How to take a news detox

Go Prefigure 14 🌱: April 2024

Greetings!

After getting fully into Brain Stoker theory-vibes by giving a talk recently (more on this soon), I thought it time to step back and write a post for the Go Prefigure section - where we try to make a small difference in the world, to be the change we want to see.

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On the state of the media

Many of my conversations with friends lately have ended up with criticising the state of the media. No matter your political stripes, there appears to be widespread agreement that the media agenda has us stuck, either distracted by gossip, or demoralised by war, or crime or the political scandal du jour.

Few buy physical newspapers anyway, so we are stuck in algorithms, echo chambers and filter bubbles, having our emotional buttons pushed. We are going in circles, unable to discuss questions, where long-term solutions are out of reach.

Even if we are not news junkies, the information feeds we are fed shape our sense of ‘what’s going on’ and, subtly, what is possible. Our sense of agency (how much influence we believe we can have on things) is shaped by what stories are let into our field of vision. 

What to do about all of this?

Some modest answers

There are a couple of ways of approaching these questions:

1. Mental health tactics – coping strategies; knowing all this, how we face the day, the world.

2. Political strategy - how we can shape the world out there.

They are connected, because it’s not possible to take even small steps to change the world unless we feel in a decent frame of mind.

On the mental health question, first of all, the first step is acceptance of how we feel. If the news is causing us stress, let’s fully accept that. If we feel angry or depressed, accept that too. It can be as simple as “this situation is overwhelming and I observe that I resist engaging with it”. 

Often we’ve normalised this feeling so much that it becomes imperceptible - like the background hum of a fridge, ambient air pollution, or the junk room in your house. A microdose of fear and loathing has become a drumbeat of our days and weeks. 

Or we might relate to news events and media with an attitude of resignation: “oh, it’s terrible out there, but it could be worse.” This is particularly British, the land of “not bad” meaning “good”. Some will make meek appeals for change: “I can’t really face it - someone should do something, though.” 

Your brain on news

Let’s get this out of the way: most media only cares about attracting and holding your attention. The “public duty to inform” is less important than views, ticks, engagements. And so the media treat us, its potential audience, like pinball machines. And they’ve learned how to hit all the right buttons. 

We’re hard-wired to respond to danger more than hope. It helped our evolutionary ancestors survive: noticing a poisonous snake in your peripheral vision gets a big response. A bumper crop of fruit, not so much. We are constantly scanning for dangers, and many of us use media or news intake for this. 

News focuses on the dramatic and the scandalous, and skews negative. There’s also a huge amount of meaningless gossip, about the royals, and political tittle tattle. Media is often polarised so it will reinforce your own view of the world if you seek that. It’s called “confirmation bias” and it comes to us whether we seek it or not. It is provided by click-bait algorithms.

Anger is one of the biggest buttons on our emotional pinball board, so the news goes for this. Outrage, annoyance, indignation are some of any synonyms. All of them provoke a surge of adrenalin. So we continue to seek them even when we suspect they are harmful to us.

I recently rewatched the 1976 movie Network, in which the news anchor Harold Beale cries out, in a famous scene, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more!” 

A scene from Network (1976)

Here’s the speech:

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be!

We all know things are bad -- worse than bad -- they're crazy.

It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone."

Well, I'm not going to leave you alone.

I want you to get mad!

By turning overnight from a straight-laced anchor to a mad prophet, ratings skyrocket and he becomes a smash hit. As a preacher, the news show descends into entertainment and reactionary noise. It’s a terrific parable of what’s gone wrong with the media, and quite prescient. (I’m just glad we don’t have negative political advertising in the UK like they do the US.)

Fast forward to the 2020s, and news has become much more sophisticated at manipulating our emotions, and getting to know our individual preference. A lot of people get their news from social media these days. And these platforms tailor your feed (they know quite a bit about you) to make you comforted and emotionally heightened in an intoxicating mix.

News algorithms online are a bit like this scene from the Social Dilemma - a control room that has a full profile of your interaction with the site.

A scene from The Social Dilemma

If that seems creepy, it’s meant to. The control room is a dramatisation of what the algorithms do automatically. They only want to keep you there, engaging, interacting. If social media were a diet, it’s Krispy Kremes and a can of Relentless energy drink - spiking your synapses with minimal nutritional value.

These platforms don’t want you to thrive. If you were living your best life, you wouldn’t be mindlessly scrolling on social media, you’d be with your loved ones or immersed in a hobby. They just want eyeballs for ad revenue. That’s all. This is because of the business model - we’re not willing to pay for news any more, we expect it to be free.

So, news operators are increasingly talking to our easily-excited “inner chimp”. Understanding this, we can see (try to be aware of) what they’re doing and seek a calmer, more thoughtful path.

There is a better way: fruit and veggies for your media diet

The first step, which I’d recommend to everyone, and regularly have taken, is: start to consume some solutions-based journalism. This phrase might be new to you but the idea is simple: most news focuses on problems. “What bleeds, leads” is one cynical news maxim - add to this scandal, and pessimistic predictions. You get the idea. This is simply because it triggers readers’ amygdala and holds their attention, like the insulting advertising we hate but can’t escape.

In contrast, solutions-based journalism focuses on what’s going right. This can reset our mood music when engaging with the wider world. Rather than doom scrolling, we start to believe there are possibilities for some solutions to the intractable problems. We may even start to notice some good things happening. This increases our willingness to think positively about  seemingly uncontrollable challenges. Our tense posture softens a little.

Where to start with a news detox

Where to start with solutions-based journalism? I will share two tips for starters.