Imagine! 7.24.22
State of the Press: News Made for Humans
Sunday newShrink greetings, and welcome!
The past several weeks have been a bombardment of the journalistic “what,” with multiple, complex news and cultural stories of national, historic and mass impacts.
Today is a bit of a tack to focus on the “how.” That means how, and how intentionally, we as readers consume, absorb and process news and cultural fare. It also means exploring and staying aware of how it is reported, written, published/delivered… and by whom.
Left-column images above depict some of the top national stories of the week, particularly those related to the dramatic culmination (and recess until September) of the eight televised public U.S House Jan. 6 committee hearings. Images in the right column illustrate items below with a forward look into the next two weeks’ editions. Those will focus newShrink’s soul-focused depth psychology lens on the “who” — the people both in and creating/producing news and the arts — in a couple of new and deeper-dive ways.
connecting themes…
Today’s title theme, and centerpiece column above, is a Washington Post first-person piece from earlier this month by journalist and author Amanda Ripley. For me it struck a nerve with its grabber of a title: “I stopped reading the news. Is the problem me — or the product?”
Before reading much beyond that I was already hearing and getting copies of it from several of you — not surprisingly some other past or current journalists, but also several others who aren’t.
Clearly, to a lot of us that venerable first rough-draft of history, journalism, is long overdue for some edits.
The rest of Ripley’s piece both informs and inspires. (It’s detailed with links in item #5 below.)
Along with a trove of interesting (and concerning) statistical and trend information she identifies a need and envisions news designed for humans with three defining values or features. Those three are so consistent with newShrink purpose and focus that I’m adopting them as today’s theme, along with a fourth I consider important. You might keep them in mind when reading, listening and watching.
Ripley’s three essential elements that news made for humans would provide are:
🔷Hope
🔷Agency
🔷 Dignity
and, in today’s-world roles and media environments, I would also add
🔷2-way Relationship/Communication (vs 1-way Transaction’s ”I deliver/You consume”)
More on this, and Ripley, below. First, news…
with stories
The usual navigating details for accessing all links and references on the newShrink website are at the bottom of this post after closing comments.
# 1. Stories here are related to January 6th and events and actions leading up to it.
If you weren’t able to watch, You Tube and several news organizations have full video or transcripts from the hearing. In addition to thorough real-time and first-day coverage in venues ranging from the New York Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio, PBS NewsHour, The New Yorker, Christian Science Monitor and various networks, I highly recommend political historian Heather Cox Richardon’s thorough recap (heathercoxrichardson.substack.com). Meanwhile, here is a sampling.
Trump’s Hundred and Eighty-seven Minutes of Inaction on January 6th
(From The New Yorker, “Politics & More” Podcast — 32 minutes)
Jane Mayer and Susan B. Glasser help break down the remarkable findings from the House select committee’s last prime-time hearing of the summer.
The Jan. 6 Panel After 8 Hearings: Where Will the Evidence Lead?
(The New York Times)
The House committee has set out a comprehensive narrative of the effort to overturn the 2020 election. But it’s unclear if that will be enough to achieve its legal and political goals.
Perspective: Liz Cheney understood the assignment
(By Monica Hesse, The Washington Post)
She never lost sight of a fact her party could not understand: The hearings are about saving America.
Read the full remarks: Rep. Liz Cheney delivers closing statement at prime-time Jan. 6 hearing
(NBC News)
Donald Trump made a purposeful choice to violate his oath of office, to ignore the ongoing violence against law enforcement, to threaten our Constitutional order. There is no way to excuse that behavior. It was indefensible.
We Are Retired Generals and Admirals. Trump’s Actions on Jan. 6 Were a Dereliction of Duty. (NYT Guest Essay)
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Unfolding all week outside the hearing itself was the following related story.
Secret Service erased texts from two-day period spanning Jan. 6 attack (NPR)
By midweek the committee issued subpoenas and the National Archives were launching investigations about the disturbingly timed destruction of government communications despite laws requiring they be preserved.
