Filtering News

Most national and international news isn't actionable by us as individuals, so do we really need to watch it? 

In 2018, I wrote about how to deal with the effects of the continuous flow of bad news.

I have three rules for filtering news:

1. How will it affect my lifestyle?

2. How will it affect my daily activities? 

3. How will it change my mind in the voting booth?

For most people, if the answer to all three is, "Not much," then ask yourself why you're continually watching the news? Bored? Looking for excitement? Curious?

Keep in mind what it's doing to your mental health.

 

Many people end up watching the news and then complaining on social media about it which spreads the angst. If you really want to do something, then do something actionable. Instead of going to a protest, contact your member of Congress. Do you even know who your three members of Congress are? Mine are Padilla and Schiff in the Senate and Peters in the House. 

Better yet, watch the local news. Everything actionable will be covered there and your local government officials are easier to access when you want to be heard. 

Having simple rules helps. Here are My Three Daily Life Goals.

9/11: The Last Thing I Remember

RADM Craig Quigley, Pentagon Spokesperson on 9/11

A key physiological trigger to memory recall is adrenaline which is why people remember exactly where they were on 9/11. Remembering much of anything else, just prior to hearing the news of the attacks, is difficult.

The last thing I remember before hearing the news of the 9/11 attacks was how beautiful of day that late summer Tuesday morning was. I was living in Northern Virginia, a couple miles from Dulles Airport, where American Airlines 77 departed from and crashed into the Pentagon, about 20 miles away. I had just taken my four month old puppy out for a walk and vowed that I could go for a run at lunch because it was too perfect of a day to not do that. But that never happened. After walking my dog, I was working out with the radio on when I heard that a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers. My initial thought was it was a small plane that inadvertently hit the building much like a B-25 that crashed into the Empire State Building in the summer of 1945. As the news reports continued to flow in I turned on the TV and never left my house for the rest of the day.

Exactly one week earlier, my boss and I were driving to a client site at the Navy Yard, in Washington, DC. We both grew up in New York and, as we drove pass the Pentagon on SR 110, we pondered the question, "Which office building was bigger, the Twin Towers or the Pentagon?" Obviously, we wouldn't have reached our destination if that meeting were scheduled on 9/11, due to the mayhem.

Dealing With Terrorism and Mass Shooting News

Many of us continually watch terrible news like incidents of terrorist attacks or mass shootings. What we really should do, instead, is stop watching cable TV news and, perhaps, watch This is Your Brain on Terrorism.

On the surface, watching cable TV news (left or right) makes sense because we want to be informed and safe. But, this type of news ends up having the opposite effect, especially if we're not involved in the incident. We know that TV news is important, but we forget that, by definition, news is something that almost never happens. Because shocking news brings an audience, it ends up being broadcast nonstop which tricks us into thinking that it's a common problem.

Just to be clear, no one wants mass shootings – even the NRA doesn't want mass shootings. But, the reaction of people who immerse themselves in this news, and feel helpless at the senseless violence, end up doing nothing effective to make things better. Their typical reaction is anger, talk, and posts to social media where they express their fury without doing anything to fix the problem or its side-effects that spread the fear.

My point of this post is to show you that continually watching cable TV news coverage does very little to help the situation and actually causes more unnecessary anxiety.

If you're scared and you continue to watch scary news then your fear will increase. Ask yourself what would happen if you didn't watch cable TV news. Instead of watching, read a couple news articles, ideally from different sources, and then go about your day while being thankful for how fortunate you are.

Do Something

Feeling helpless? Then find a cause where you can make a difference. Want to right a wrong in the world? Do a YouTube search for "puppy torture" or "puppy abuse," etc., and then foster a pet or do volunteer work. Want to join a big team to right the wrongs on a global scale? Then run for office, enlist in the military or join an NGO. Make the world a better place. At what point does emotional protesting become useless complaining? It seems that the people who complain the most tend to do the least. Stop complaining and start doing.