News

Things are Weird

March 22, 2020 by Elizabeth Drake

I am not going to belabor the COVID-19 outbreak, nor am I going to minimize it.

My family is struggling. Frankly, eight days cooped up together is a lot. My husband has a cold. Every time he coughs, we jump. But yes, just a cold, thankfully.

I turn on the news only to turn it off again. I am doing what I can with social distancing. There is little more I can do right now.

We have no idea when or even if the kids will go back to school this year.

Grocery shopping is a nightmare.

The fear over if we will have a job in a few weeks also looms large. We live America where there really is no social safety net. We are fortunate that we have some savings to see us through, but the threat of unemployment is very real.

Through all of this, I have been…writing. Yeah. I know.

I’ve basically tuned it to what I need to, then I have buried my head in the sand with my imaginary characters.

I finished one book during this time and am 30k words into a second. Yeah, burying my head.

middle-ages-knight — There will be knights. Mages, too!

I don’t know what else to do.

I look forward to a return to some normalcy. To at least knowing what we face rather than just being afraid all the time.

Until then, I pick up my sword and shield, and face the demons of the unknown in the dark.

5 Reasons Science Says We Should Consume Less News

April 19, 2018 by Elizabeth Drake

What Common Household Item is Killing Your Children? We’ll tell you, tonight at eight.

Except, if it really is killing my children, shouldn’t I get a news flash across my phone telling me what it is and how to get rid of it, much like an Amber Alert?

localnewsmeme — If they were honest, this would be the news in my area.

Here are six reasons why research says you should consider changing your news consumption habits.

1. News Outlets are Here to Make Money, Not Inform

With the wave of “fake” news lately, this hardly needs explanation. But we need to remember that news doesn’t usually cover what’s important anyway. They’re looking for the “human” element, the element that sucks you in and gets you to keep watching or clicking.

If it bleeds it leads.

If a building burns to the ground, what do you think the media is going to focus on? The building. The people in the building. Injuries. Fatalities. All of which is relatively inexpensive to produce. They don’t actually have to dig to get to the guts of the story. Do they ever tell you why the building burned? Changes to the fire code that should be enacted to save those lives?

No, because that doesn’t get clicks.

With this emphasis on the dramatic, we focus on the wrong things, and those things are then overblown in our minds. We all fear terrorism, but no one thinks too much about chronic stress. Total US deaths, worldwide, due to terrorism from 2004-2014 was 112. Think about that for a moment. 112 people in the Unites States died from terrorism over ten years. That’s 11.2 people, on average, per year.

How much news did it get?

But how many people die each year of heart attack? Stroke? Cancer? Yet, how much emphasis has any of this gotten?

Stress affects 143M Americans, and 81M are under extreme stress. The causal connection between chronic disease and stress is growing .

So why don’t we hear more about this? Reducing stress is something we might actually have control over, and it can have a direct impact on our lives. Imagine if reducing stress could reduce the number of people with heart disease or cancer by 10% or even 1%.

The news doesn’t cover this because it doesn’t get clicks.

News is a for-profit organization. They are not here to inform. They are here to make money.

2. Doesn’t Really Matter to You

How many news stories have you watched or read in the last year? The last month? What did you do because you read or watched it? What decision did it help you to make, particularly about anything of consequence? Did you become a better parent? A better spouse? Did you make a serious financial decision? Do something to improve your career?

I ask this is all seriousness. If it is meant to inform you, it should be doing so in a meaningful way. We’ve already established that it’s not really informing you. Rather, it’s telling you things to get you to tune in, and we should be challenging the value of tuning in.

I can honestly say consuming news did little to engender action from me. News stories didn’t even help me make a decision on the candidates I voted for. I got that from their stated positions on their websites.

3. Teaches You Not to Think Too Hard

This article really says it all. News programming is designed to make you think you’re seeing both sides of a story and getting the low-down, but you’re not. Most of what we get are news bites, little pieces of information meant to fit into an allotted amount of time. Deep, complex subjects require time to digest. Truly difficult concepts can’t be understood in the five minutes they get.