This whole situation brought to mind two unavoidable echoes. One was Rosemary Woods — Richard Nixon’s secretary who steadfastly and famously claimed her foot on the pedal accidentally erased all of the former President’s taped conversations about the Watergate scandal. The other was the endless scrutiny, re-investigations and public fanfare around Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email account and server while she was Secretary of State. (At one point in response to a news update, I was muttering “Oh, go check with Huma Abedin or Anthony, they probably have the missing texts and Anthony has sent plenty of backup copies around…”)
Meanwhile, also related to the run-up to January 6…
#2. Bannon Found Guilty of Contempt in Case Related to Capitol Riot Inquiry
(NYT)
He is the first close aide to former President Donald J. Trump to be convicted as a result of one of the investigations into the Jan. 6 attack.
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By Friday night, the White House was reporting the President responding well to treatment for mild Covid symptoms.
#3. Biden’s COVID symptoms improve, WH says he’s staying busy
(Washington Post)
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Aside from its obvious home-state appeal, and the fact it’s from national journalist, author and educator who’s a fellow UNC-alum, here is Frank Bruni’s lovely commentary piece on North Carolina’s urban-vs-rural political landscape that gives it bellwether status leading into midterm elections and 2024. My “lovely” description is partly in contrast to recent and periodic pieces by his NYT pundit colleagues, particularly David Brooks and Bret Stephens — so arms-length and abstract they sound as though they never met one of these skittish “non-urban-anti-elite” voters or visited their non-urban towns in person, or on purpose. (In a couple of new ways future editions will more specifically identify opinion pieces along with with their writers and consider and respond to their respective various takes on similar issues.)
#4 .One of America’s Most Seductive States Is Also One of Its Scariest [Politically]
(Guest essay by former NYT staff columnist Frank Bruni, now a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University. He’s the author of The Beauty of Dusk and a contributing Times Opinion writer.)
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Here is where Beatle John Lennon in the illustration lyrically invites us to imagine news-made-for-humans with Amanda Ripley. At center below the Lennon quote, the cartoon by Maren Amini of The Washington Post accompanied the Ripley piece. (This isn’t terribly long and her relatable set-up for the good meaty parts make it well worth the full read.) Ripley is the author of High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped — and How We Get Out and host of the Slate podcast “How To!”
#5. Opinion: I stopped reading the news. Is the problem me — or the product?
(By Amanda Ripley, WAPO)
I have a secret. I kept it hidden for longer than I care to admit. It felt unprofessional, vaguely shameful. It wasn’t who I wanted to be.
But here it is: I’ve been actively avoiding the news for years.
It wasn’t always this way. I’ve been a journalist for two decades, and I used to spend hours consuming the news and calling it “work.” Every morning, I read The Washington Post, the New York Times and sometimes the Wall Street Journal. In my office at Time magazine, I had a TV playing CNN on mute. I listened to NPR in the shower. On weekends, I devoured the New Yorker. It felt like my duty to be informed, as a citizen and as a journalist — and also, I kind of loved it! Usually, it made me feel more curious, not less.
She goes on to describe how that changed so much over the past six or seven years, professional commitment and personal enthusiasm giving way to the combined over-saturation of depressing yet vitally important issues and problems along with growing helplessness in doing anything about them.
The dismay was paralyzing. It’s not like I was reading about yet another school shooting and then firing off an email to my member of Congress. No, I’d read too many stories about the dysfunction in Congress to think that would matter. All individual action felt pointless once I was done reading the news. Mostly, I was just marinating in despair.
Eventually beginning to share her secret with others, she learned she’s far from alone. That is where her essay became riveting to me. Consider some facts and points:
Last month, new data from the Reuters Institute showed that the United States has one of the highest news-avoidance rates in the world. About 4 out of 10 Americans sometimes or often avoid contact with the news — a higher rate than at least 30 other countries. And consistently, across all countries, women are significantly more likely to avoid news than men. It wasn’t just me and my hypocrite journalist friends after all.
