Turning away from the news

Donald Trump has nothing to do with you

I used to feel pretty informed about current affairs and be able to give my two pennies worth about the Eurozone at dinner parties. In recent years I’ve withdrawn from reading the news, without consciously realising I was doing so, as if part of me had started to wonder if the trade-off to being informed - a sense of helplessness and anxiety and empathy with nowhere to put it - was actually useful to anyone. As a consequence, now feel I know very little about global events, and I often feel like a dunce, or selfish or irresponsible or embarrassed about how uninformed I am. Recently - especially as the worldwide events feel more and more alarming - I’ve been trying to interrogate my choice, and asking if it’s ok to create distance between me and the news. I’m not talking about disengaging entirely, but about creating boundaries between myself and things I can’t control in order to continue to be useful to myself and the people around me. This piece explores this topic as I try and work out my approach to it all. I’d love to see you in the comments and find out where you’re at with it all.

In the first episode of the second series of White Lotus, a liberal and politically-plugged in couple are appalled to hear that the couple they are holidaying with neither vote nor read the news. The latter couple are self-absorbed, unable to look beyond their Negronis towards political and environmental crises in the rest of the world.

Will Sharpe and Aubrey Plaza play straight opposite Megan Fahey and Theo James in White Lotus. Photo HBO

There’s a clear suggestion of an ethics of engagement here - that intelligent, responsible citizens are ones who stay alert to global events. Perhaps staying engaged is considered so important to enable us to exercise our democratic right to affect change - even as a layperson, by being informed we can ensure that our votes, our conversations, our letters of protest, our sit-ins and our boycotts might go some way to help mitigate the worst effects of national or international events.

But it’s no coincidence that the couple in White Lotus who engage with the news cycle are pretty miserable. As technology has changed in the last decade to enable us to be continuously plugged in to unfolding events, we can all recognise that limiting our news consumption is self-care 101. I’ve observed myself check the news as an anxiety response, an action stemming from the illusion that knowledge equals control. Doomscrolling until we have a panic attack in the early hours isn’t useful to anyone, but at the same time, something feels irresponsible about disengaging entirely.

Of course the people in power have a lot to do with us when their decisions and actions affect us directly. In the US, the woman who can no longer get an abortion even if she’s been raped, the man who is being deported after living in America for decades, the parent whose child is the victim of gun crime are impacted directly by policy change. Climate breakdown, wars and financial chaos cross geographical boundaries, potentially affecting all of us.

There’s so much to make us feel despair and anger. But is it true that we’re doing the right thing by endlessly viewing traumatic images or having our nervous systems constantly hijacked by doom-laden headlines or alerts? We believe that a good, responsible citizen is useful for the world because they stay informed, but what if the opposite is true: that a choice to maintain some distance actually helps us stay saner, calmer and more useful to ourselves, other people and the planet?

The more distance I create between me and the news, the calmer and more present I feel and the more I notice how much time there is in my life when Donald Trump has nothing to do with me, when events in my life, my feelings or thoughts don’t need to be dictated by certain actors on the world stage. I’m able to be more discerning about where my energy goes; arguably, I’m a more useful, kinder person. Holly Whitaker wrote this week about the historical figures “who stepped away from society to engage in contemplative practice—freeing themselves from suffering so they could help others do the same—before returning to shape history”, a list which included “Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, MLK, the Dalai Lama, Jesus Christ, Joan of Arc, and the Buddha himself.” Disengaging isn’t just about turning away in order to put your own needs first; it can also be about making space to consider how you might live in the world in a way that might help others.

Oliver Burkeman is my go-to on the question of engaging with news media. His mini-series Living with the News on BBC Sounds kicks off with a reminder of what the news actually is (or rather isn’t) - it is not a fair representation of world events but a skewed, mainly sensationalist, repeating story-cycle. He talks to an expert in news media who explains that an article with Donald Trump in the title brings more readers, which requires news platforms - even the “responsible” ones - to keep mentioning him in order to profit from the advertising revenue they need to keep running. And so our brains conclude that the only thing happening, all of the time, is Donald Trump, something that mercifully isn’t true at all.

Worrying/terrifying/horrible things are happening all the time - plus ça change - and I do want to know what’s happening in a broad sense, both so I can understand events that affecting people (and potentially myself) and take any action that’s relevant.

