EXTRA! EXTRA! News Junkie Burns Out On The News!!!!!!

“…remember that the news is always trying to make you scared. It’s bad for us, but very good for news organizations: the easiest way to get an audience is through frightening people.”--Allain de Botton, author "The News: A Users Manual"

I love, LOVE, the news.

Reading it. Seeing it. Hearing it. Writing about it.

What happened in the world in the last twenty-four hours and now with instantaneous reporting, what happened in the world in the last twenty-four seconds. Print, video, radio or online, I’m not picky. I’m journalistically omnivorous. I got hooked on the news fifty years ago at the family breakfast table where I’d read the comics, and then the sports in the morning newspaper. Doonesbury, and Bloom County and then the Boston Red Sox and last night’s box score. 

I’ve been a working journalist for most of the past forty years, have written upwards of 1,500 newspaper columns and essays like this one. Edited my college newspaper too. And now I consume more news than ever before in my life, as do most Americans in 2022. News is so close, just a swipe, a tap, a click away.

From first thing in the morning, news on my laptop with my coffee, then news on the radio in my kitchen and car, then checking my phone for the news every few hours, then day’s end when I take a quick peak at the news online before I go to bed. I am ruled by the news and my hunger to stay informed. To not miss anything. By the myth, that if only I have enough information about the world, maybe I can better control it somehow. Sound familiar?

But no more for me. No more news addiction. I’m done. I’m burnt out on the news.

I’ve reached a breaking point in my love affair with all things newsy. Maybe you have too.  I’ve been trying to figure out why my religious devotion to being up to date about current events has gone lukewarm, if not downright cold. I once so looked forward to the headlines and felt proud to work in the media. But not so much anymore.   

I connect this change in my attitude to the 2016 Presidential election, the most negative, most verbally violent, downright craziest and most vile contest I’ve ever seen. From then to now the news has slowly but surely lost its luster for me. It no longer informs nor amuses nor enlightens me as it once did. I know many folks who feel this way. Know that far too often, news just depresses us now. Scares us. Makes us anxious. Its negativity can even carry over into my day and color how I am feeling about life. As a person charged in my work to embody and to preach hope, the news too often right now is more about hopelessness. Even despair.

Is the news really all bad, so much bluer, and bleaker than ever before?

I don’t think so. Every generation is beset by great challenge, every era, be it 2022, 1982 or 1962 or 1942. Each of those times faced the worst of humanity and the best of humankind too. So, now we’ve got the war in Ukraine and COVID and inflation and an election filled with stupid, rhetoric and candidates. And we’ve also got amazing vaccines and near cures for cancer, and less people in poverty and hungry around the world than ever before in history.

The news is good, and the news is bad as it has always been.   

What’s changed is how the news is packaged, sold, slanted, presented, and fed to the masses. Conservatives watch Fox and liberals watch MSNBC and Trumpers watch Newsmax.  Everybody gets to see the news they want.  Every outlet sells “fear porn” as well. That’s the doomsday message that threads throughout so much media reporting. Your political opponent isn’t just disagreeable. They are in fact evil. They want to destroy the country. Indoctrinate your children. Destroy your world. Both sides have adopted this tone and the cameras and microphones are always right there to capture it all.   

And also get great ratings and make lots of money for the news corporations! AAAHHH!

I know I’m not the only one worn out and exhausted from the negative news flood. You are not imagining things if you too have noticed how negative, brutal, stark, and biased, the news is now fed to us as readers and watchers.

So, as of this week, I’m taking a break from the news.  Maybe I’ll do a weekly 24 or 48 hours fast from the news. That might work. Or perhaps I’ll take my news in very small doses, just the headlines. All I know is that my spirit cannot take any more of the toxicity of our news.

I pray I won’t care less about the world, or do less in my own way, to make this world a better place. My faith demands action for peace, justice, and love. That won’t change, God willing.  But for now? I’m on sabbatical from the headlines.  Maybe you should think about that too. 

Here’s the good news. We do not have to be consumed by the news. Instead, turn it off. Turn it down. Turn away. We can do it. God knows that we need a break.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.