Why are people avoiding the news? It’s repetitive and dispiriting, often of dubious credibility, and it leaves people feeling powerless, according to the survey.
She began interviewing and researching further some of the reasons, and of course many people blame bias while journalists note the business model in which negativity gains more clicks.
But I’ve started to think that both theories are missing the most important piece of the puzzle: the human factor.
Today’s news, even high-quality print news, is not designed for humans. As Krista Tippett, the journalist and host of the radio show and podcast “On Being,” puts it, “I don’t actually think we are equipped, physiologically or mentally, to be delivered catastrophic and confusing news and pictures, 24/7. We are analog creatures in a digital world.”
She describes how she’s spent the past year in a search for what news designed for 21st-century humans should look and feel like. She interviewed people like physicians who specialize in communicating bad news to patients, behavioral scientists who understand what humans need to live full, informed lives and psychologists who have been treating patients for “headline stress disorder.” (Yes, this is a thing.)
Distilling all they had told her, she arrived at her three essentials that all human-focused news should include in its offering: hope, agency and dignity. To these I have added 2-way relationship vs 1-way transaction — which may be viewed as part of both dignity and agency. But I add separately because this calls on, in fact requires, journalists more and more to do something utterly transgressive for journalists — and which Ripley does with this first-person piece in which she functions as both a journalist and a news consumer/reader. .
Regarding the power of hope, agency and dignity she provides compare-and-contrast examples that are doable and inspiring. Included in the story are several resources and links that are informative and useful. I share this one:
There aren’t many major news outlets systematically creating news for humans yet, but one that I admire (and now subscribe to) is the Christian Science Monitor. Each issue features reporting from around the globe, vivid photos, brutal realities — right alongside hope, agency and dignity. Stories include a brief explainer called “Why we wrote this,” treating readers like respected partners.
It’s a kind of low-ego, high-curiosity journalism that I’ve started trying to emulate in my own work. I don’t always succeed. It can feel uncomfortable to, for example, let listeners dictate the subject of the podcast I host. But last month, I spent four hours at an antiabortion rally with a camera crew and did something I’d never done before: I just tried to understand, deeply, what people told me. I didn’t try to extract the most chilling quote or the vivid, ironic anecdote. I just asked deeper questions, without judgment. It felt less transactional, more human. I also felt more informed.
So, as we brace ourselves for the coming midterms, variants and cataclysms, here’s my plea to all my fellow journalists: Please send a search party for the 42 percent of Americans who are avoiding the news. We can’t all be wrong. Or oversensitive or weak. And we might just be you.
The Christian Science Monitor is a long-highly regarded, award-winning 114-year-old non-profit daily international newspaper based in Boston. Though founded by Mary Baker Eddy and still affiliated via funding with the Church of Christ, Scientist, the Monitor’s news operation is run independently from the church.
A digital subscription is $11/month, and you can try the Monitor Daily free for a month.
Here’s a sample Monitor piece, from this week’s news:
On a day of division, and beyond, a challenge to remain fair
I am just trying the Christian Science Monitor, myself, and would value your sharing any comments or experiences you have with it.
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Moving more briefly to the right-column items…
#6. “The present day shows with appalling clarity how little able people are to let the other’s argument count, although this capacity is fundamental and indispensable for any human community.”
(G.C. Jung, 1916. “The Transcendent Function,” from Volume 8 of his Collected Works, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche.)
This quote from Jung highlights a core depth-psychology concept that applies in many areas of newShrink tracking of the (unconscious) soul in the news and the people in it. In commentary, discourse and debate on contentious issues, this essential transcendent function of holding the tension of opposites can be most simply understood as holding the opposite pole, acknowledging accurately the position of the other. This is stated as essential, because without it no positive resolution can be created. That’s in the external world, in every kind of debate and discourse. And it applies similarly to the need for us to hold and openly regard what we are consciously aware of, most decisive or sure about as well as allow for and attend to what may be happening or arising from the ever-present unconscious psyche or soul.
