Are You Worried?

I got into a discussion with my husband the other day about why I’ve stopped listening to virtually all television and radio news. I used to feel that the news was almost a civic duty, part of being an adult citizen. But after years of dutifully watching and listening, I realized that most often after a news program I simply felt tense and anxious, not informed and enlightened. And why? Look at the kind of stories that caught my attention just last week:

• Your tires could kill you (a local news story about retread tires)
• Toxic work environments (asbestos in your office that could kill you)
• Random crime and assaults (people you don’t even know who could kill you)
• Global warming
• Iraq, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Iraq

Most of these kinds of stories aren’t really about informing the public—they’re about making you worried enough to keep consuming their news product, and therefore watching or listening to the ads that come with the product. Make no mistake, the news media are in business to sell you something. And that’s equally true for so-called public radio.

Years ago I was a devoted public radio listener. But that was when they carried a mix of stories, covering culture, sports, and the arts. Now it’s all “hard” news all the time, and those stories are in the same vein as those in commercial outlets. Perhaps even more colored with doom-and-gloom in fact. Public radio seems to want to sell you a political viewpoint, and they certainly want both listeners and corporate sponsors to feel enough urgency that they’ll keep contributing operating funds to the networks.

So why is there so much bad news and anxiety-inducing material? I think it’s about keeping listeners insecure, worried and feeling like they need to keep abreast of all the bad news to feel some sense of control. But that’s the whole problem. Virtually all of the news is about things you can’t control or even affect; you can only worry. So we get story after story about global warming. This issue seems to have taken the place of other doomsday scenarios from years past, such as

    The population explosion
    The depletion of oil reserves
    Nuclear proliferation
    Bird flu (last year’s disaster to come)

And how much could any of us do about any of those issues? Eventually the public gets fatigued with the doomsday issue du jour and the media move on to another story that we can all worry about together.

My break with the news came when I checked it against my reality. My reality is that things are pretty good. Nationwide, crime rates have fallen, the air is cleaner, there are more acres of forest compared to ten, even twenty years ago. Our government is sloppy and wasteful but I’ll take it over any other. Most of the people I meet week to week are good people trying hard to live good lives. I’ve come to feel that by obsessing about world events and global disasters, we’re failing to show proper gratitude for the good things we have. There are so many people in the world without a home, without a job, without even a safe place to sleep at night. But my worry won’t help the homeless and victimized at all. Only prayer, charity and action can do that. Worry is both wasteful and pointless.

As for the broadcast news, I don’t miss it. I read two newspapers and several websites that allow me to pick and choose which stories to invest with my precious time. For the rest, I let it go. Other people may not want to go my somewhat radical route, but I highly recommend trying to take in the news with more detachment and less anxiety. And think about the motivation behind the continual barrage of bad news. Remember, if you aren’t worried, they don’t have a product.