Going Back to the Nightly News

Every time we have a national crisis, I find myself checking the news constantly. The Coronavirus pandemic coverage has been very good about providing hard numbers and constant updates - infection data, death rates, and recovery numbers most prominently. Our politicians have also been working hard to keep the public calm and supplied with as much relevant information as they can. I've checked out a few from Governor Gavin Newsom in California, Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York, and done my best to avoid the Trump press briefings, which are unfortunately the ones quoted most heavily in the mainstream press right now.

However, it's very easy to become overwhelmed and drive yourself to anxiety with the constant flood of information. I've tried to limit myself to only checking on the news twice a day - specifically my feed of Google News updates and virus tracker sites. Worldometer has been the most consistently updated one, and with the fewest ads. However, with the isolation of living under shelter-in-place orders, and the mental weariness that's been building with trying to screen out all the alarmists and the crazies that keep trying to hijack the crisis, I've found myself doing something I haven't done in ages - watching television news broadcasts. Every night before bed, I've fallen into the habit of watching the BBC World News for international updates, and the nightly NBC newscasts for domestic ones.

I usually have all the information contained in these programs already from reading the print news. However, reading about a tragedy in print is never going to be as visceral as seeing video reporting and hearing live interviews. I can read about overrun emergency rooms and medical equipment shortages, but actually seeing the images has a much greater impact. First hand accounts and personal details tend to get more emphasis. And as a result, deaths are no longer dismissable as numbers and stats, but more clearly real people with grieving loved ones. There's a danger in getting too morbid about the steadily rising death count, but for now, while there are still parts of the U.S. that aren't taking this as seriously as they should, I think that's important to get across.

And I've found a new appreciation for the slickly packaged American nightly newscasts for their simple messaging and narrative - sensationalist, but also comforting. The events of the day are tragic and daunting, but not insurmountable. I've been sticking with NBC, frankly, because they're the most accessible online. Also, it helps that their format and packaging is nostalgic for me. My parents usually watched their newscasts, and I've been hearing that same trumpet fanfare since I was a kid. So, I've been watching the NBC News organizations cover horrible things happening for decades now. And the U.S. survived all those horrible things happening, so it feels like we'll get through this one too eventually. The NBC newscasts have even taken pains to end their telecasts on an uplifting note - little human interest stories about weddings, reunions, or shows of solidarity.

I feel it's also important to make a distinction from the 24 hour cable news, which I've been doing my best to stay away from. No matter if it's FOX or CNN or MSNBC, cable news is still far more eager to sensationalize, to speculate, and to blow things out of proportion. Because they have to generate more content constantly, they also tend to be repetitive and more prone to misinformation. There's already a push from various parties to try and place blame for the mismanagement of the Coronavirus response, which isn't remotely helpful while we're still in the thick of it.

I've heard anecdotal stories of people falling back on a lot of old comforts while stuck at home - reading, baking, and of course copious consumption of alcohol. I've had more time than usual to consume media, my personal drug of choice. I've found that nostalgic media is particularly potent stuff lately, and that includes listening to a very calm, deep-voiced news presenter tell me what happened today in New York, Chicago, and Washington D.C. for twenty minutes. I tend to watch the programs online now instead of over the airwaves, but it's really not any different.

Take care of yourselves out there.
---