The next two weeks’ editions of newShrink will bring a depth psychology perspective in looking at several people both in the news and arts and those who are writers/creators. Important concepts will include: this tension of the opposites (such as psychological masculinity and femininity), individuation and increasing psychological maturity throughout the adult lifespan. There will also be a look at familiar archetypal patterns, in the form of familiar “characters,” recognizable among the people in today’s news scenarios.
#7. David Brooks’ The Second Mountain (and/or “the résumé self?”)
The NYT columnist and author with his latest book, the closest he’s yet come to a real memoir, is pictured because he will be a prominent, though not the only, subject of next week’s deeper dive into the “who” of news. Some of you may recall that I’ve been closely reading and following Brooks in both his roles of opinion pundit and book author, as a subject of study interest from a depth-psychology standpoint for about the past decade. (I do not choose these subjects, but rather vice versa! Often, as is the case with Brooks, they are public figures or artists with whom something for me doesn’t fit somehow … or, as in the psychotherapy room, there is psychological intensity/energy there that is trying to go somewhere… and/or I find the person both unbearably annoying and impossible to ignore and in some ways positively impressive.)
I’ll be engaging with this book and his previous ones alongside a range of his NYT columns as well as a healthy supply of news stories in which he is the subject. Particular depth psychology themes will likely be: tension of the opposites, his recent series of initiatory crisis “threshold” experiences and resulting individuation (or lack of it.) This latter especially applies to that binary of our (sinful selfish) “résumé” vs (virtuous/moral) “eulogy” version of us, which Brooks himself set up in his previous book, The Road to Character. (The depth psychology view on this, and mine, differ from Brooks’ in a simple but substantive way.)
Also along the tension of opposites theme, next week I hope to excerpt and comment on several of the New York Times’ recent “I was wrong about ————” columns by opinion writers (including Brooks) who revisit and rewrite what they wish they’d said in a previous column.
A working title for next week: What’s in a Name? 7.31.22 /The Power of Brand, Authority, and Who Tells the Story
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And yes, up next on the illustration that is Crawdads author Delia Owens again, with a scene from her novel’s marsh setting. This is another whose contradictions/opposites (summarized some last week) are still nagging. The depth-psychology focus for me with her, the book, and its character is on what gigantic mass unconscious response she in her work has evoked, with millions of readers — around themes of such great potential impact, for people and even for our beleaguered planet, if brought to consciousness.
More generally the depth-psychology focus for that 8.7.22 edition will be on familiar archetypal patterns — named for familiar current roles and characters we all can recognize and relate to — that show up in both news scenarios like the January 6 hearings and in fiction.
Working title for the week after next:
#8. What’s in a Voice? 8.7.22/Characters, Archetypes, the Power of “Who”
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The closing item is in that spirit of hope, from Ripley’s news made for humans model, with the quote from Alain Badiou at bottom right in the above illustration, and this one here:
#9. “Love is a tenacious adventure… Real love is one that triumphs lastingly, sometimes painfully, over the hurdles erected by time, space and the world.”
Excerpts here are from an essay by Maria Popova in her Marginalian newsletter. (An aside that makes me chuckle: About the time some smug hubris in still-another David Brooks column has me seething, I must smile to read him say that he, too, regularly reads and values Maria Popova’s Marginalian, and even my cherished poet David Whyte. Shadow and… a little hope!)
From Popova:
Unlike Tolstoy and Gandhi, who advocated for cultivating an expansive platonic love of one another, and unlike Martin Luther King, Jr., who pointed to the Ancient Greek notion of agape as the kind of love that would cut off the chain of hate between human beings, Badiou advocates for the truth-enlarging value of the most intimate kind of love — the soul afire eros of romance.
I recommend the full Popova essay, which includes wonderfuol art and links to other sources on the subject (such as poet Mary Oliver, on love’s necessary wildness.)
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And speaking of hope, I’ll leave you with a new take and unique angle — from the keen eye and camera of Virginia friend and reader Barbara Barnett.
And, that is all I have! Talk to you next week.
🦋💙 tish
•🌀🔵🔷🦋💙
… it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
— William Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”
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