I was talking to a fellow music radio broadcaster the other day.
She said she’d been planning to do an all-African show, but had
to reconsider because of “the whole Sudanese gangs thing”.
“What’s the Sudanese gangs thing?” I asked. Upon uttering
my words, I realised it was clearly a big deal (‘gangs’ generally
are), so rushed to explain, “I don’t watch the news.” This was an
understatement. In fact, I avoid the news for months at a time. It’s
easy when you don’t watch TV or install social media apps. I find
out about ‘the news’ in conversations like this, where the other
person is forced to explain the situation to me.
From what I gathered, the “Sudanese gangs thing” involved some
kids – who happened to be Sudanese – doing some bad stuff.
Certain people in the media then painted the entire Sudanese
community as ‘bad’. “So, some kids did some bad stuff,” I said, “and
now the media are using it as an excuse to be racist?” My new friend
confirmed that was basically the situation. ‘The news’, in this case,
was something the media had created: racism, hatred, fear.
I always feel like I run the risk of seeming ‘uninformed’ by avoiding
the news – but what am I really avoiding? The vast majority of the
time: bullshit. In order to access the facts, one has to wade through
monstrous opinions, sickening bias and, sometimes, fully inventedcrap. If my knowledge of logical fallacies serves, then the Sudanese
situation is an obvious case ofdicto simpliciter. Here’s how that
works: I’m half Italian; I drink six shots of coffee a day; therefore
all half-Italian people drink six shots of coffee a day. Is that true?
Obviously not. ‘Dicto simpliciter’ is basically a fancy term for
sweeping generalisation.
So, if I’m able to dissect ‘the news’ in this way, then why not read it
with a forensic attitude in mind and attempt to extract the facts? Well,
I would, only ‘the news’ is almost always depressing. I remember
flicking through a paper at a café one morning while waiting to see
the doctor. I pointed at every news story and reduced it to one word.
The words were: death, war, abuse, illness, destruction, corruption,
crime, etc. If horror is the norm, then aren’t acts of human
compassion ‘news’? Sometimes they are. But those stories don’t
occupy the main space of the news. In mainstream media, those
stories seem to function as buffers for the ‘real stories’.
On a date with a former journalist for a national news broadcaster,
I learnt that at one point, some director there had wanted them to
tell more positive stories. “We need to tell the bad stories, so we
can bring them into the open and do something about them!” my
date yelled. His view seems sound, even if his choice of hats wasn’t.
It would be great if we all heard about the “bad stories” and were
stirred to make the world a better place – for you and for me and
the entire human race. But when I only hear about things, real or
imagined, that are intended to enrage or terrify me, I will just switch
off. I can’t be enraged and terrified all the time.
This is not apathy on my part – it’s self-preservation. I only have
so much energy to give the world. I can’t afford to drain it. No
doubt, I will return to consuming more ‘news’ at some point, but at
present, I’ll continue to receive it through individuals. That doesn’t
mean it will be any more real or even relevant to me, but at least I’ll
be able to (hopefully) have a conversation about it, as opposed to
having hundreds of headlines accompanied by the commentary of
hundreds of anonymous vitriol-spewers dumped on me like garbage
at a tip. (Tom Piotrowski is quite charming, however.)no news is good news
MIA TIMPANO PREFERS TO KEEP
CURRENT AFFAIRS AT ARM’S LENGTH.
PhotoLukasz Wierzbowskisomething to say