No News is Good News

I live in St. Louis, which as most of you know is actually two cities in one. There is the Missouri St. Louis (in which I live) and the Illinois St. Louis, often referred to (in dark tones) as East St. Louis. East St. Louis is on the other side of the river, which, one might guess, is a euphemism used when "the other side of the tracks" isn't evocative enough. East St. Louis recently surpassed Detroit as the city in which one is most likely to be seriously inconvenienced in a karmic sense. Bad, baaaaad stuff happens in East St. Louis. I've never been there, but I know all about it. I know all the most intimate details of the heinous, horrific, senseless, gut-wrenching horrors that occur on the other side of the river.

How do I know all these things? Simple. These things are News.

I don't like to hear about these things. It isn't enjoyable learning about deaths and horrors on a daily basis. Frankly, all the gruesome details of all the terrible murders and deaths I've heard about over the years have formed a sort of black lacquer of constant low-grade dread over my heart. I have grown cynical and fearful. I am suspicious and worried, afraid for the welfare of my self and my wife, doubly afraid for my kids, growing up in a world where horrors are casually visited even on children. I know this is true because it gets told to me on the tens everyday on news radio. I hear about it from blank-faced, blandly attractive people every evening at 5, 6 and 11.

Horrors and deaths are News. Even more, they are the totality of the News.

OK, that might be a very slight overstatement. News also includes sports scores, the weather, and funny stories about singing parakeets and the baking of the world's largest cookie. A summary of the news would lead one to believe that the Cards might make the playoffs, it'll probably be hot this weekend, a child-killer lives down your street, drive-by shootings and rape-murders are rampant and growing, and the Islamists are about to get The Bomb. But it's all OK because there's a little boy in Fenton who grew a potato shaped like the state of Wyoming.

News is bad. Good things may be happening, but if they aren't funny, trivial and easy to make into a forty second human-interest clip, they aren't News. Horrors are News. Death, murder and fear are News. I don't know why this is, but let's just accept, for the sake of what follows, that this is the case. We all know it. No News is good News.

About a week ago, after hearing another horrific, jolting, casually read story about a long, gruesome death of a baby, I asked myself a question. A simple question. A question that made me stop, suddenly, as if at the edge of a cliff.

Why do I need to know this?

"Weeeell," a voice inside said, the voice I think of as the voice of The Culture. "You need to know what's Going On in the world. It may not be pleasant, but it's your responsibility to face reality. After all, you may be able to make A Difference." And at a first glance, that sounds fine. Knowledge is my duty. I may be able to help. I owe it to the world to bear my portion of the weight of it's pain and fear and loss. Let's call this the Guilt/Duty Rationale.

I really examined the Guilt/Duty Rationale, and I came to see two major problems.

The first one is a question of response. First, when I hear about a rape/murder, for instance, what, exactly, can I do about that? Can I help catch the perpetrator? In most cases, that would be highly improbable. Can I help the victim or the victim's family? Perhaps I could, but do I? Do any of us? No. There are just too many horrors to address. If we tried, we'd almost instantly be broke and burned out. Can I prevent such a terrible crime from happening again? No more than we can stop the rain. So what can I do, exactly? I can feel terrible. I can glom onto the fear and the dread. I can apply one more coat of lacquer to the shell of cynicism around my heart. But what, exactly, does that accomplish? How does that benefit anyone if the end result is simply a feeling of growing impotent dread? On these grounds, I reject the G/D Rationale.

The second problem is one of source. Is it fundamentally true that what we see and hear is all the News that is fit to tell? Is there instead a possibility that the News does not, in fact, represent a valid, reasonable, honest perspective of the world? Horrible things do happen, but we all know, on some level, that horrible things are not the only things that happen. So, if the News tends to only tell us the horrible stuff, how can we have an honest picture of the world? Is it possible that our worldview is being unneccessarily and even wrongly tainted toward the negative by the fact that all News is bad News?

I suggest the following radical, perhaps even heretical notion: There is infinitely more Good News out there in the world than the media, any media, would let us believe!

There are babies being born healthy and happy to overjoyed Mamas and Papas, who will love them enormously and train them up well and responsibly. All over the world, some people spontaneously help other people in huge ways and tiny ways. Flowers are growing in vacant lots, kids are still playing scratch baseball and soccer, from the tribes of Africa to the back streets of the Bronx. Sometimes alcoholics go to AA instead of killing themselves and others. Sometimes marriages come back alive. Sometimes people are quietly heroic in confronting their own demons, and defeating them. This happens the world over, everyday, millions of times.

There is more beauty in this world than could ever fit in a forty-second fluff piece on Channel 2. There is more light and good in humanity than the drive-by horror-mongers of the media would ever lead us to expect. The world is not all terrors and fears, regardless of what the clamoring 24-hour news media berates us with over and over. Those things are there, but they are not all that is there. Shame on the media for presenting such a skewed, dark, salacious view in the name of ratings and titilations. But shame on us more for letting them.

So let's boycott the News. I am. It does nobody any good to be bogged down with irresponsibly overweighted stories of murder and fear. There is a life to be lived if we can break the stranglehold of cynicism and fear we've come to believe in. Life and humanity are glorious the world over, regardless of what CNN and FOX news and Channel 2 say, not because horrible things don't happen, but in spite of them.

This goes for you people with the bumper stickers that read "If you aren't angry you're not paying attention". Consider the possibility that if you are that angry, maybe you're not paying enough attention to the right things.

This goes for you people who think the world is going to Hell and that things were better in the Good Old Days. Consider the possibility that the Good Old Days were only as Good as they seemed because you weren't being daily spoon-fed the individual horrors of the entire world by the drive-by media.

This goes for me and the rest of us living with the weight of the fear that there is an entire nation of wacked-out religious uber-nuts that would kill me and my family on sight. Consider the possibility that these people have always existed, and that they are a lot fewer than their media-amplified voices may make them seem.

In short, let's all lighten up, people! Let's break out of the fear and the suspicions. Let's let go of the terrific evils and horrors that aren't ours and that we can't fix anyway. Life will hand us enough hardship directly without us filling our plates with the world's share from the media's buffet of death-du-jour.

Good things do happen! Let's go find them. Let's celebrate them. Let's make them happen some more!

And for Heaven's sake, turn OFF the flippin' TV!