Last week, we found ourselves wondering if the President of the United States didn’t have better things to do with his time than have a press conference regarding Shirley Sherrod. Sherrod, in case you somehow missed it, is a U.S. Department of Agriculture employee who was fired after a tape was leaked of her supposedly admitting to racist behavior against a white farmer (Sherrod is African-American). But the story didn’t stop there.
It later turned out that the tape was taken out of context, and the resulting media storm about whether it was Sherrod herself who was the victim of racism or an unwarranted firing dominated the news cycle for an entire week. President Obama was brought into the situation and a national press conference happened. We don’t want to diminish Sherrod’s situation, and we certainly think that issues of race in government are important, but we were forced to wonder, “Doesn’t Barack Obama have something more important to worry about than the Georgia Director of Rural Development for the USDA?”
When we posed that question, the response that we were given from friends was accurate. That response was, “In the era of the twenty-four hour, multi-channel news cycle, he does have to worry about it. After all, if we’re all feeding into it, he’d be at a political disadvantage to not comment on it.” At which point we realized – we created this beast of the twenty-four hour news cycle, and as postconsumers we should question our participation in it! Of course, it’s still vital to keep informed about what’s going on in the world.
There are a number of reasons to walk away from the twenty-four hour media news cycle if you want to travel down the road to becoming a satisfied postconsumer. We’ve previously discussed the first reason, which is your exposure to advertising. The more you watch and read online endless “news” coverage, the more you’re exposed to the messages that got us to our current state of overconsumption – messages of “needing” items that we don’t need and acquiring more and more. The less you choose to expose yourself to those media messages, the less susceptible to falling prey you will be.
The second reason is because we want you to find satisfaction, and the twenty-four hour news cycle is a fast road to frustration. The news cycle is there to feed short attention spans and frustration and boredom in people. That’s why so many headlines cycle through so quickly, but the road to peace and satisfaction is to mentally begin to find calmness and happiness. Hearing about the world’s disasters, dramatized for maximum effect and with a good dose of opinion thrown in, isn’t a great solution for that.
The final reason, of course, is that there are just better ways to get your news. Places without an advertising budget the size of a twenty-four hour news network. Places where the emphasis is on the news and not on the business model of news output.
Our friend who was commenting on the twenty-four hour news cycle said the following, “I bet presidents miss the days when the news only happened twice a day, in the morning and the night.” To which we responded, “The presidents aren’t the only ones. We miss it too.” We encourage you to start to separate from the addicting pattern of twenty-four hour a day news stations. After all, we want to find the satisfaction of enough, and we’ve learned that anything in excess isn’t a good thing. That counts for news, too!
