Fixing The News: Part 1 of 3
Fixing The News: Part 1 of 3
Contents
Survive vs Succumb
Turn Off The News
A Short Rant
It Ain’t As Grim As All That
For Your Consideration
Exercising Your Power To Act – Or Not Act
Reading. It’s The New Watching.
__
When it comes to the news, even things like headlines can change the tone of those around us.
Consider this example:
“Looks Like Another Failure. Launch Company Blows Up Another Rocket. More Money Wasted.”
Versus this:
“Launch Company Marks Another Milestone. Will Use Results From Latest Effort To Add Features To New Model.”
Pretty different vibe, eh?
It all has to do with intent.
Survive vs Succumb
On a more personal level, when you greet people, are you the one that opens with, “Did you hear about that terrible thing in Germany? Those pour tourists that got mauled by that circus tiger. Such a tragedy.”
Or are you the one that opens with, “Did you see the new OSIRIS probe brought back an asteroid sample? Amazing. They’re saying it will give us clues for tracking Near Earth Objects.”
We say work on being that second person.
The one focused on passing on news having to do with survival, success, not the one relaying stories about failures and tragedy.
You may not be able to control the headlines, but you can control the things you say about them. You can enlighten your friends as to the real wins. Focus on the positive, minimize or outright ignore the negative.
This is the way you encourage survival.
This is the way you encourage success.
There are a hundred sayings and examples of why this is.
Turn Off The News
Turn off the news if you can manage it.
The big news networks aren’t focused on anything positive anyway. Plus, less time spent there means more time you can spend with your favorite tech and space news sites. Or whatever fun thing you prefer.
In the mainstream news the success stories will be buried here and there, if at all, but on the right sites they’ll be headlines. Choose those sites instead.
By turning off the mainstream news the idea is to drive attention away from the negative and put that attention on the things we want to see more of.
Sadly the days of objective news reporting are gone. Even the weather has a spin for drama.
A Short Rant
Didn’t think you’d get away without one, did you?
Dear people that actually have a platform and a responsibility:
If one’s goal (presumably) is to generate interest in your chosen field (let’s say, in this case, space things), to inspire a public that may not yet know much about the technical stuff you’re covering, are you likely to get their support if you focus on the troubles that science is having?
If your audience already doesn’t understand it clearly you’ll only generate more opponents.
And what’s the point in that?
Any source covering space and new technologies, advancements that are so necessary for our collective future but that are already poorly understood, should focus on the things that are being accomplished.
On the gains that are being made as, yes, challenges and difficulties are faced and overcome.
It’s easy to think, Oh! But we need to know the bad things!
That would probably be the retort of said sources.
“The people need to know how we’re failing!”
No, not really.
Only way we need that information is when it’s framed with solutions and ways we’ll make it work. The real news is the news of the things that are being done to make it go right, the things we can actually do to help.
Everything has problems. Especially new, groundbreaking stuff.
We’re not interested in problems.
We care only that we’re solving them, what we’re doing to get there, and how we’re reaching success.
Not what’s going wrong.
Let’s start seeing more headlines of this tone about how we’re making things go right.
It Ain’t As Grim As All That
So … how do you stay informed?
That’s the trick, isn’t it.
If we’re going to ignore the negative, but negative spins are the majority way things are ever and have ever been presented …
What’s a poor, budding space enthusiast to do?
See the next section of this blog, For Your Consideration.
Obviously we need to at least be obliquely aware of things other than science and space. If you totally avoid knowing what’s going on in the world you end up with your head in the sand.
What we’re advocating is keeping your head high, surveying the land without diving into the gritty minutia. As presented by the media there are problems and bad things everywhere.
Again, we invite you to look around.
Go outside.
Shake a few hands.
Touch grass.
The falseness of that grim outlook is hard to miss.
Mostly we’re doing pretty damn fine, with a strong forecast for doing better.
For Your Consideration
One way of staying informed might be to find a source you prefer and use that.
Skim other headlines in order to stay objective, but use that reliable source.
Headlines will also generally inform you of what is important. If a bunch of headlines are talking about an invasion somewhere, then that’s worth a deeper dive.
If it’s just one alarming headline about a terrible raccoon attack somewhere in the world, unless you plan to do something about it, that one’s probably worth avoiding.
Which brings us to a sort of litmus test for any news:
Don’t read anything negative unless you plan to do something about it.
Exercising Your Power To Act – Or Not Act
Let’s be honest. You can do anything you choose to do.
When it comes to terrible news, either choose to do something about the situation and do it, or choose not to and don’t.
All we’re saying is don’t read the negative news only so you can sit and think about how bad it all is.
Sounds extreme, and maybe it is, but if the goal is to take a more proactive role in our world (and it should be), we don’t need to load our attention (and time) with things we can’t, or don’t intend to, do anything about.
No need even reading the details.
A set of hardcore “either/or” options for evaluating headlines might be:
Decide you can help. Read it and do something. Or,
Decide there’s nothing you can or will do, ignore it and move on.
It’s tough, we know, but if you use that criteria and start skipping such stories your thinking will clear, and you’ll become that much more effective at solving the things you choose to solve.
Reading. It’s The New Watching.
Also, reading is better than watching.
And we’re not just saying that because you’re here reading a blog.
Committing yourself to any sort of news recording or, worse, broadcast, means you have to consume the story at the pace of the presenter, along with being subjected to the emotional spin with which they choose to dole it out.
That spin often includes syrupy fear-mongering, veiled antagonism, calculated indignation and worse. (We’ll talk more about Instant Indignation Syndrome in Part 2 of this series.)
To combat that we coined a phrase:
Reading.
It’s the new watching.
With reading you set the pace. When reading you can read in the tone you choose, more easily skim and skip annoying parts, even pass over the dramatic sensationalism, digging out the real news.
Better, faster, easier, saner.
Stick to headlines. Skim for messaging. Read only the news you want. Avoid recordings and especially broadcasts.
Get on quickly with your day.
See you in Part 2.
Want to hear from us Friday mornings?
Every Friday our chief correspondent, Tai Rade (you’ll love her take on things), sends a recap of the week in space.
#FortySuns