We’ve all heard “climate change”, but how many of us have actually taken the time to understand what it is and why it’s happening? What are the macro effects? What does it truly mean to the planet and to us? (Give you a hint, the planet doesn’t care. It’s already survived numerous mass extinctions.) What are we really sacrificing by not dealing with it, and what would it really take to reverse it?

You see this superficiality with a lot of “news” reports. They are interested in giving you bite-sized pieces, but nothing too meaty. They don’t make money informing, remember? They make money on you tuning in or clicking.

Yet, without this deeper level of understanding, you lose sight of the bigger picture. Events become singular and contained instead of part of the broader view. Hard to make truly informed decisions when you see a very small piece of the whole issue.

4. Seek Conforming Opinions

With the sheer volume of news out there, we no longer have to expose ourselves to ideas that don’t conform to ours. If we don’t want to believe in climate change, we can find plenty of articles denying it to fill our screen.

As Warren Buffet said, “What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.”

If this is true, then we’re really not seeking information or enlightenment. We simply want to be told that everyone already agrees with us. That we’re right. That’s called confirmation bias, and it’s very detrimental.

It means you never hear the other side, you never have the chance to understand their way of thinking. You can’t find a compromise because why would you compromise when “everyone agrees with you?”

But what if we’re wrong? Even Albert Einstein was wrong on occasion.

5. Induces Stress

News, particularly what’s splashed across our networks, triggers our fight or flight response. The same stories that get clicks activate this center.

When you hear about a family dying in a fire, you have a very different reaction than if you’re hearing about alternate routes to avoid a fire. That’s why so many of us felt panicked and twitchy after all of the 9/11 stories, particularly as we watched people, human beings, plummet from those upper stories.

That’s one image I will never, ever forget.

The “human” side of these stories releases glucocorticoid which has a whole slew of effects on your body. It’s the fight or flight response. And what does this constant fight or flight response bring? Remember that stress we were talking about and how we know it contributes to heart disease, stroke and cancer? Yeah, that.

It’s like being constantly told there’s a monster under your bed, and knowing there is nothing you can do about it.

6. Crushes Creativity

I’m not sure if news in general does this, or just bad news. I won’t say this is an unbiased or researched article, because I couldn’t find any with hard facts, but it states what I’ve seen myself.

The more news I consume, the less creative I am. Or, perhaps, the less time I have for creativity.

Not sure, but I do know that switching off the news, even for a week, made it much easier to focus on my novel. I felt more relaxed and able to bring more of myself to my writing.

Why?

Not sure, but I figure the reduced fight-or-flight response is part of it. As is not allowing the news to snatch at my already divided attention. Kids, spouse and day job already get most of it, I’m not letting things I can’t impact take more.

Of course, tuning out the world burning may not be ideal, but there is very little I, personally, can do for the issues of the day.

Yet, despite the science that says to ignore it, we keep coming back to the news. Makes me think they’re in the same camp as social media. They’ve figured out how our brains work and how to keep us coming back for more. How to suck our precious time from us for profit.

I am done.

I will continue to read the Economist, and I will never know what household item is slowly killing my children until they send me an Amber Alert to my phone.

How about you? Do you watch the news? Do you get anything out of it? Does it inform your decisions? Has it ever affected your sleep or given you nightmares?

Sometimes, There Are No Words

October 4, 2017 by Elizabeth Drake

I’m supposed to be a writer, yet I have no words for what’s happened in Las Vegas. No words to describe the horror of it, the senselessness, the depravity of hurting or killing so many innocent people.

lasVegas

I can’t imagine the horror for the people that went out to enjoy a concert and didn’t come home. The pain of the families that lost mothers, fathers, sons and daughters to such senseless violence. The long road of healing ahead, both physically and mentally, for the people who were injured.

