Is The News Too Depressing?
Drilling down to the root of the problem with the capitalist news media.
Just having to go to the dentist is enough to get many people down. But having to go to the free dentist is even worse — vastly so1. I mean, sure, the free dentist is free, and, yes, it’s great that it exists at all, but the free dentist also requires an early morning trip downtown where you must stand in line on the cold street for up to two and a half hours for a chance of being let into the waiting room (the earlier you get there the better chance you have). Once in the waiting room, moreover, you might find yourself waiting for a few more hours to see a dentist — if, indeed, you end up getting to see one at all that day. Either way, it sucks.
But, if I’m honest, the worst part about going free dentist is not the wait or the cold or the humiliation or the uncertainty: it’s the social environment it exposes me to. It’s the poverty and misery and suffering it forces me to witness on the early morning city streets as I wait in line. It’s the feelings it forces me to experience: the horror, the anger, the helplessness, the shame. It’s a depressing emotional cocktail, even on good days.
And, of course, sometimes it’s not a good day. For example, while in line for the free dentist recently, I saw a fifty-something-year-old man with a walker suddenly collapse — and after I helped pick him up and seat him on a nearby bench, I found myself holding his head and staring into his face as his mouth stiffened and his eyes went dark and his skin turned blue. And then, as paramedics fought in vain to save his life and I stood there wondering if I could have done more, I found myself face-to-face with another member of the downtown street community who suddenly realized, as I watched, that they knew the man who was dying on the cold pavement in front of us, and that were losing yet another friend.
This is the real price I pay when I go to the free dentist: I don’t get to stay in bed, blissfully unaware of the suffering outside. I have to be conscious of it. I have to be present for it. And it sucks. And I hate it. And then I feel bad for wanting to look away, and that makes me hate it even more. It makes me wonder if I should have stayed in bed just to spare my mental health. It’s bad out there, folks.
Many people feel the news is too depressing — in fact, increasing numbers of people are avoiding the news entirely on this account — but the news can’t hold a candle to reality. All people have to do is spend a few early morning hours walking around downtown to see that; call it “doom-strolling”. Indeed, assuming the news media’s job is to accurately reflect reality — to write the “first draft of history” — the news is, in many respects, not nearly as depressing as it should be. And, to some extent, the reason for this is readily understandable: news consumers cannot be made to feel like I do waiting for the free dentist downtown; they’ll tune out in droves, and advertisers will follow them out the door.
This is not to suggest that people who think the news is too depressing are wrong, of course. It’s a subjective opinion. And, what’s more, it’s a subjective opinion that points to some important objective truths. The capitalist news media is profit-driven: true. The capitalist news media profits from reporting bad news: true. People don’t necessarily benefit from consuming all the bad news that the capitalist media can throw at them — in fact, doing so can be hard on their mental health: true, and true.
This just isn’t the whole story. It can’t be: too much bad news is missing from the headlines. If the problem is simply that the media is addicted to bad news, then why is the plight of unhoused people is so sparingly featured in the news — even now, in the midst of a historic housing crisis? Why are toxic drug deaths, which are now the leading killer of people between the ages of 19-39 in BC, all but absent from the headlines? Why is climate change coverage so minimal considering the threat; and why does it so often fail to center those who climate change most directly impacts? Why do we hear so little about the horrific suffering being routinely inflicted on people in Palestine, or in Haiti? Why are some wars — like the war in Ukraine — so gratuitously reported on while others — like those ongoing in Syria or Yemen, or the recent war in Tigray — are all but ignored? Something else is going on here: not all that bleeds, leads.
Conversely, the invisible hand of the market has proven itself entirely responsive to the increasing demand for good news. Indeed, “good news” seems to have become somewhat of a craze in the capitalist media recently — even the corporate fear factory Fox News now has such a section on its website. Catering to the half-baked popular belief that the fundamental problem with the regular news is that it is too depressing, “good news” seeks to spotlight “positive” and “uplifting” stories that will, supposedly, bring balance to the force: mental health supplements to compensate for an otherwise unhealthy news diet. Clearly, the capitalist media has no problem with reporting good news — not if there is demand for it.
But forcing the news to smile actually doesn’t make it any more beautiful, it turns out: only more superficial, and less informative. Worse, in effect “good news” just ends up apologizing the very institutions that are responsible for the depressing state of the world; encouraging undue faith in a failing system; and creating the gravely mistaken impression that maybe things aren’t so bad, really. In the hands of the capitalist media, in other words, even good news turns bad — propaganda for late-stage capitalism.
Clearly, therefore, the fundamental problem with the news is even more fundamental than “too depressing” communicates; clearly, the real problem with the capitalist news media is that they are capitalist.
This doesn’t just mean that they are profit-driven — although that’s true. More importantly, however, the capitalist nature of the news media also makes them perfectly ill-suited to the task of providing insight into the ultimate causes of many of our modern predicaments. Climate change, war, injustice, poverty — any meaningful analysis of these issues demands, at minimum, an acknowledgement that they are the fruits of capitalism. Without such an acknowledgement, there can be no systemic critique, no cohesive explanation of what it is that going wrong. Without it, the news is reduced to a chaotic jumble of random and predominantly unfortunate events; it is reduced to “this person was bad”, or “those people were greedy”. No rhyme or reason can be discerned, no lessons drawn, no solutions conceived of. Human nature is discredited. Progress is invisible. The mind is burdened, but not enlightened; informed, perhaps, but disempowered2. Yet no critique of capitalism can be expected of a capitalist news media.
This is a problem more “good news” cannot fix: it is a problem that stems not from the news media’s profit-driven addiction to bad news, but from their class allegiance and vested interest in the status quo.
Granted, the clarification doesn’t necessarily make the news any easier to take in. But it may suggest some alternative courses of action to those growing numbers of people who are tuning it out altogether. As an obvious example: trying out different, anti-capitalist sources of news and analysis. If these are any good, the world they present will still be dark and growing darker, with multiplying apocalyptic potentialities; but it will also be convulsed with class war. And in view of this war, often waged by those who, by all rights, should be far deeper in despair than yourself, the news will not just be outrageous but also inspirational and meaningful. With class consciousness comes a way to gauge progress, and basis for hope; with class consciousness comes working class solidarity.
In view of class war, indeed, the obvious act of self-preservation is not to eschew current events but rather to keenly follow them: to be mindful of the victories and reverses that occur in our great common struggle to survive the capitalist era. Turning away may be easier in the short-term, but as a collective strategy it only assures defeat — and defeat assures total destruction.
Again: none of this is to dismiss the potentially depressive effect of the news. Nor do I mean to downplay the potential seriousness of depression. The world can be legitimately hard to deal with, even on good days. And, of course, sometimes it’s not a good day.
Like the day I saw a man fall over in the street outside the free dentist. Like the day his face etched itself into my brain. I wish I hadn’t seen that. I wish he hadn’t died in front of me.
But given that he did die, I can’t bring myself to wish that I had been somewhere else at the time. After all, somebody had to be there. And it really feels like it meant something to be present for his end — to help to the extent I could; to bear witness: to care. It was a great honor, in fact. And, next to that great honor, the sacrifice it required of me is reduced to nothing.
For the confused: people in Canada have access to free public healthcare, but dental work is not yet considered to be a form of healthcare (for obvious, private profit-making reasons), forcing poor writers in Victoria, BC — like yours, truly — to visit a special, nonprofit clinic downtown that sees walk-ins when other clients miss their appointments.
Indeed, one of the most fundamental insights of Karl Marx, whose thinking has done so much to empower working people around the world, is that history is not random and in fact can be studied scientifically.