By Jim Heffernan
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about “the news” and hope.
I’ve been talking to people, and I often find we have very different opinions. When I ask the question, “Where do you get your information?” the answer always seems to be YouTube or some news network.
I’ve totally sworn off watching or listening to any news. I find I’m too easily lulled into a point of view by a pleasant face and a smooth voice.
I know I’m happier because I made this choice. I like to think my views cut closer to the truth because I restrict myself to just reading the news, but I could be wrong. I’m a big fan of the scientific method and its premise that nobody is infallible.
Instead of passively absorbing the news, I read books and columns that grab my attention. I have my favorites on the left and on the right. I have to admit I don’t cross very far into the right. David French and David Brooks are my conservative favorites. Dan Rather, Robert Reich, Maureen Dowd, Michelle Cottle, Jim Hightower, and Nicholas Kristof are my left-side favorites. Don’t get me started on authors.
I am particularly partial to Nicholas Kristof. He grew up in the small town of Yamhill, just across the mountains from Tillamook. His book, “Tightrope”, captures how so many of his generation lost out on life through drug and alcohol addictions.A recent column of his makes a very valid point about hope*. Hope is not very popular as a news topic these days, but hope is what drives human progress.
I wonder why we seek out the doom and gloom news and ignore everything with a positive slant. Trump’s multiple trials are covered extensively, but the reduction in the cost of insulin triggered by the Inflation Reduction Act is largely ignored in our news coverage. Who cares? If you’re paying for insulin, it’s a very big deal.
Events in Gaza and Ukraine are tragedies that play out daily and deserve our attention. How many of us know of the highly successful PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan For Aids Relief) program that was started in 2003 by George W. Bush? It has saved at least 25 million lives and has reversed the decline in life expectancy in nearly 90 countries around the globe.
More children are surviving today than ever before in history. Largely, because diseases that used to kill children by the millions are either eradicated or greatly reduced.
Poverty is also at a lower level now than ever before in the history of the world.
I want to conclude that our “doom and gloom” journalism that pervades most of our media is motivated by simple greed for advertising dollars. Nothing sells so readily as fear. I do have to wonder if there isn’t somewhere an intent to infect us with a sense of disgust that makes us apathetic. The more of us who are apathetic, the more powerful the fringes become.
*NOTE: Kristof has just published a memoir – “Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life” – https://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Hope-Reporters-Nicholas-Kristof/dp/0593536568 Watch for a review soon!