I don’t have words for any of it, and maybe there are no words.

This isn’t a political blog, so I’m not going to rehash any of the finger-pointing going on right now. It doesn’t bring back the people who died in the worst mass shooting in American history. And it doesn’t bring us together as a nation.

Interesting to note that while many of us were extremely sad and upset, no one I know was surprised. For me, Sandyhook was the final numbing agent. Each person has had their own, but at no point did I hear surprise from others or feel it myself.

After I learned the news, I took a few minutes to grieve. I tried really hard not to cry at work when I over heard others discussing what had happened and popped open Google news to see what it was.

Yeah, I’m a corporate cog, but even cogs can cry while we try really hard not to put ourselves in the people’s places who lost a friend or loved one. Or the children who lost a parent. Or the place of someone who lived while the person next to them died.

And that’s it. I turned off the news. It wasn’t trying to inform me anymore. It was trying to elicit an emotional response and a page click. To keep me invested even though there really is nothing more to tell the general public.

I wish I’d done the same thing with news about the hurricanes. I did do it with the news coming out of Puerto Rico.

No, I’m not heartless, but I have no control over any of these things. I did what I could and donated to the American Red Cross through a charitable drive at work. That’s really all I can do. I have neither the skills to help nor the power to do more.

So, yes, I turned it off. I only have so much to give before I’m emotionally empty. I need to save my reserves for things I can impact. My children. My spouse. My family. My community. My writing.

Maybe this is selfish, maybe this is just self-protection. I’m not sure anymore. But I have noticed I need to do it more and more often. And when I do, I’ve discovered I’m happier, less stressed, and more creative. Not sure if it’s right or wrong, but for me, it’s what I need to do to keep my sanity.

How about you? How do you handle the constant bombardment of the news cycle? Do you just turn it off? If not, how do you cope with the stress and helplessness?

My Recent Obsession with Weather

September 13, 2017 by Elizabeth Drake

I’m not sure where my recent obsession with weather originated. Yet, I was glued to the screen watching what happened first with Hurricane Harvey and then Hurricane Irma. Was this going to be the “big one”? What were people doing? How were they coping? Were they going to be okay?

I was pulling for them and their pets.

I watched all that happened during the storm, and then I watched the efforts afterward. Read about people coming together to help their fellow human. It brought tears to my eyes.

cajunparade — *Yes, this line of boats made me choke up a little.*

Maybe it’s been all the negativity I’ve felt for well over a year. I tuned into social media not long before the election here in the US. It was a constant bombardment of negativity.

Then came the election.

Then came the new administration, and I’ve felt like there’s a new kerfuffle every week.

This isn’t a blog on politics, so I’m not going to get into that, but what I will say is that my stress level has skyrocketed during this time. I’ve actively tried to tune out the media and news, but that’s easier said than done even if you’re a casual Twitter or Facebook user.

As I think through this, perhaps it comes down to a part of me looking for a “villain” we can all hate: the weather. This is an impersonal thing, not someone doing horrible things to others for reasons they feel are justified.

And, more importantly, it’s something we can all rally against. There’s no politics involved in this.

We’ve done drives at work to gather up non-perishables and send them to Texas. There were donation drives for the Red Cross and a general feeling of getting together to help people. Not because of who they voted for, but because they were people in need.

We live up here in the frozen tundra, and while it has many drawbacks, we’ve never had to deal with hurricanes or earthquakes. When a tornado comes by, it might touch down, it might not, but it doesn’t destroy entire cities.

Winters are another story.

We’ve suffered through polar vortexes (days on end of -45F weather) where we’ve had to worry about cars starting because of the cold, but nothing on the wholesale devastation of Harvey.

But people here still stood up to help those in need in parts of the country they may never see. They stood by each other.

Makes me sad that it takes an act of extreme weather to get this to happen, but I’m so happy and relieved that it still happens.

How about you? Did you watch the Harvey and Irma coverage? Do you find weather related events watchable?

