News Addiction: Why I Have Stopped Reading the News
By Rev Dr Ian Stackhouse, Guildford
The views and opinions expressed above are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the Jubilee Centre or its trustees.
Like many people, I am addicted to the news. My hope is that at some point in the not-too-distant future I shall be able to say that I was addicted to the news because in recent months I have made a conscious decision to disengage. I have not stopped being curious, nor do I feel out of touch. I love books, I read many articles, and I am a fan of good old-fashioned journalism, including sports journalism (I used to buy the Telegraph on a Monday just to read Michael Parkinson’s sports column). But in terms of news feeds, click bait, breaking news, and all that kind of thing, I am most definitely offline, so to speak, and like all recovering addicts I am zealous to convert others to my cause.
I guess there is a paradox in my reasoning. My idea to stop following the news is not because I have decided to retreat but because I want to be engaged, and the more news you feed on the less capable you are of doing that. Thomas Merton describes news as hypnosis. [1] Our daily fix of news makes us feel we are in touch, but in truth it sends us to sleep. A saturation of news breeds passivity of mind, since there is only so much a human being can absorb before they feel completely overwhelmed. The scale of the impact, notes Rolf Dobelli in his provocative book Stop Reading the News, is tantamount to a mental health crisis. [2] Quite apart from the fact that news is irrelevant to our everyday lives, and therefore a complete waste of time, Dobelli argues that it is toxic to the body and destructive of our peace of mind. It is also highly manipulative. But then we have known that for a long time.
Perhaps the most pernicious feature of the news is what Neil Postman describes in his seminal book Amusing Ourselves to Death as ‘Now…This.’ What he means by this phrase is something akin to incongruity: one moment we are looking at shocking images of screaming children following a bombing of a kindergarten in Ukraine; the next moment a parade of celebrities making their way on the red carpet to yet another award ceremony. [3] Incongruity is of course the very heart of a good joke. The juxtaposition of two incongruous images is the mainstay of great humour. In the context of news media, however, incongruity can only end up as a bad joke, the long-term effect of which is to dull our senses, trivialise the tragic, and reduce us to voyeurs.
Strangely, my strongest criticism of news media is reserved for the Sunday morning news shows. It’s not that I think everyone should be in church, or that no one should buy newspapers on the sabbath. That’s not the point. It’s more the arrogance on the part of the broadcasters who must think that people have nothing better to do with their lives than listen to the weekly gossip of the Westminster bubble. The phrase 24/7 comes to mind at this point: non-stop, incessant, without pause, news feed from which there is no escape. No wonder people are so depressed. There comes a saturation point when the news, even cheery news, ceases to be news but more akin to pornography.
To say that the news reflects what is happening in our world, which is how the media justifies its existence, is to underestimate the fact that the media shapes the news and determines what happens. The sacking of a politician, for example, is as much the judgment of the media than it is the party. Most pernicious of all is the puritanical savagery by which it is executed. Gone are the days when a person was innocent until proven guilty. We are in a situation now where the simple posting of an allegation is tantamount to condemnation. Indeed, we are not too far off from a situation where the media could end up as judge, jury and executioner; and given the potency of the media it is difficult to imagine how this tyranny might be reversed. News has a life of its own. Its influence is ubiquitous. The ascendency of false testimony, let alone the matter of fakery, has never been more serious. Hence, my decision to stop reading the news.
I am sure there will be those reading this article who will feel that I have overstated my case and believe that shutting down completely is too extreme. Maybe they are right. Maybe adjustment is better than renunciation. There is often some wisdom in that approach. But the trouble with incremental change, especially when it comes to addiction, is that it dallies around the edges and never actually confronts the issue. Failure to strike at the root runs the risk of the whole thing returning. Like technology in general, media is not neutral. That is simply a myth. It has power. In its present form, it hooks people on to a distorted reality. Furthermore, at the risk of sounding paranoid, its emphasis on the immediate and the sensational (which cumulatively adds up to what is called doom-scrolling) makes it the perfect conduit for apocalypticism. When journalist Tom Davies posited this as a hypothesis in the late eighties, calling out the news media’s role in promoting acts of violence, I recall a panel discussion where he was ridiculed as a loony fundamentalist. Over forty years on, maybe he is not so crazy, after all.
So let me leave you with an exercise. Instead of turning on the radio first thing in the morning, or checking your news feed on your smart phone, let the morning begin in relative silence. Or maybe a piece of music. You might even read a Psalm. Try it for a week. You might even want to strengthen your resistance by adding a sabbath day into the equation. [4] Why not? I guarantee you will feel so much better, and I dare say you will feel more energised. We can’t change the world, and no amount of news information will alter that fact. By going offline, however, we can live a ‘happier, calmer, and wiser life.’
[1] Thomas Merton, Faith and Violence, Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1968, 151.
[2] Rolf Dobelli, Stop Reading the News: A Manifesto for a Happier, Calmer and Wiser Life, Sceptre 2021, 56.
[3] Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, London: Methuen, 1987, 106-107.
[4] See Walter Bruggemann, Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now, Westminster/John Know Press, 2014.
