Our days are already full. She, immersed in high school, part time job and of course a healthy dose of drama at school; and me drowning in work, home improvement, bills, cooking and maybe some dating. I wish I can say our weekends are used for rest and relaxation. But the reality is that my daughter has swim practice on Saturday mornings, too. We really only have one day to sleep in! And when I say sleeping in, I mean I get up at 8am! Because our days are so curated, one of the things that fell off the list is TV watching! It’s ironic that after renovating the house and hard wiring every room with RJ45 and coaxial for unlimited streaming, most of the TVs are off with only the main one streaming endless 4K nature backgrounds!
As a consequence, I stopped watching the nightly news. It wasn’t a conscious choice at first but now, even if I have the time, I wouldn’t watch it. Here’s why.
Bad news grabs attention. That’s why the rescued kitten at the local church is a fluff piece that is saved for the end when most viewers have turned in or passed out! There’s so much content about society’s negative side why would I want to infuse myself with negative images of robbery, assault, death and more death just before I go to bed?
Sometimes, we wince at the idiocy of the world. But we learn that we are more connected when we tune out more.
It’s all broadcast content and I have no ability to control it other than to turn it off. If I leave it on, I will have to endure the stories in their presented order from gross to mundane. Most stories are so immemorable that I won’t even remember after the commercial break. Broadcast news is less about informing the public and more about selling advertising to get us to consume more.
It’s all skewed or spun with a specific viewpoint. Even if the newscaster invites a panel, the questions are controlled and moderated. But more often than not, the news anchor is regurgitating pre-written and pre-approved script for a liberal audience so as not to offend. And specialty news channels can be even more polarizing. This is more about viewership than truthfulness.
I get my news in one of two major ways: what gets pushed to my phone as ‘breaking’ or economic news that is interwoven into the business channel I subscribe to. If content interests me enough, I will drill down. My daughter has taken the same approach when it comes to sifting the internet for relevant homework research. There’s simply too much of everything out there.
On school nights, we tend to sit around the kitchen island. She does homework and I putter around making tomorrow’s dinner or reading a book or surfing the net. We banter back and forth on what we read or heard that day. Sometimes, we wince at the idiocy of the world. Other times, we pity the situation and the people caught up in them. But mostly we learn about each other’s reactions. In a sense, we are more connected when we tune out more.