Practicing Empathy

March 8, 2017 by Elizabeth Drake

I recently wrote about empathy, about giving people the benefit of the doubt, and how we really need more of it.

I thought of this as I read an article recently that talked about Trump’s travel ban, and it’s impact on three people. Sadly, this article was taken down shortly after I read it, but I’m assuming it was done to protect the man in Alabama I will discuss shortly.

You don’t have to look very far to hear the stories of people affected by it in a negative light, up to and including a US-born NASA scientist. As with many of the news stories about the ban, this article began with the heart-breaking tale of a woman who had aided the US in the Iraqi war, was targeted by terrorists because of it, and trying to get to the US for her own safety. It talked of an American man who’d married an Iranian woman and couldn’t get her and his daughter into the US even though they had green cards.

Remember, if it bleeds, it leads.

Empathizing with these people is easy. The news makes it easy. But none of those events are unique to this story.

What was different, however, was the article spoke of an Alabama man who was happy about the ban. After hearing all the stories of terrorism, he was relieved that something was being done to protect him.

This man hadn’t felt safe at baseball games or even the store. He feared any area where large groups of people congregated because that’s where terrorists struck. He didn’t give up going to his favorite sports events because he thought that would be caving into the terrorists, but he felt truly afraid.

Let’s remember that in fiction, no one usually sees themselves as the “bad guy”. The books on craft drill that into our heads.

alabama2

I doubt this gentleman from Alabama saw himself as a “bad guy” either. He truly felt afraid. He wanted to be safe, and he cited the events in France and Belgium as reasons for his fear.

What he didn’t know, what the news hadn’t informed him of, was that the total number of American citizens that died due to terrorism from 1995 to 2014 – that’s twenty years – was 3,503. That includes the 2,910 people that died on September 11th.

In 2014, 42,773 people died by committing suicide. The really scary stuff? According to the CDC, in 2013 approximately 610,000 Americans died of heart disease. Yeah. One in four American deaths was due to heart disease.

Had the news given as much weight to things that posed the most threat to this man, terrorism wouldn’t be his top concern. He’d be demanding roasted kale and orange slices (two foods known to help in the battle against heart disease) as he watched his sports games while jogging on a treadmill.

Was this man genuinely afraid? I think he was. It’s possible this man has never met a man or woman from any of the nations impacted by the travel ban. He may not have ever met a Muslim. Only 0.2% of Alabama’s population is Muslim. It may be difficult for him to separate out “bleeding” new bites from reality.

While each person is accountable for their emotions and how they respond to them, I think the news media also needs to accept some accountability. How many images of terrorist attacks have filled our screens? How many times did we watch the planes hit the towers? See the aftermath of bombings?

And it happens every time there’s an attack. We’re bombarded by images. This becomes our reality, what we fear, rather than heart disease.

I’ve seen some accuse the media of being accomplices to the attackers by helping them spread the fear that their attacks were intended to generate.

I doubt this is intentional.

You see, fear sells. If it bleeds, it leads. And what is more terrifying to us than terrorism? Thinking you’re going to punch the clock like any other day, but instead, a plane is flown into your workplace.

Fear sells.

Not only does it sell, but we’ve become addicted to fear, and for-profit news companies know it. They know how to get us to tune in and keep us coming back.

If you think about Maslow’s Hiererchy of needs, safety ranks as more important than sex. So if sex sells, you better believe fear does. Our ancestors knew this. Go back and look at those original fairy tales if you don’t believe me or the research.

News capitalizes on this, and it’s one of the reasons why I’m avoiding the news.

Was this Alabama man practicing empathy for the people this ban affected that weren’t terrorists? Doubtful. But, I’m betting he was afraid, and if he votes, I’m betting that fear influences his vote.

I know fear can influence me and make me do things I regret or keeping me from doing things that I regret not doing.

73k79

What about you? Do you let fear influence your decisions? Do you watch the news? If so, do you find it be full of fear-mongering?