All definitions of the term ‘news’ are a variation on: newly received or noteworthy information, especially about recent events. News, for those of you who don’t know, is an acronym that stands for: notable events, weather, sports.
I am a recovering news and political addict. I listened to the news constantly on my commute, read the online news almost hourly and watched the news reports on TV daily.
The fact that I knew what was being reported gave me the sense that I knew something valuable, that I was across what is happening in the world. It made me feel smart.
Almost two years ago I deleted all the social media apps I’d downloaded onto my phone. I was trying to limit how much time I spent on the damn thing and social media was giving me the shits. A few weeks after removing all social media apps from my phone, I noticed that the time I spent on my mobile hadn’t shrunk. I was still on it more than I would like to admit. And the apps I was constantly visiting? News apps. So, I deleted those as well.
All of a sudden the app I checked most often (after email) was the weather app, and that was twice a day. I also stopped listening to news during my commute. And over a couple of months I was a ignorant of what was happening in the world, as deemed worth knowing by the news outlets.
And it was amazing.
I realised that news isn’t actually news. News in the digital age has become a form of entertainment. It is there to get your attention. And if you’re not across what is being reported it is designed to make you feel inadequate. News stopped being about informing. It morphed into attention seeking machine that delivers audiences to advertisers.
And if you think I am being melodramatic – consider this; who do news outlets deem to be their competitors? It is social media channels and other forms of entertainment. In the chase for advertising dollars, any other channel that can deliver audiences and thereby siphon off advertising dollars is deemed a competitor. So news started to compete with algorithms and click-bait.
Things have changed to the point where noteworthy or notable events are events that editors and news outlets believe will deliver audiences. News no longer informs or keeps our leaders accountable. News has morphed into delivering fear and outrage. It hunts gotcha moments and scandal.
And when news seeks out fear and outrage, it disproportionately amplifies events that are small and potentially insignificant. It biases the extreme and makes the world seem far less safe and humane than what it actually is.
The news cycle needs to be fed, audiences held, advertisers kept happy. And thus the things that shouldn’t be considered notable or newsworthy are reported and exaggerated. And we grow more fearful and we end up being more ignorant and knowing less about what is really happening in the world.
I now read the news once a day and from that I decide what in it is newsworthy to me. I also have RSS notifications that let me know about developments that I believe are noteworthy and relevant to what I’m interested in. I try to avoid other people deciding for me what events are important or worth knowing.
On 18 April, 1930, the 20:45 BBC news bulletin script read; “There is no news.” The day we once again have a bulletin where nothing was deemed worth reporting, perhaps then we’ll know that the news is truly newsworthy.