Danielle Preiss Speaks with NPR Media Critic Eric Deggans.

Eric Deggans: We’re in a media ecosystem where the viewers have more power than they’ve ever had. Individual people have the ability to see something on television or experience something on social media and then broadcast their own thoughts about it with no editor or no gatekeeper and then that thought can be picked up by other people if they think it’s significant and it can become a major talking point for the nation or for the world.
           
I think that power requires the audience to be more careful about what it patronizes and to be more rigorous about what it takes in and what it supports. If Fox News didn’t make money doing what it does, it wouldn’t do it.
           
I’m quite sure that Rupert Murdoch and some of his family are ideologically friendly to conservative ideas, they wouldn’t be supporting such an extremist partisan news network if it wasn’t making a ton of money and it wouldn’t be making a ton of money if there weren’t a ton of people watching it and tolerating the misinformation and disinformation that they surely know they’re being fed.
           
At some point, it’s on the citizen, it’s on the viewer, it’s on the audience member to stand up for democracy and stand up for press freedom and stand up for the truth and reject messages that are obviously fraudulent.

Danielle Preiss: Eric Deggans, in so many ways 2020 was a year of just doom and gloom in the news and the news cycle hasn’t seemed to have let up all that much. Is it just that the news really is worse than it has been at previous points in history or are other things going on here too?

ED: That’s a good question. I’d say we have some singular events of course; the pandemic and its ongoing effects, the radicalization of one of America’s major political parties, the attempt by a President who lost a fair election to try to overthrow those results and the support that that President got from areas of media, areas of Congress, areas of politics, we’re still grappling with that. There are a lot of things about this time that are singularly disturbing.
           
But we also live in a media culture that thrives on bringing all of this to your doorstep or to your phone or to your tablet or to your television set in a way that we haven’t seen before. While we’re also living in a time where there have been some singularly troubling events, we also live in a media culture that constantly brings this stuff to your doorstep every day, every minute of every day and so we’re more impacted by it. We’re more aware of it.
           
One of the things that strikes me about a media consumer in the 1960s, you’d watch the evening news and read the newspaper, but you didn’t have a constant barrage of news updates telling you about the worst things that were happening in the world at that moment all the time and that’s what we have now. I don’t think we have fully realized or grappled with the implications of that and what it does to people, how it traumatizes them and how it changes their perception of the world, changes their perception of the news, changes their perception of society. We haven’t begun to grapple with those questions.

DP: I’m a news junkie. I love Twitter and even sometimes I feel like I want to scroll past some things and not engage in upsetting news all the time. As individuals, is it wrong to do that? If someone feels that their mental health is affected, is it okay sometimes to just say, “I don’t want to know right now”?

ED:  Oh yes, you absolutely have to consume media responsibly and intentionally. You absolutely have to do that, cable news in particular. The way cable TV news works is that it is constantly trying to engage you by using conflict and by using fear to get you to pay attention. When you put on Fox News or CNN or MSNBC in the background while you’re at work or while you’re in the waiting room of some office, you’re getting this constant barrage of fear and conflict that you don’t even realize is agitating you.
           
You get to the end of the day, and you feel like crap about how the world is and you don’t really understand because you’ve been getting a constant barrage of messaging that has been trying to engage your attention by pushing your buttons about fear and pushing your buttons about conflict and pushing your buttons about anger through the whole day.
           
I was constantly telling people when the pandemic was first kicking off and people were glued to the TV set to find out about the latest iteration of how things were going in New York or how things were going wherever. I was constantly saying, “Dip in until you feel like you know what’s going on and then stop watching it.” It’s damaging and you have to learn to limit your exposure to that kind of agitation otherwise you’ll walk around depressed about the state of the world and you won’t understand why you feel that way.
           
The other thing I constantly tell people is that if you think back in history, if you think back to the 1960s, in the 1960s, we had the Bay of Pigs invasion where we almost had nuclear war with the Soviet Union. We had the assassination of a President. We had the assassination of a major Civil Rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr. We had the assassination of another major Civil Rights leader in Malcolm X. We had the assassination of RFK when he was running for President, and we had the Vietnam War going on and we had riots in American cities over Civil Rights issues. All of that was happening in the 1960s.
           
As bad as things are for us today, we have not had four major American figures in politics and Civil Rights killed within ten years of each other. There have been points in America where the daily news has been much worse. It’s been much more calamitous. It seemed much more like America was about to go off the rails, but the nation didn’t have this pervasive sense that everything was declining the way it does now because we didn’t have this 24/7 news and media structure constantly bringing the worst of what is happening in the day to our doorstep every day.

I find it troubling and surprising that people are looking at what’s happening now and they’re like, “Oh my god, it’s never been worse!” I’m like “really?” That’s the other thing, we have this media that is delivering all this material to use, and we have an American public that is ignorant of history. Some of this is a matter of perspective and some of this is a matter of understanding history and some of this is a matter of grappling with the effects of our media structure on us and the ways in which it is encouraging American to beat itself in a way that is horrifying.

