Pop 89: The News is There to Scare You

By Madonna Hamel

I remember when dad bought mom a microwave oven. Rumour had it, if you stood too close you could render yourself sterile. I also remember going from a rotary dial phone to a push-button. And when satellite phones arrived, they were such a status symbol that you could buy a fake one and pretend you were talking into it while driving, just to impress the guy in the car next to you.

I remember going from a face clock with a sweep second hand to those single digit  clocks where the minutes and hours flipped like calendar pages. Then came the digital clock that glowed an eerie red at night. I didn’t know then what a jolt to the psyche it would be to go from analog to digital. In the days of analog, reality came on a sliding scale - subtle shades of grey transited us from black to white and back again. With digital you were either a 0 or a 1. And, the more I think about it, maybe that’s what started this whole mess of extreme polarization - where you are either number 1 or a big fat zero, with nothing in between. And certainly no variation.

I remember when the remote control was invented, too. Before that you had to physically get off the couch and turn the tv dial to one of two, or three, channels. Now you can circle the globe with remote in one hand and beer in the other. And best of all you can mute the ads when they come on.

That was the seventies, when we humans, as a collective, went from being citizens to consumers. We understood, soon enough, how television worked and the nature of sponsors and commercials and how popular shows attracted companies who, eventually dictated to those same shows what their content should, and should not, be.

Today, news is the product for sale. And if you don’t like one version of reality, you can switch to another until you find the news “show” that’s tailor-made to your specifications. The host of the “show” will deliver the “news” in a manner to your suiting - want righteously indignant? Flirtatious? Shocked and Appalled? Snide? Glib? Blasé? Ridiculing? Pandering? Outraged? Bored? It’s all there - ready and waiting to confirm your bias. Trust us, we are told: we are letting you know what to freak out about today. This is the world that matters.

But the “news worth knowing” provides more ammunition than information. And here’s the most disturbing part of all: I’m not telling you anything new. You already know this. But, hey, life is rough and it’s nuts out there so please don’t give me more than I can handle. I’m free to watch the channel of my choice; I’m free to pick and choose the truths that are palatable to me. Don’t make me consider someone else’s side, don’t force an encounter with Reality - and the rest of humanity who inhabit it.

I worked in a newsroom. (Before that, I engaged in activist art - I led protests, marches, and graffitied buildings. Before that I studied literature while working several jobs, waiting tables, popping popcorn at a cinema, painting parade floats, cleaning toilets, selling books, doing voice overs, singing in blues bars, etc. Suffice it to say I’ve seen the world, I’ve made good coin, and I’ve struggled to pay rent. Eventually, I settled for a modest wage with a huge dividend in personal freedom, saying exactly what I believe, and no fear of getting fired.)

And I’m here to tell you: The news is there to scare you. You can count on it. Thats its job. And its hosts, no longer anchors, offer up the daily carnage from safe offices and neighbourhoods. They work and live in places far from the danger and the fray.

Behind the scenes some of the most diametrically opposed broadcasters dine together, scratch each others’ backs. The president, on his way into the studio of a politically opposed newscast, tells the host he’s about to send his ratings sky high. And the host knows this, even though he is “ethically” opposed to everything the president says - and most of all- how he says it: with contempt, cruelty and dismissiveness, measuring everything by monetary gain. But he’s right. He will help with ratings. And so, he does the interview, hoping for an outrageous outcome.

Krista Tippett, the host of the podcast On Being says it’s time to mute your feed. “I can’t count the number of people I’ve encountered across the last weeks who have reported that they are deleting apps, limiting their consumption of news, boycotting or disrupting the barrage of information overwhelm,” she says.  “I’m beginning to see this as a spiritual discipline for being alive in this time. It is not to be confused with disengagement or passivity. It may be an essential tool for sanity.”

Surely, it’s time to shift the conversation, to not give over to getting scared. Getting paralyzed by fear is not staying informed. There will never be an end to “breaking hard-hitting news” that makes us angry, renders us nonproductive at work and unable to sleep at night.

If we must keep ourselves apprised of every insane gesture performed by the man we fear can make or break our day, can we not balance the craziness by stepping away from the screen after ten minutes? Maybe go for a walk. See what the birds are up to? What’s blooming in the garden? Listen to our own selves, for a change - to the murmurings of our hearts, the still small voice crying to be heard beneath the chaos?

We can remind ourselves there are stars in the sky more enduring than the celebrity stars of the speedy digital world, a world that only lives for the next news cycle and seems too frightened, and less able to remember: there’s a whole world out there.