I wrote this piece on media polarisation and the role that anchors play, and why trust in the media is at an all time low, for the FPJ
In the last two years, since the lockdown began, most of us have become even more dependent on news feeds on traditional as well as social media platforms. In our sense of isolation from the world at large, news platforms have almost become a lifeline to the outside world. Doomscrolling was a word that evolved during the pandemic, that looked at the attitudes of audiences who exhibited “the tendency to continue to surf or scroll through bad news, even though that news is saddening, disheartening, or depressing.”
One look at the news streams put out by the mass media, you would think that the world is burning. Across the world, what all of us get to hear about is how terrible humanity is. Be it the efficacy of vaccines, or the right to wear a hijab, the nature of taxation, or mandates to mask – there are pitched battles of opinion, and the media sees this as the opportunity to lay more traps for audiences. We hear about pitched ideological battles between the flag bearers of the left and the right. We hear about the ideological splitting of hairs, and judgements pronounced on what is acceptable and what is not. We get shown the behaviour of the worst amongst us and see that getting mainstreamed as a reflection on all of us. And, then there are the unfiltered biases, rumours, and outright lies that are put out to meet the unquenchable demands of the viewership race. It is little wonder, the world over, trust in media is at an all time low.
The Reuters Institute Digital News Report (2021) had some interesting findings insofar as the consumption of news, and the trust in news organisations are concerned. While the Nordic countries showed a relatively high rate of trust in news (just over 50%) most other nations performed poorly. In the United States of America trust levels were as low as 29%. In India, trust in the media was 38%, and in the United Kingdom it was 36%. All three are democracies that have faced intense political differences over the last two decades, and it is evident that the media has taken sides to such an extent, that the supporters on one side do not trust the media labelled as being on the other side. And this level of polarisation, and media affiliations, bodes ill both for the media and for the future of democracy.
All this has led to one of the most core precepts of a society to be threatened – the ability to agree on a common set of facts. A common understanding of the ‘truth’. And the media’s obsession with cornering the attention economy , has led to a situation where the world that is projected is full of screaming people, pitched battles, and hatred. In all this, truth is the major victim.
Let us look at some examples around the “Hijab/Burqa” row in Karnataka. There is no agreement on whether the ban on the Hijab/Burqa is at the school level – where uniforms are mandatory – or the college level – where they are not. There are ‘left’ wing affiliated journalists and platforms that publicized a video of right-wing students allegedly taking down the tricolour and hoisting the saffron flag. There were right-wing affiliated news platforms and handles running stories of the one of the young women in a burqa, wearing western clothes on her social media feed. Both news stories were fake. Yet they were both massively consumed by the respective ecosystems, and very few of them will believe the truth, even after the stories have been proven to be fake.
How do we break out of this? There are a few ways. The first is to consume less news. You will honestly become a happier, and a more secure person if your news consumption decreases. The second is to read multiple sources of news – including regional news. The third is to avoid watching news shows based on debate. The purpose of those is a shouting match to engage the audience – people on those shows are brought in more for entertainment value, than any body of knowledge they may have. And, lastly, try and consume an epaper (or a physical newspaper) with the entire set of daily news – across all sections. And, then while the world may look like it has some serious problems, it doesn’t look like it is going to collapse and implode by end of day.
The model adopted by most media houses is still advertising. And advertising revenues are dependent on audience numbers. Viewers like being shocked. We like bad news. We like the sense of both a real and an existentialist threat. And the media provides it in droves. For the more they provide the threat, the more we are likely to consume news to understand if that threat is coming home to disrupt our lives. And, therefore, the only way to get the media to change is to send a very clear message to the media, by drastically reducing consumption. News in today’s world, is junk food for the brain. And we need to treat it as such – limit its consumption for our own wellbeing.