One of the things that people want is a quick solution, a quick solution that can be implemented by a decisive leader or a company changing what it does or an industry deciding to change. I don’t think that’s what’s going to solve a lot of our problems with media. What’s going to solve a lot of our problems with media is if the audience changes. People have to choose to reject that stuff.

Danielle Preiss interviews Dr. Dana Rose Garfin, Assistant Professor of Community Health Sciences at UCLA

Danielle Preiss:  Dr. Garfin, you’ve done research focusing on how media coverage of crises can lead to greater anxiety and poorer health. Could you talk about this research a bit?

Dana Rose Garfin: Alright, the research that my colleague and I have been doing has explored the relationship between media exposure to collective trauma and when we think of collective trauma, we can think of large-scale events that impact the populous broadly through both direct means as well as indirect means which is if you knew someone who was close to the event or through the media.
           
We have found in a series of studies that media exposure is a particularly potent predictor of distress syndrome and that includes symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder and importantly that’s symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder not necessarily post traumatic stress disorder. We’ve also found that exposure associated with symptoms of anxiety and depression. Media exposure has also been associated with long term physical health ailments such as increased risk of cardiovascular disease.

DP: Could you talk a bit specifically about the research that you and your colleagues conducted on American’s reactions to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings?

DRG: Yes, in the study of the Boston Marathon bombings, we assess people who live in Boston who live in New York because many of those folks had been exposed to the 9/11 terrorist attacks as well as people from across the United States. What we found was that individuals who were exposed to high levels of media coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings exhibited higher levels of acute stress disorder. Acute stress can be thought of as early symptoms of post traumatic stress. The symptoms are very similar. You have reexperiencing symptoms, you might have memories of the event, flashbacks, nightmares and so forth.

Even people who had only been exposed through the media, if they had experienced extremely high levels of media exposure, some of them reported higher distress than even people who were at the event.

DP:  Oh wow, that’s really interesting. I wouldn’t have thought that that would have been the case. It seems very counterintuitive.

DRG:  It does, but when you think about it from a neurobiological perspective, it can make sense. When you’re watching media coverage of an event, you’re seeing that over and over again, so it’s really becoming imbedded in the neurobiology of the brain.

If you were perhaps near an event or you knew someone at the event, you could have only been exposed to it at that time. It allows the brain and the body to have a natural recovery process. A lot of times people will experience heightened distress while something is happening or in the immediate aftermath, but from an evolutionary perspective, we need to be able to go on with life and adapt. Most people are quite resilient even after traumatic events, however when you’re exposed to something over and over again, it can really become biologically embedded in your neurological circuitry and in that way, it can be extremely reinforcing.

DP:  Dr. Dana Rose Garfin, can we talk about doom scrolling? I’m very guilty of this. I actually remember very specifically the Boston Marathon bombings because I remember that was the first time that I was really consuming news on Twitter. I was just feeding off it so hard that I was looking for the updates constantly. That was the first time that I had followed a news story in that way. Is it really all that bad? If I don’t notice that I feel bad after a doom scrolling session, am I in the clear or am I storing up stress and anxiety that I don’t realize?

DRG:  There is a lot of variability between people. Some people are just naturally more resilient to stress and some people are naturally more susceptible to negative physical and mental health outcomes from stress exposure. This can also relate to other things that are going on in one’s life or things that have happened in the past. If your life is going pretty well and you’re following a news story, you might not be as distressed by it.
           
If you are experiencing a lot of personal stress, perhaps related to something like the pandemic or a divorce or you’re in a relationship with a lot of interpersonal violence or you’re having financial struggles or other types of things in your life, you might be more susceptible to negative impacts of doom scrolling or the media. There is a lot of variability that occurs within someone’s life dispositionally, however we do know that on average over time when people are exposed to more media coverage of an event, they tend to exhibit more stress.
           
We would recommend that people limit their doom scrolling also knowing that it is designed to be addictive. People design these apps, they design these websites to keep people engaged. Once you get involved in reading about something, it can be really hard to turn it off. You get updates on your phone. Your phone dings. You check your messages and it’s a news update. It’s a news update about a story that you’re interested in and that you’ve been following. It can make it really hard to pull back from that.

DP:  On the flip side of that, I’m a news junkie and I really do enjoy following the news very intensely, even I feel lately like sometimes I just want to scroll past some things and not engage in upsetting news all the time. Is it wrong to do that? Isn’t it a luxury to be able to ignore the news?

DRG:  Well, I think there is a pretty big difference between repeated exposure to disturbing news coverage of an event and staying informed about what’s going on in the world. We also know from research that my colleagues and I have done that repeated exposure to disturbing images of an event is also associated with high stress responses. So, it’s not just how much media you’re consuming, but it’s what you’re consuming.

You can think; does watching that same horrifying image of the pregnant woman who ultimately died being carried away from the hospital in Ukraine during the Russian Ukraine War, does that provide you any new information by watching that image over and over again?
           
