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I've always tended to avoid news, because it's usually so very depressing. But lately, its awful. How do you stand watching it and reading it? I know being in Baton Rouge, I'm affected by it a lot more than most people, but even so, I know the hurricane news is miserable. I can't watch it. I can't read it. It makes me pull out my hair. Literally. My hairline has receded about a half inch since the hurricane hit. Even the happy news like the story about the people who did a little parade in New Orleans, or ones about people being reunited with their dogs, it's so sad.
But it's important to read news and know what's going on. So how do you make yourselves read it and watch it? How do you seperate it from yourself? I've been reading hurricane threads, I know it upsets yall too. How do you keep with it anyway?
Posts: 3493 | Registered: Jul 2001
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I actually don't watch Network news if I can avoid it. As for the news I do watch, I see it religiously as a reflection of the end of times. I also realize, because I live and breath on the same planet as the news, that most of it is sensationalized and doesn't hold the complete picture.
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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I don't often watch the news. I watch the Daily Show and Meet the Press regularly, otherwise I just read whatever articles people send me or link to.
For whatever it's worth, I'll quote Jim Henson for the second time this week...
quote: At some point in my life I decided, rightly or wrongly, that there are many situations in this life that I can't do much about - acts of terrorism, feelings of nationalistic prejudice, cold war, etc. - so what I should do is concentrate on the situations that my energy can affect.
posted
I watch it then I decide what I can do and need to do to make things better, then I do that, then I pray for everyone. At some point if it gets too much I go and run hard intervals or something and get totally exhausted and just go back to living.
I don't think it's right to push it out of my consciousness entirely, but at some point I do try to take a break and think about something else if possible. What's worrisome is after New Orleans is no longer headlines, all these people will need so much help still. We have to be there for them and not forget about them.
I hope you are okay, I've been thinking about you a lot and praying for you too.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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I watch (or read) the news, and when it's bad, I take notes. Records, I suppose, for posterity. I suppose that's one way of handling things.
It can be scary, but I'd rather know and have all the records and the notes from those days and weeks than not know at all.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Truthfully, I find the hurricane coverage somewhat uplifting, as I usually do when disasters occur. It's a reminder that, with certainty, there is something truly meaningful and valuable in the world, and that the human spirit will triumph over all disasters.
That's what struck me as the most suprising on this day in 2001 - the fact that people cared so much, that they'd actually shut down their everyday lives for the sake of things going on in a far away city to people they didn't really know. It's a beautiful thing when people actually let their true selves out and show how much they actually do care.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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I work at a newspaper - as a paginator. My job is to put articles on the pages.
I usually have a bit of leeway about what goes on my pages. Sometimes it's just the briefs - the editor likes to choose the articles, but he only works Friday evenings (he works during the days other days and doesn't directly put the paper together).
I often use "Odds and Ends" - which is like "news of the weird" for my briefs. They are usually amusing and a nice change from the depressing news.
Our newspaper is affiliated with the Associated Press - which is where we get everything that our own reporters don't write. We don't have enough reporters to cover anything outside of our basic area. With the recent resignation of an area reporter, we are scrambling to cover even that. We have to rely on the AP for state, national and world news. So, when people complain that we are covering the war in Iraq in a negative way, well, that's what the AP gives us.
I check the e-mail addressed to editor and newsroom - sometimes we get those forwarded e-mails that we all get. One was about "pictures you won't see in the paper" from Iraq. They were pictures of soldiers praying, or interacting with Iraqi kids, etc. Well, guess what? I recognized some of those photos. At least some of them were AP and I think we used one or two.
Anyway, we do the best we can with what we've got. [/rant]
Posts: 2034 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I understand your concern and often feel the same way. Like CayCedai, I enjoy the unusual news. I also like trying to find the good news buried within the bad.(ie stories of a miracle rescue,etc). I like reading about the good things people do as well.
When I read the newspaper, sometimes I get mad at the dumb yet devestating things people do. For example, yesterday's paper conveyed the story of a man who got confused when one of his children missed the school bus. OK. But then, he forgot the baby in the car. You can guess what happened, yep, the baby died.
Sometimes though, the news is just too much and I find I need to just turn it off.
Posts: 38 | Registered: Jun 2005
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I find the 11:00 news to be the worst. I just cannot watch it. Instead, I listen to news on the radio and read it online.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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After 9/11, the ratings for the "I Love Lucy" show went through the roof.
I think that we need to give our hearts some down-time and to laugh. Being saturated by sad news like this can make us feel very depressed, helpless and frustrated. Sometimes, we need to stop looking at it just to remember that we are still alive and capable of taking care of ourselves before we're able to tackle the task of helping others.
Posts: 2425 | Registered: Jan 2002
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I find contemplating the absolute horror that is often human existence actually helps me keep thigns in perspective. If you're going to meet life on it's own terms, you've got to realize that those terms can be really bad and there's nothing you can do about it.
Right this minute I could die from so many different causes. I could be growing a cancerous tumor that'll kill me slowly, painfully over the course of 10 years. One of my parents could develop alzhiemers. My niece could be kidnapped by a child molestor. These things happen all the time (well, the kidnap thing not so much, but there's plenty of child abuse to go around) and there's almost nothing the people who suffer from them can do about them. And those are just the things that I, a highly priviledged member of the most advanced society in all of history could go through. There's so, so much worse out there.
The problem, I think, is that people think that life should be good and fair and kind and it just isn't. I think you've got to embrace life as it is. She's pretty much a dirty, sneaky, cheating bitch, but she's also the only game in town.
Bad things happening aren't the exception. Well, to many of us they are, and that's so amazingly wonderful and it's a tragedy that we don't see it. After looking into the endless darkness of the abyss, even a single candle can be blindingly bright.
