In an age of relentless news coverage, the feeling of news burnout is utterly pervasive.
Too often, news seems like nothing more than a daily morass of mind-numbing violence, unenlightened political bombast and pointless celebrity gossip. Attention-grabbing headlines chase after us, only to disappoint.
Technology was supposed to make us better informed. Instead, news often leaves us drained, sometimes to the point where we just don’t have the energy to care.
This article is part of a series on news literacy, designed to educate readers to better judge the reliability of news reports and other sources of information.
News burnout is a topic we need to discuss because it leads to indifference, cynicism and compassion fatigue. News burnout fuels social polarization and mistrust of public institutions, though it isn’t the sole cause of those problems.
Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news
Since 2001, I’ve been closely following media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and have both asked and been asked these questions about news burnout in conversations with readers, colleagues and other journalists.
- Doesn’t following the news day in and day out make you feel crazy, depressed or hopeless?
- How do you keep your sanity?
- When you read about the awful things people are capable of doing, how do you not become numb?
The short answer to those questions: 1) The twists and turns of the Mideast and Israeli politics sometimes make me throw up my hands in exasperation. 2) As a former reporter, I’ve learned to set aside my emotions to do the work that needs to be done. 3) I sometimes need to decompress too.
So here are my own three tips for avoiding news burnout:
1. Tune it out
There’s no need to be dialed in 24/7. You’re not the general manager of the universe, so learn to let go.
Periodically turning off the news is healthy because the time away from it allows us to recharge our emotional batteries and return to the news with a fresh feeling. Time-outs won’t make you ignorant if they give you the ability to stay better informed over the long-term. Catching up afterwards isn’t that difficult.
My own tune-out time is during the 24 hours of Sabbath and various holidays. On vacation, I keep up with news, but less frequently — and only on a limited number of go-to sites. For my needs and lifestyle, that works well.
The point is this: You can reclaim your news cycle.
But there’s a deeper aspect to tuning out: humility. It’s impossible to know absolutely everything about any topic, no matter how much you immerse yourself in it. Accepting and even embracing this attitude is the biggest single step to avoid news burnout while staying informed. You can’t change the news, but you can change yourself.
Related reading: News Literacy: The 7 News Habits You Need to Develop
2. Take control
There’s so much buzz each day about different things, it’s easy to diffuse your news time. Pick one single topic and make it your business to be well-informed on just that. Cut back on or skip everything else. Over time, you’ll get a feel for news services and reporters deserving to be your go-to.
Make it your habit to read news at the web site of the agency originally reporting the development — the extra step is worth your time.
And absolutely do not rely on social media, news aggregators or other tools pushing news your way. Elamin Abdelmahmoud explains why they accelerate news burnout (emphasis added):
Much has been written on social media’s “flattening” effect on news, especially your Facebook feed’s ability to combine important news and frivolous events on the same visual field, so that the New York Times and your cousin Matt carry the same weight. This is damaging to our ability to figure out which stories to follow. Everything feels equally important (or unimportant), and nothing is to be ignored (or all of it is).
Here’s the secret: to step outside the noise, you have to be proactive about your media consumption. If you wait for the news to filter through your social media feeds, it’ll blend in with everything that doesn’t require your attention. . . .
Don’t leave the job of controlling the inflow of information to algorithms and push alerts and trending topics. They will feed you a never-ending diet of stories until you’re unsure if a development is insignificant or monumental.
Related reading: 7 Tips to Teach Your Kids News Literacy
3. Know what not to follow
Ongoing coverage of something waiting to happen is a waste of time, so I don’t recommend staying up on election night following the returns, or watching a scrum of reporters outside a maternity ward for a celebrity baby vigil. The collective anticipation is buzz, not news.
When there’s finally something to know, don’t worry. You’ll find out.
You’re less likely to get distracted if you periodically remind yourself what the purpose of journalism is. Ripe for causing news burnout are stage-managed events (Super Bowl media week), minor incremental developments (some legislative news), or stories that are a bit of both (political party conventions). So be smart about how much time you spend on stories falling into these categories.
Buzz doesn’t necessarily mean relevance, so if you have limited time for news, use it wisely.
Related reading: 5 Tips For Sharing News Responsibly on Social Media
* * *
It’s easy to complain about the news industry, but change begins with ourselves. It’s worth looking in the mirror and asking ourselves questions like these:
- Am I getting the information I need?
- Which areas of coverage are most important to me?
- Given my lifestyle and what I need to know, are my news habits effective?
- Do I differentiate between news and the interpretation of it?
- Which news services are most reliable for the coverage most important to me?
- Am I learning something new each day, or am I just getting incremental updates?
Journalism is supposed to inform and challenge us, not reinforce our world views. Unfortunately, news is often unpleasant, ugly and stressful, and that will never change.
We can, however, learn to handle the stress to stay informed while avoiding news burnout.
Featured image: vectors by Freepik; head CC0 Pixabay; phone CC0 Max Pixel; London via YouTube/ODN;
Before you comment on this article, please note our Comments Policy. Any comments deemed to be in breach of the policy will be removed at the editor’s discretion.