There are certainly other ways to educate oneself and stay informed about a geopolitical crisis, what’s going on, the history behind it, if someone is really interested in learning about that that could serve to help inform you more without necessarily being more psychologically distressing and potentially creating negative impacts on physical and mental health over time.

DP: Is there anything that I missed or anything else that you want to add?

DRG: I would really encourage people to check in with themselves like what you were saying and see how they are feeling after they watch the news and to choose wisely about where they’re getting their information from, what they’re being exposed to and also to take time for self-care during these times of uncertainty and social upheaval.

Danielle Preiss interviews Ja’Nel Johnson Phillips with Solutions Journalism Network

Danielle Preiss: Ja’Nel Johnson Phillips, what is Solutions Journalism?

Ja’Nel Johnson Phillips: That’s a great question. Solutions journalism is a way of reporting that looks at responses to social issues not just the social issue itself, not just the problem.

DP: Is this a new concept? How did it come about?

JJP: Well, Solutions Journalism Network has been around since 2013, but we are very upfront about the fact that we did not invent solutions journalism. Solutions journalism or stories that focus on solutions, they’ve been around for a very long time. People have always been interested in and deeply invested in what’s going on in their own communities. What are officials and representatives doing to try to fix issues within their communities, within the state? Solutions journalism has been around for a while.

DP:  You know, there is this very strong perception that the news is all based on “If it bleeds it leads,” and that we’re really interested in the problems and the bad stuff, but also that’s what’s making it difficult to be news consumers when we’re constantly confronted with these problems. I’m wondering if there is an appetite for this journalism when it’s not exactly the lens that we are used to.

JJP:  Absolutely. Absolutely there is an appetite for it. Solutions Journalism Network has what we call a story tracker. Journalists can submit their stories into the tracker and then sometimes we just got across those stories and we put them into our tracker. The story tracker has thousands of stories from hundreds of journalists all around the world. It’s not just a United States thing, it’s a global thing. We want everyone to be able to come into contact with solutions journalism and to try to really make it part of the fabric of what they do.
           
The news cycle does tend to be negative at times. We’ve seen a lot of news fatigue over the last decade or so. Of course, from what I’ve read, now we have this 24-hour news cycle. You always have news at your fingertips if you have your cellular device. We’re always on the internet. Even if you’re not specifically looking for news, in one way or another you come across the news. Sometimes it’s not always news that you want to see. What we consume has an effect on our mental and emotional state. A lot of times people are avoiding news because they are tired of the negativity.
           
Research has shown that people walk away after reading or listening to journalism solutions stories feeling different than they do if they just read a problem-focused story. Not only do they feel more informed, but they also feel uplifted. They feel hopeful and part of that is because the story doesn’t just stop at the problem, boom and that’s it. They say here is the problem and here is what is being done about it.
           
In 2021, we released some research with Smith/Geiger. It looked at six markets in the United States. They interviewed over 600 people and basically what they found out was that solutions journalism has more audience appeal. People found the solutions stories to be more interesting, more trustworthy, deep and uplifting and less upsetting than problem-focused stories.
           
They also found that there was greater impact. The solution stories change peoples understanding of issues and inspires them to get involved.

DP: Joining us today on Peace Talks Radio is Ja’Nel Johnson Phillips, Western Region Manger for Solutions Journalism Network.
           
Ja’Nel, as a journalist, how do you handle the stress and trauma of the news cycle because you don’t really have the choice to tune it out or to ignore it.

JJP: You know, I was in the newsroom up until February of 2021. At that point I came to Solutions Journalism. In the last year how I’ve been able to deal with being a journalist was actually to take a pause. When I was in the newsroom, there were several ways that I would cope. A lot of it was that when I went home, I just did not watch the news. I would just totally tune out because you sit there for eight or more hours, depending on what’s going on, you could have early mornings or late nights, so I just had to say to myself, “When I go home, I really need to detach,” taking time to recharge, therapy, spending time with good people away from work.

DP: Coming back to solutions journalism, I’m wondering if you could give an example of a negative news story and how it has been approached from a solutions journalism standpoint.

JJP: I would say to utilize Solutions Journalism Network Story Tracker. The Story Tracker has thousands of stories on a number of different topics. If you go to the Story Tracker and type in “gun violence prevention,” that’s a very tough topic to cover. I just did a quick little search for gun violence prevention in the Story Tracker. I found a story in our Tracker from ABC News entitled “Lessons from a violence interrupter as shootings continue to ravish Chicago.” The subhead line said, “Reggie Woods was part of the problem. Now he’s on the frontlines of prevention.”
           
The story talks about how this violence interrupter model started in Chicago in 1995 and how over the last 15 years it’s been adopted by major cities across the country. The story takes the opportunity and even poses the question, “Has this approach worked?” It takes you through and answers that question for you.
           
Going to the Story Tracker, you will find so many examples on so many different topics, whether it’s gun violence, climate change, black maternal health, in different ways. Whether it’s people, communities, organizations, city officials have gone about to try to alleviate or fix that problem.