The 24 hour news cycle is killing me. Seven days a week, 365 days a year, news is delivered in the form of short attention span theater. It’s depressing. The good hearted, the charitable, and the positive are cast aside to make room for murderers, liars, and the sleaze of Washington D.C. It’s draining.
Network Predicted Our Future
I recently watched Network (1976) again and I’m shocked at how amazingly relevant it is today. The film is practically prescient in predicting where the media of the early 1970’s would inevitably lead us. If you haven’t watched it in a while (or ever), it’s really worth a view. An absolute classic.
The main character is Howard Beale who goes a little nuts on national news one night and becomes an overnight sensation where he can say whatever he wants without censorship on his own television show. Here’s a sample of Howard’s advice:
Television is not the truth! Television is a damned amusement park! Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, side-show freaks, lion tamers, and football players. We’re in the boredom-killing business! So if you want the truth… Go to God! Go to your gurus! Go to yourselves! Because that’s the only place you’re ever going to find any real truth.
News Cliches
Honestly, I think watching local news every night can drop your IQ. We get a story about a local rapist followed by a weather report that tells us what we already know and then cap it off with a heart-warming tale of a squirrel with one arm that learned to crack open acorns in spite of his disability.
And lord help us if there’s a winter storm warning. We’ll have a news anchor reporting from a wind tunnel, wearing a parka that looks like it belongs on a mountaineer climbing Everest. He’ll yell every word as he predicts our impending doom. Oh, and they always have to use the word “brace” as in brace yourself, the entire downtown area is bracing for the worst, the region is bracing for a blizzard, etc.
I think there must be software that spits out these news story titles. The rules go something like this:
- Stories about a White House scandal must end in “gate”. Watergate was over 40 years ago people!
- Stories about weather will use [The storm name] and the year like Winter Storm 2014.
- Once a storm has hit, no matter how bad (or not bad) it was, we get the follow-up stories which all must include the word “aftermath”
For reporters, it seems there are only a limited number of phrases available. All other vocabulary appears to be banned for on air news reporting. So we end up with phrases like: gunned down, heated debate, outpouring of support, and every talking head’s favorite summary phrase “at the end of the day.”
More Howard Beale wisdom:
“We’ll tell you anything you want to hear, we lie like hell.”
The Experiment
It’s gotten to the point where I can’t even believe most things I hear. There’s so much propaganda and conflicting facts that I can’t tell what’s real anymore.
So I tried an experiment. I turned it off. I deleted my news apps from my phone. I exercised enough willpower to stay away from any current event-related websites. I ignored Facebook / Twitter updates that had even a hint of politics. At the end of two weeks, I knew nothing about the latest scandal, kidnapping, or economic news and you know what? I felt fine. In fact, I was happier. I worried less. I didn’t feel that the world was getting worse every day. I was more positive.
And what about all those scandals and “important” new stories from two weeks ago when the world was on the verge of collapse? Funny enough, there wasn’t a mention of them when I checked the news today. They had come and gone. Maybe I didn’t need to know about them in the first place.
I finally realized why Howard Beale was “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.” News makes you mad. It shows you all the bad with none of the good. It’s a constant barrage of negativity.
I know I can’t just bury my head in the sand and ignore current events but I’ll be honest…I kind of want to. I just need to take news in smaller doses from now on and always remember that no matter what happens, life goes on.