Most every night, I watch the 10 p.m. news on any given Chicago TV station.
Yes, I know I can get the same news immediately at any time throughout the day – and I do, via newspaper websites, social media and talk radio – but watching the late-night news is a habit I’ve been doing for more than 40 years.
Maybe I’m dating myself by saying this, but I don’t want to “miss” anything at the end of each night.
Anyway, at the beginning of each newscast, the anchors give viewers a fast-paced, bullet-point listing of the day’s news. Every night, without fail, it sounds something like this: murders, mayhem, scams, terrorism updates, house fires, economic crises and so on.
The adage “If it bleeds, it leads,” isn’t too far from the truth. Negative news sells. Always has. Always will. It taps into our human nature. We’re wired to receive it and, afterward, we’re quietly thankful those things didn’t happen to us.
Even while knowing all this and shaking my head in disbelief, I still remain glued to the negative news. Night after night. Segment after segment. Shame on me. You, too? Without flinching, or barely blinking, we’re shown 30-second flashes of a bad news barrage. They hit us like machine gunfire – bang, bang, bang, bang, bang – ricocheting from local news to national to international in rapid-fire speed.
This is not exclusive to the nightly news. It also is broadcast in similar fashion on cable news networks, news radio stations, news media websites and Facebook post updates. Social media users love nothing more than to share the dreadful news as quickly as possible, as if they are de facto news outlets.
Twitter only compounds this daily dam of sad news with its endless rat-a-tat-tat missives. They come so fast that it’s nearly impossible to keep up with each new one.
My iPhone was blowing up (as the kids say) so often with all these news alerts that I’ve had to change the notification process. It got to the point where my phone sounded like a ticking bomb, exploding with each new health scare, political scandal, violent act, mass shooting or other criminal acts.
Last week, however, I stumbled on a fresh way to interpret this daily overload of shocking or depressing news. I realized that it’s easy to forget, for the most part, our lives are relatively safe and peaceful. Nothing like the headlines that scare us, sadden us or routinely grab our attention.
No terrorist attacks here in Northwest Indiana. No mass shootings. No suicide bombers. (Someone should knock on wood at this point.)
Yes, some media mortars hit closer to home than others. Yes, we have violent acts in our area, as well as rapes, shootings and house fires. But, proportionately, these things are few and far between for the vast majority of us. Again, we live safely and peacefully most of the time.
Our lives are blessed or lucky or well-earned, take your pick. Of all the humans who have lived, struggled and died on this planet since the beginning of time, you and I would likely rank in the top 1 percent when it comes to standard of living. We have it that good, generally speaking, I believe.
So good that most of us will die of old age and natural causes or from our own poor choices – overeating, laziness, smoking, drinking and so on. And even then, our life expectancy is longer than previous generations, thanks in part to modern medicine.
Most of us will not perish from so many of those dastardly ways we consistently see on the news. Not from violence, suicide bombers, random shootings and terrorist plots, among other frightening headlines.
Yet this is a distortion we too often buy into, warping our perspective about our society, our world, our own fates. It’s like looking into a carnival mirror and seeing your body grossly distorted. You know it’s not real but, for a moment, you can’t stop staring.
If you stare into that warped mirror long enough, you begin to believe what you’re seeing. The same phenomenon happens when you continually stare into the warped perspective of TV news broadcasts, whether it’s Fox News, CNN, MSNBC or your local news stations. It’s a grossly distorted reflection of our world.
I don’t blame news media. Under the guise of keeping us informed about the world around us, media outlets are feeding us what we hunger for, though we’ll never admit it.
We are not forced to watch disturbing video clips again and again, like from that unforgettable scene in the 1971 film “A Clockwork Orange.” We choose to watch them. And we are not forced to forward these images to others with the click of a mouse. We feel compelled to. We, too, are using a carnival mirror to fool ourselves.
In truth, the clearer reflection of our reality is much less frightening. We go about our lives, struggle for the legal tender, raise our families, look for love, care for others, pray for peace and laugh as often as possible.
No, it’s not as eye-opening or shocking or newsworthy. But it’s a good life. A simple life, in a way, even in the 21st century with such a complex world spinning around us.
We shouldn’t forget this simple fact – a fact nonetheless – especially with the holiday season now upon us. Before we can give thanks for our bounty of good fortune, we first must recognize and realize what that bounty is.
Despite my decades-long habit, and possibly yours too, we won’t find it on the nightly news.
Twitter @jdavich
