Don't Put It Down
It’s not just you. Reading or hearing the daily headlines without becoming inundated with negativity feels almost impossible for many Americans, and recent events have only worsened this effect.
Recently, at the Golden Globes and Grammys, we’ve seen celebs wearing “ICE Out” pins and making remarks in award speeches. As Zach Bryan put it in his song “Bad News”: “Everyday on the news, someone else is shot.” The urge to wave the white flag and stop paying attention is greater than ever. This is exactly what we can not do. We can not give the win to the opposition when the going gets tough. We cannot fall.
It’s not a secret that a huge aspect of Donald Trump’s influence is his media prowess, and central to that is his creation of the “Flood the Zone” political strategy. This strategy was popularized by Trump himself as well as former White House strategist Steve Bannon in 2016. Two years after Trump won the 2016 election, Bannon was quoted by Vanity Fair’s Micheal Lewis saying “The Democrats don't matter . . . The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with s***.”
Throughout the first Trump administration, the strategy proved to be effective as the press struggled to keep up with the White House. It remained useful during Trump’s second term, the first day of which the president signed 26 executive orders in a highly publicized stunt which took place at a stadium, a prime example of “flood(ing) the zone.”
Despite a decade of this strategy, it seems as though the press still has not found a way to combat it, and they have mostly given up. The popularity of new, independent, and highly online media outlets can absolutely be attributed to their freedom to cover what they like, as legacy news outlets tend to focus on Trump to boost ratings. This trap is one that outlets and consumers of news alike will continue to fall into for years to come, as the strategy once again begins a cycle of too much to talk and think about. To an extent, the press likes this—there’s always news to cover. As a news consumer, you should hate it.
It's very easy to get tired of hearing bad news every day and just stop paying attention—it is human nature to preserve oneself from emotionally damaging material. But choosing ignorance is ignoring one of the most important aspects of society’s functioning (politics), and will end up making you feel worse.
No system is perfect for everyone, but there’s a consistent message across articles and research on news intake: wade through the “s***.” It’s easy to rely on the school-provided New York Times and move on, but even in our era of subscription news services, there are many good free options out there: the Associated Press and ProPublica, to mention a few. Many experts recommend identifying two fact-focused websites to check once or twice a day, which can include more focused sites such as 404 Media.
Additionally, subscribe to a free daily newsletter (such as 1440), and have a favorite opinion-based podcast or website. It’s easy to be convinced that opinion divides us, and it’s certainly true to an extent. But the truth is, no one is without their opinions and biases, and the political center is a lie.
Left- and right-leaning voices in the media are the ones who, once you’ve learned the true facts, make sense of the facts. Who you choose to listen to may affect your view on the world, but that’s the point. We are nothing without our opinions, and in order to craft them from a well-informed perspective, we need to know what is going on.