In 2016, the prolific author and economist Thomas Sowell gave up his syndicated column after a quarter-century. A few months later, I asked him how it felt. He was delighted. The best part, he confided, was not having to read the news so assiduously every day.
Hoo boy. “I feel ya,” as Ted Lasso might say. Aware that my own consumption of news was depressing me, I lit up upon finding that the BBC had inaugurated a podcast devoted entirely to good news. It promised stories like a man saving a family from a burning house and a kid who raised money for Ukraine.
What a relief! Except, when you try to click on the podcast, you find the message “Sorry, this episode is not currently available.” Figures.
Over just the past several days, we’ve been subjected to news stories like the woman who opened fire at a Nashville school, killing three adults and three children; Russia placing tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus; a bunch of Stanford Law students shouting down a federal appeals court judge, and the administrator in the room, instead of admonishing the students, joining in condemning the speaker; Israel in more domestic turmoil than at any time in its history; the Ukrainians running out of ammunition; and a new survey finding that the percentage of American adults who say patriotism is “very important” to them has dropped from 70 in 1998 to 38 today.
And all of that is on top of the fact that a feral, mentally unstable arsonist is the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president again.
The news we consume is depressing and demoralizing us. The American Psychological Association estimates that “media saturation overload” — or, more colorfully, “doomscrolling” — is damaging the mental health of many people.
It’s not just that the news is bad. When has it not been? Planes landing safely do not merit mention. No, in our age, the way many of us get news is in prepackaged units wrapped in outrage and blame. The more angry a headline makes you, the more likely you are to click through and read the story or watch the video.
It’s not just that children are lying in pools of blood in classrooms; it’s that those people you hate are letting this happen by a) resisting gun control, or b) voting for Soros-backed prosecutors who won’t enforce the law. Our heads are exploding not because we’ve lost our self-control but because we’re ingesting news that is designed for that purpose. It’s like dining on arsenic and then being surprised that we’re sick.
This news menu has torn us apart more thoroughly than any foreign enemy could. Even stories that aren’t twisted beyond recognition are tweaked for maximum clicks and thereby shaded to sound more ominous than necessary. Consider the poll about patriotism. The Wall Street Journal article about the poll, conducted jointly by the Journal and NORC at the University of Chicago, is heavy on plunging arrows and dire trends: “Patriotism, religious faith, having children and other priorities that helped define the national character for generations are receding in importance to Americans, a new Wall Street Journal-NORC poll finds.” The article suggests that the only thing Americans now value more than they did in 1998 is money — with 43% of respondents in the new survey rating it as “very important” compared with 31% in 1998. Swell.
But when you look at the cross-tabs, you discover that while it’s true that only 38% of respondents said patriotism is “very important” to them, another 35% said it was “somewhat important” for a total of 73% who still value it. Or, to look at it from the other side, only 27% say patriotism is “not important at all” or “not that important.” You can make a case that the glass is half-full.
Or consider the United Nations report on climate change. The hysterical headlines are so common that they’ve given rise to “doomism,” the belief that humanity has no future. Many young people are reportedly so pessimistic that they hesitate to start families. “It’s fair to say that recently many of us climate scientists have spent more time arguing with the doomers than with the deniers,” Zeke Hausfather, a contributing author to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told The Washington Post. Climate is a serious challenge, but not even the most alarmed scientists say that humanity is doomed to extinction.
But despair is a sin. More importantly, the evildoers of the world want the rest of us to give up in disgust — to tune out and leave the field to them. They would like nothing better than for us to conclude that it’s hopeless to try to tell the truth; that falsehoods travel faster than facts; and that we will tire of the effort to keep our values and our vision intact. That’s the best reason to stay with it.
Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the “Beg to Differ” podcast.
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