But the news cycle - a mechanism for colonising our attention towards a primarily negative set of events, whether local or global - sets us down a path of anxiety in the most part without a clear way to action or shape these events. Unlike within our immediate sphere of influence, we’re left simply with the work of worrying.

Oliver Burkemann says:

“To stay sane, you need at least one foot planted firmly in your world: the world of your job and neighborhood, that letter you need to mail, the pasta you're cooking for dinner, the novel you're reading with your book group, and that guy on your street who never cleans up after his dog – the world where you can have an effect.”

So the key to feeling more calm and content is spending more time practising staying within our own life rather than, as Burkemann calls it, “living in the news”. You can still engage, but you should feel empowered to choose when to do so, to keep it infrequent and manageable and make sure your attention doesn’t move too far from the substance of your own, real life.

Rosie Spinks’ brilliant Substack What do we do now we’re here explores this question - how might we live meaningfully, and create closer connections to the people around us. She paints pictures that are small and local, where the act of working an allotment, joining a choir, inviting your neighbours for coffee or creating a group for local parents both helps us and people and communities around us. When we take these kind of actions, we shift attention away from phenomena we largely have no control over, we find meaning and a sense of satisfaction and we engage in subtle acts of resistance against a corporate, disconnected, atomised culture.

Removing myself from constant exposure to horror naturally enables more peace, contentment and joy, which sounds like a selfish act. Feeling joy when there is also horror in the world can feel jarring; being able to feel two things at once is also part of being a grown-up, a sign of emotional maturity and an acknowledgment that joy isn’t just a nice to have or the preserve of the privilege, but a symbol of being human and the right of all humans. Feeling joy can actually feel dangerous - the superstitious idea that any feeling of contentment is asking for trouble, inviting disaster. Is there a part of us that feels we should spend time thinking about how awful things are elsewhere, almost as a penance for when things in our lives are just fine? The thing is, joy is catching and it’s transformative. Knowing how calm, contentment and joy feel in our own bodies, our own systems, undoubtedly ripples out to those around us. You have to know it to create the conditions for it - for your family, your friends, your community.

I’m not suggesting that we stick our fingers in our ears and book a spa break and assume that will trickle down to someone in the Sudan, but that small acts of kindness to ourselves and the people close to us matter, often more than we think. It’s a strange idea in a way, that us all sitting separately on our sofas and worrying about all the things that could go wrong is the most useful, responsible action. I used to think that the best preparation for disaster was reading everything - that forewarned = forearmed. Instead endless information just means endless anxiety. I need to trust that small, kind, local ways of living will stand me in the best stead, that when times get hard, this kind of self-plus-community care is the practice that will make me ready.

Part of my determination to turn away a bit more is an understanding that the worst actors on the world stage want our fear and our division. Their antics are a tactic, flooding the zone of our attention, so a counter-tactic is to not engage, to not rise to the bait. Your attention is a precious resource and unlike many things in life, we do have some control over where it goes.

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The sun is high in the blue sky on the first warm day of the year and I’m walking in the park and everyone is smiling at each other. I’m eating banana bread in my favourite local cafe and talking to the woman who works there and feeling the glow of connection with another human. I am watching my son and daughter embrace when they go their separate ways for the school day. I am crying in the cinema with a friend watching a character grieve, seeing the flip-side to love, the proof that we are human. I am donating to a charity. I am going on a march with a friend. I am feeding a baby a bottle of milk while her mum has a bath. I am walking in the sun with my husband. I am arranging to help a friend with her cat. I am putting up a poster for my yoga class. I am calling my parents. I am buying food to thoughtfully make a healthy meal for my children. This is the stuff of my life, this is me living inside my life. Right now whatever Donald Trump is doing has nothing to do with me.

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Healthy habits for news consumption

I’m trying to reconsider my relationship with the news, my habits and my beliefs (including a sense that a good and responsible person reads the news at least daily, has high-level knowledge of geo-political events etc).

Here’s a few things that I’m trying:

• checking the news infrequently (as in every few days, not a few times a day)

• no news apps on my phone and no alerts

• when I do read the news, I read for short periods and at a sensible time e.g. in the morning, not before bed

• I read on my laptop not scroll on my phone

• seeking out positive news sources like the Good News Network

• I’m reading more fiction books / my Kindle

What about you - is your relationship with the news changing? Are any of these ideas or tips useful or do you disagree with me entirely? How are you staying sane, especially if you work in the media or need to stay informed for work? I’d love to hear your view.