Avoiding the News? You're Not Alone
Young people, women and members of marginalized communities are most likely to avoid the news
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I planned this morning to write about the U.S. turning into a theocracy, the latest evidence coming from the Alabama Chief Justice who ruled that his decision to consider frozen embryos to be children was grounded in the idea that "human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself."
Or I could have noted the ongoing, wretched despair in Gaza and the thousands of children there, killed or left orphaned. Or the death of a nonbinary teenager after being beaten up in their school bathroom. Or the activities of sexual predators on Instagram, and the parents who persist in posting accounts there.
But I couldn’t bring myself to go deep into any of this, because like many of you, and many people around the world, I didn’t want to read the news.
This is called “news avoidance.” It sucks for journalists and for readers, and it sucks for our democracy. It also makes total sense.
This is where I, as a journalist and someone who teaches journalism, am supposed to tell you all the reasons it’s bad to avoid reading or watching the news. It lets corruption spread because concerned citizens aren’t engaged with holding the powerful to account. It leads to news deserts, where whole swaths of the country don’t have a reliable local news source.
It indirectly means that misinformation can spread because if we avoid reading the news, media outlets are more inclined to pump out “infotainment” and outright lies, to try to attract as many eyeballs as possible (clicks = dollars).
All of this may be true, but let’s not blame the victim here.
Readers of news (and heck, that’s you! You’re reading this, hello!) want information that you know will help you understand the world, and participate in it in ways that are meaningful to you. That can be climate news or news about Ukraine; it can be home decor trends or movie reviews.
Whatever it is, you want to be able to trust it.
The people most likely to avoid the news are young people, women and members of marginalized communities. Not only are these groups rarely represented in news stories – when they are, it’s usually through stories about tragedy. Most newsrooms still operate with the attitude “we publish, you read.” It’s top-down, hierarchical, and alienating, not to mention totally exhausting.
Fortunately, new research from the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford about why people avoid news has helped me understand some of what could be different here, and some of the ways readers could be better served.
News feels bad, but doesn’t have to be that way. Stories that are focused on solutions to our myriad problems tend to make people feel better, because it gives them a sense of hope and possibility and not just gloom and despair.
People who avoid news felt that journalists could do a better job explaining ‘how this could affect you and what you can do about it.”
That gap left readers “trying to fill in that gap on their own,” the researchers wrote.
“And without that link to their lives clearly articulated, many news avoiders saw little reason to consume news that would just upset them.”
The news can be isolating, but it could build a sense of community. That community is why newsletters like this and many others can thrive, because so often you find your people in these spaces. (To be sure, that comes with a dangerous echo chamber effect, so we all need to get better at watching our biases).
Many news outlets already build a sense of belonging among their elite readers (the “How To Spend It” column of the Financial Times definitely tells rich people they matter, the researchers point out), but wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to have loads of extra cash to feel like we belonged?
Teaching kids – and grown-ups – how news gets made (researched, reported, verified) helps make news feel more trustworthy. The research found that people who avoid the news didn’t know much about how news gets reported, “making it difficult for them to distinguish between sources that produce news and sources that just regurgitate it with a twist.”
The Oxford researchers used survey data and hundreds of interviews with people who consistently avoided the news in the UK, Spain, and the US to conduct their study. Their other recommendations — keep it short and simple (most news avoiders in the U.K. and the U.S. have less than a 6th grade literacy level) and make sure you can read it easily on a phone — are also important and will serve all of us.
Finally, researchers argue that journalists have to make the case for the value of their work. They can’t just assume that people know journalism is important – a coordinated campaign to let folks know why journalism matters could go a long way in shifting perspectives, the researchers argued.
All this is to say that, if you feel like you just can’t deal with the headlines today, remember that it’s not all on you to make that change. There are plenty of things news organizations could be doing differently.
And then it’s up to us to support those news outlets that do.
In that vein, here are two other newsletters I want to encourage you to follow:
Popular Information, written by Judd Legum, is where I first read about the Alabama ruling and about the case of Nex Benedict. I’ve followed its coverage of the radical right-wing group Moms for Liberty and the ongoing threats of aggressive book banning in states from Maine to Florida.
Like more traditional news outlets, it is rooted in what’s called “accountability” reporting – holding institutions that serve the public to account.
I think of The Double Shift creator Katherine Goldstein as the OG of serious journalists writing about caregiving and family life. I interviewed Goldstein not long ago what would really move the needle on childcare and family policies. We talked about everything from union organizing to the role of the religion in supporting families.
She’s also incredibly thoughtful about how to make the day-to-day experience of being a parent easier (and more fun), with posts like How to Make Friends as An Adult, Millennial Dads and The Caregiving Praise Conundrum, or the two part series: The “Every Family for Themselves” Fight for Summer Camp & How to Make Summer Better for Everyone.
She’s newly joined Substack, so show her some love and subscribe.
MATRIARCHY REPORT is written by Lane Anderson and Allison Lichter.
Lane Anderson is a writer, journalist, and Clinical Associate Professor at NYU who has won several awards for her writing on inequality and family social issues. She has an MFA from Columbia University. She was raised in Utah and lives in New York City with her partner and young daughter.
Allison Lichter works at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. She has been a writer, producer and editor for radio and print, covering the arts, politics, and the workplace. She was born and raised in Queens, and lives in Brooklyn with her partner and daughter.
When I was a full-time reporter, my young nieces and nephews regarded my job as kind of terrifying: "Do you write about fires and bad things all day??" I found this suprising at first--but duh. Heck, the news terrifies me. Honestly I love newsletters now bc I feel like I often get better info and writing that makes me feel like I belong! I appreciated this post from a verified journalism school dean :)