Remember when the news was on the radio, on TV in the morning, at noon, at 6pm, and at 11pm, or in the newspaper?
Now, 24/7, we can’t escape it.
If I am being totally honest, I’m kinda glad that Facebook and the Canadian government are having their little spat and that my feed isn’t filled with news stories shared with sometimes questionably biased intent. I like being able to see my friend’s stories without having to scroll through a mess of news posts. I can go to the places that provide news that I think has journalistic merit and form an opinion without being bombarded by verbiage designed to elicit an emotional reaction. I have started to receive my daily newspaper in the morning again. News feels little more leisurely and a little less constantly jarring.
I remember going on a research trip in the US for a month and not having access to much Canadian news. In that month, if I was using American news to provide my world view of Canada, I would have thought it was a place fraught with tornados (because “one” occurred in St Albert and it made the US news), and people left skinned body parts in other people’s driveways (fun fact….that turned out to have happened in a friend’s driveway and it turned out to be a bear’s paw…making it also look like a ridiculously small place).
Another time I was at a research station on the west coast, in the days before wifi, before smartphones, and when I came out at the end of the month I discovered that Overwaitea/Save on Foods had gone on strike…..and something else had happened in the world that had completely passed the small community by (but I’ve since forgotten).
Life went on, we were oblivious, it was fine.
But now we seem obsessed with having non-stop news fed to us and it’s mind numbing. If it doesn’t send us into anxiety-land, then we are desensitized to it all.
Am I sad that my Facebook feed isn’t littered with a constant barrage of back and forth on the US election?
No.
I still get too much of it in my morning paper, on the morning and evening news, and in conversation.
I miss being a little less informed sometimes.
I miss when the news was the news, delivered more clinically and without a sense of theatre that is pervasive today.
I think we were probably all a little less polarized on topics.