I can lose the ones I love in the blink of an eye, but that only hurts because I've been blessed with people I love so much. My money, my health, my sanity. They can only be taken from me because I have them. There are many who can't say as much. I've been doomed to die as soon as I was born. But when the other alternative is not to have been born at all, I know what I'll choose every time. Think about the bad things you dread. Realize that not only can nearly all of them happen, but that at least some of are likely going to happen. Realizing all the pain you could go through, you'll probably find how many amazing things in your life you take more or less for granted.
My advice in dealing with he bad news. Go to a holocaust memorial and really get into it. Really lose yourself in what it must have been like to suffer and die in one of them. See it and see also the guards who wirked there, the administrators who set them up, and even up to Hitler. Realize the all the people in that, victims and their tormentors are human beings, pretty much like you. If fate where different, you could have been in any one of those roles. Taste what that means. Feel yourself in those roles.
If you can confront all this and accept it, if you don't shy away with how horrible life can be, I think you'll see how wonderful life is. Every breath, every heartbeat is a plus. Because life is so bad, you really drink in all the great things that happen every single freaking day. You can look at her and say "Cut me, you bitch. I love you anyway."
Of course, this might just make you numb. I find it leads you to feel for all the people who are suffering and, ultimately, to accept responsibility for their pain. Because life's a gift and those who are given much should give back much in return. And because that dedication, that working at your best for others, is pure joy (at the same time as it's almost unbearibly frustrating and heartbreaking). And hey, all the fairy-tale "Life should be different isn't going to change it. It's the only game in town. If it's going to change, it'll need to be by your hands.
I think a lot of the depression at the news is the feelings of helplessness that people feel. The things is, we're at a point now where you can do much more for good than was true at most other times ever. We are the empowered ones. You can claim that power and use it to do as best as you can do. Looking at the world, you'lll see how little and how much that really is. And you can accept it, because it really is the best that you can do. The only thing acheived by spending time wishing it weren't so is to dimish what opportunities you do have.
Don't look away. Look right at it and say, not "Someone's got to do something about this." but rather "I'm going to do something about this." You may find the bad news may cut you even deeper then, but that it's somehow also not as bad.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Easy to say. Not so easy to do when you're sitting 15 minutes walk from evacuees, and unable to do a thing but make balloon animals for the kids. Not feeling all that empowered.
Posts: 3493 | Registered: Jul 2001
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You and I have a different perspective on things, and though I don't completely agree, I feel very lucky to have caught a glimpse from your mountain top.
Posts: 2425 | Registered: Jan 2002
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quote:I think a lot of the depression at the news is the feelings of helplessness that people feel. The things is, we're at a point now where you can do much more for good than was true at most other times ever. We are the empowered ones. You can claim that power and use it to do as best as you can do. Looking at the world, you'lll see how little and how much that really is. And you can accept it, because it really is the best that you can do. The only thing acheived by spending time wishing it weren't so is to dimish what opportunities you do have.
Don't look away. Look right at it and say, not "Someone's got to do something about this." but rather "I'm going to do something about this." You may find the bad news may cut you even deeper then, but that it's somehow also not as bad.
Thanks, Squick.
That's exactly what works for me. I am powerless over most things that happen in the world. But I choose to work on something I can exert some influence on.
What that means for me, anyway, is that I can feel powerless over the totality of messes in the world. But I don't feel helpless or powerless in a global sense.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I like what someone on Hatrack said a week or two ago... that the media is nothing but an echo chamber.
Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
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I almost never watch TV. I use the Internet, and I read a lot of news. Arguably, this is a particularly weird form of masochism; I'm getting the bad news of TV without the entertainment and escapism.
But.
How I can stand to watch the news is that it motivates me to action. To give blood. To give money. To get in touch with old friends I haven't spoken to in a while and realize how precious life is. To spend more time reading to my daughter. To write letters.
When I look away, no matter how tempting, I feel like I've stopped being a citizen and just become a consumer. As bad as the news is, for me, feeling like that is worse.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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quote: But it's important to read news and know what's going on.
Why?
Seriously, why? If something major happens, you'll hear it about it from friends, neighbors, relatives, coworkers, people on Hatrack, etc. Why watch the news? Especially if it's going to damage you.
Toretha, I know how you feel - I think. Watching the news after the tsunami hit would send me into tears. It still upsets me. I wasn't affected, I'm perfectly fine, but so many people I know lost everyone they were related to. There was so much devastation and loss, and I was surrounded by it. I'd break into tears over watching the news, and Fahim would put his arms around me (if they weren't already) and do his best to comfort me.
It didn't take long before we stopped watching the news altogether. It was too much for me.
For me, it's because, unfortunately (I think), I can put myself into their shoes and feel their suffering.
The point is, there's no reason why you *have* to watch the news or read the paper or . . . If it's damaging you, take a break. Do something else. If you're feeling really insecure about doing that, then tell someone you trust what you're doing and ask them to give you an alert anytime anything major happens. Or just come here and get your news - most major events get covered here.
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I don't watch the news or read the newspaper either. Ask other people to tell me the most important things....
Yet we have something that is called 'News for children', it's every day at seven. As you will understand from the title, it is presented in a very non-confronting way. Besides, the subjects they cover are more balanced: Some bad news but also a lot of good news. It's good, I don't have trouble watching this.
Posts: 1247 | Registered: Apr 2000
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![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
that we all get. One was about "pictures you won't see in the paper" from Iraq. They were pictures of soldiers praying, or interacting with Iraqi kids, etc. Well, guess what? I recognized some of those photos. At least some of them were AP and I think we used one or two.
