No News is Good News

We have become a society that lusts for news. We perch hungrily for the latest scandal and are eager to see our enemies demeaned by the latest bit of information we squeeze from an ill-written headline. Increasingly it seems, no news is good news.

photo credit: Oliver Klein, unsplash.com

If you’ve read my previous posts, you know my political choice for president. Not surprisingly, the majority of people I know don’t read my posts. So I’ve been fielding a lot of conversation about that.

Those visits usually begin with, “Well, I guess you’re happy about the presidential election results.” And then, I must honestly reply, “No, I’m not.” Living in conservative West Texas, I can usually expect the person to physically step back from me and then set my watch for about two minutes of disbelief and, sometimes, horror.

Evidently, the two minutes is about the average amount of time it takes for people to recover from shock and to realize, “Oh, it’s not a big deal, because my candidate won.” Something about winning and smugness usually prompts them to say, “Well, I love you anyway.” I wonder each time if they would be saying that if the results had been different. It’s easy to be magnanimous when you’re the winner.

Oddly, I bear no ill-will towards most of these folks because they, like me, took the information they had, applied some standards, and made a choice. That’s the way this works and, despite complaints, it is a pretty good system. If you read my personal call to action right after the election, you know that my first step was to be willing to admit I’m wrong . . . occasionally . . . every once in a while. Maybe I was wrong about Mr. Trump. I just want to be clear, the evidence is still out. I borrowed the “I just want to be clear” statement from President Obama. I can see why he likes it so much.

In the past, things seemed to be clear to me. Recently, when I’ve had conversations with people who show genuine interest in why I voted as I did, I’ve come to expect a measure of frustration and futility. It seems that we, as a nation, have no place to turn for accurate news. The main stream media — on both sides of any issue — have proven to be largely biased. Cable news and internet news is driven by advertising and sensationalism.

So, no news is good news.

I know that there are journalists out there who are working hard at their craft in investigation, fact-checking, and writing. I’ve read a lot of well-researched, coherent articles in the last six months written from many perspectives on the political spectrum. Unfortunately, many of us don’t have time to read anything in-depth, much less think about the message enough to ask questions and to engage in a personal level of inquiry.

We settle for the headline. We allow our hunger for outrage to be fed by illogical, inflammatory missiles that, most often, have little to do with actual events. Or, we revel in the mucus of stories that are simply created to do harm to some ideology or some individual. Fake news sources are profiting from our willingness to allow misinformation to be the main event in the blood sport of public rhetoric.

[highlight]It’s time to take back objectivity. We need to open our eyes and look for truth. We need to be able to trust again. We need to receive good news. Please don’t fall prey to the purveyors of sensationalism. Such behavior is an addiction.[/highlight]

 

Get to know people. Talk to them. Differ with them. Make honesty and truth a vital component of any relationship. Perhaps the media will pick up on that and learn that good news — “good” meaning accurate and balanced — sells.