I’ve been abstaining from the news lately. Not that I’ve ever been a news junkie, but for the past week or so I haven’t read or watched any at all. I’d found myself tired of it—the repetitiveness, the irrelevance—and then I read an essay by Rolf Dobelli that convinced me to try giving it up altogether (at least for a while, as an experiment). The guy makes a cogent argument against the Standard American News Diet—one of the key points being that nearly everything you read in the news has no discernible effect on your life. After all, if the effect was discernible, you wouldn’t need the news to tell you about it.
My news-abstinence became significant early yesterday morning, though. There was a fire at the marina, clearly visible from my apartment, about a mile away across the water. It was only 6:30, and still twilight. I watched the flames and the rising black smoke while I brushed my teeth and buttoned my shirt. It looked like the fire was pretty big.
As I drove in to work I thought about the fire and its relation to my news-abstinence. Obviously, this was a newsworthy event. In only a few minutes I would be at my computer, where I could look up some local “BREAKING NEWS” site and surely get a preliminary, on-the-scene report. And I kind of wanted to. I was curious.
But of course my curiosity had no basis. I don’t sail or own a sailboat, nor do any of my friends/family, nor do I even think very highly of sailing as a pastime (very cliquish, it seems). I knew (as Dobelli’s essay predicts) there was almost certainly nothing in that fire that would affect me. My curiosity was morbid, voyeuristic, and transitory.
So I decided to maintain my celibacy and not look it up online. I decided instead to conduct an observational study. I was the first person in my little work area to arrive that morning, so I figured my two workmates, when they got in half an hour later, wouldn’t know about the fire (not everyone’s home has a kick-ass bay view like mine, heh heh). I wanted to see how they’d react when I brought it up. I know neither one of them sails, and that they’d have as little reason as I did to imagine they’d be affected by the fire.
Only a few minutes after they’d each sat down, I said (nonchalantly), “Hey, did you guys see or hear about the fire at the marina.” One said she’d noticed smoke on her commute, the other wasn’t aware at all. Obviously, since I had only seen it from a distance and hadn’t read about it, I had nothing to offer by way of explanation. “Yeah, I could see it from my apartment, and it looked kind of big,” I think I said.
They immediately wheeled around to their respective computers—in unison, and as if in a deliberate effort to confirm my expectations—and looked it up online. I couldn’t help cracking a wry smile behind their backs. They each found it on a different site, too. The fire—still burning—had made not only local but also regional news. My, the speed of the internet in spreading tidings of disaster.
They shared aloud some of details, and sure enough there was nothing meaningful to any of us. A boathouse had gone up. No one knew why. If anyone was hurt or dead, they didn’t know who. It was still rather hot at the moment.
So the whole checking-it-out-online, gathering-of-information thing had been a waste of time and attention. Not a huge waste, obviously, but a waste just the same. Imagine how that interaction might have gone if we didn’t have the internet (or other rapid-delivery news channels). The fire is the type of thing I probably would bring up anyway, even if I wasn’t conducting an observational study, just in case my workmates had friends or family they might need to be concerned about. Here’s how I see the web-free version:
Me: “Did you see/hear about the fire?”
Workmates: “No.”
Me: “Looked kinda big.”
Workmates: “Oh. I hope no one’s hurt.” (Maybe get on phones to call loved ones.)
I’m not trying to deride my workmates for turning around to their computers the way they did. Turning to a computer (or pulling out a smartphone) is the instinctual 21st-century response to hearing about anything. Can’t blame anyone for it. But the nature of that response should by itself indicate to us that what we’re responding to isn’t terribly relevant to our lives.
How would you respond if someone told you something that seemed like it might be a cause for your personal concern? If a coworker came in and said there had just been an explosion at the tire factory, and you knew your son/husband/brother was supposed to have just started his shift at the tire factory, would you turn to your computer and try to find a news story about it? Far more likely is that you’d be getting on the phone and/or running out to your car.
My guess is that many people around town turned to their computers over word of this marina fire. And my guess is that it was for them as irrelevant as it was for my workmates and me. It’s funny, since you would expect that if any news were to be relevant, it would be the local news. The truth, though, is that most of the things that genuinely affect us are either mundanities that don’t make the news, or they are emergencies so personally critical that our knowledge of them bypasses news streams altogether.
I’ve only been avoiding the news for a matter of days, so I can’t confirm if a news-free life is truly better. There may in the future be something seriously important that I—in my book-reading, semi-unplugged world—totally miss out on. Maybe I’ll miss the opportunity to work for some hot new company because I didn’t read about it in a Time magazine profile. Or maybe I’ll lose all my money when I don’t read the CNN Money article about fears of my bank’s becoming insolvent. Or maybe my mother will be shot in the face by a terrorist and I won’t hear about it until she’s already buried.
I’ll be sure to let you know.
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