news is commentary. Not news but a politician putting spin on an event, so they look good, and their opponent looks bad. Or there’s “gotcha!” news, journalists waiting to pounce on their victims, to catch them somehow and make them look bad.
Or news is tailored to what we want to believe about the world. Conservatives watch Fox News. Liberals watch MSNBC. Republicans lap up Sean Hannity and Democrats worship at the altar of Rachel Maddow. Donkeys read the Times and Elephants The Wall Street Journal. Then we get to see, read, and hear the news we want to see, read, and hear. We get the version of the news that reinforces our biases. It’s not really news. It’s more like indoctrination.
We are living in an amazing time for journalism, for news gathering and news consumption. We have access to more news, more quickly, more easily, more freely and more readily than at any time in history. Yet we trust the news less than ever before. According to a June 2021 poll of some 90,000 people, taken by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, when asked, “Do you trust most news most of the time?” the United States ranks dead last out of 46 countries. Only 26 percent of us say that we trust the people and institutions who report the news. That’s much lower than other democracies like Finland (65 percent), or the Netherlands (59 percent); even lower than countries that don’t have the freest of news media, like Hong Kong and Poland.
But enough with the bad news about news. Is there good news about the news?
We can be always more discerning in what news we consume and trust—or not. It does amaze me how many folks get their news from Facebook or Twitter. Maybe those are not the best of outlets—just saying. Even though I am critical of the media I am also grateful to the media for holding government and other powerful institutions accountable. For a journalist standing up at a press conference and challenging the powers that be to tell the truth. I’m thankful for a First Amendment that protects journalists, allows them to take on the corrupt and the violent and the despots. I don’t live in China or Russia: there news is myth, and journalists regularly go to jail for telling the truth.
The greatest news about all the news is that I can turn off the phone, the laptop, the radio, the TV and just take a break. Take a long walk with a friend. Take a deep breath on a cold winter’s day and feel alive. Be thankful to the God who made me and this beautiful and broken place we call home. The good news is that Creation is still here, and we are still here and if we are still breathing there is always, ALWAYS hope for a better tomorrow and a better world.
Happy news consuming my friends. And when it comes to the news…may we all be wise. Be smart. Be questioning. Be informed. Be aware.
That’s the news!
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