Why are more and more people avoiding the news? • FRANCE 24 English

Why are more and more people avoiding the news? • FRANCE 24 English

It’s time now for scoop, our weekly conversation on international media and the political and economic headwinds confronting the industry. We look at who shapes a narrative, explore journalistic ethics, and ask the reporters the difficult questions. With trust in the press at a nadier, it’s a critical eye on a critical profession. [Music] Some people like to say no news is good news. I can’t count the number of people from family to friends, neighbors to acquaintances who tell me they don’t watch the news. Much of their sentiment can be summed up by this satirical AI video made by Neural Viz. Breaking news. Everything is bad. It’s just as terrible as you imagined and probably worse. With more, we go to Tom Lee Cruz. Tomley, we’re all in danger, Danley. Jesus Christ. What can we do? Absolutely nothing. It was good knowing you, Tom. I can’t say the same. That was unnecessary. We’re just now getting in reports that all the children have exploded. They will be missed. Let’s check in with Olivia Lee Rodrigo. Olivia Lee, where are you? That’s none of your business. Do you hear that? Cut the music. Do you hear that? What do you hear? That’s the sound of us slowly dying. Can you hear it? I can hear it. It’s louder in my left ear. Now, ideally, the press is there to inform and provide critical analysis. But for decades, in virtually any country you go to, it’s also accused of pandering to its readers, feeding them either what they want or what will keep them coming back. I’m reminded of this clip from the old but great British political satire sitcom Yes. Prime Minister. The only way to understand the press is to remember that they pander to their readers prejudices. Don’t tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country. The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country. I’m prime minister. What about the people who read the sun? Sun readers don’t care who runs the country as long as she’s got big tits. Well, headlines are often depressing. The state of the world in many places is infuriating. And this has an effect on all of us. Take a look. Breaking news. The saying goes, the news never sleeps. But with so much at our fingertips, it’s easy to get fatigued. News fatigue is defined as a state of emotional and mental exhaustion and it’s caused by consuming or being exposed to a large amount of news, especially negative or distressing news. Dr. Don Grant points to the rise of smartphones and the 24/7 news cycle as turning points. Now, social media can deliver headline after headline with little context and sometimes from sources that lack credibility. And this isn’t anecdotal. There’s data from around the world on news fatigue and its weight. Last month’s digital news report found that the proportion of people with high interest in news has fallen across every age group. And that study from 17 different markets covering Europe, parts of the Americas, Australia, and Japan. Worldwide, the average is 40% say they sometimes or often avoid the news. That’s up from 29% in 2017. That is the highest figure ever recorded along with last year. Avoidance is highest in Bulgaria, lowest in Nordic countries as well as in Taiwan and Japan. And the top reasons for avoidance was that news has a negative effect on people’s moods, followed by the feeling of being worn out and then too much coverage of conflict or politics. For more, let’s bring in our guest, Professor Charlie Beckett, head of the journalis head of journalism and AI project at the London School of Economics. Hello to you, Charlie. you for joining Scoop. Um, first of all, why is there so much news fatigue and and what is news fatigue? Well, whether there’s more of it, I’m not sure, but I think it’s basically because there’s much more news around than there has ever been before. And as was mentioned in one of those little clips you you had, you’re not just getting it by sitting down and watching France Lancer on the TV. You’re getting it on social media. And when you get on social media, it’s right on your smartphone often. So it’s there in amongst all the other lovely things that you’re doing. You’re doing your shopping, you’re talking to your friends, perhaps you’re working, and then the news comes after you. Uh there’s this desperate competition out there where everybody wants your attention. Uh and that includes news organizations. They desperately want you to click, to pay attention, and to share news content. So it’s kind of overwhelming. And the irony is that the people perhaps like the viewers of this program, the people who are interested in news and they do consume it regularly, they’re the ones that actually express uh more harm, more distress, more dissatisfaction. Um and I think actually then when they do avoid the news, that’s actually a good thing. I don’t think we should call it news avoidance. I think we should call it people seeking to have a healthy news diet. Just in the same way that we try and avoid overeating, we try and avoid eating bad things. Uh we try and eat healthily in a positive way. I think we should do the same with the news. I like that character characterization news in in moderation because some of what the experts are pointing out is that the the the best way to treat this sort of fatigue is to take a break. And I’m just wondering in today’s modern world and how globalized things are, some of the professions don’t allow us to take a break, do they? That’s right. Um, as I said, there is this constant effort to prompt you. And often it’s from your friends. It’ll be your friends saying, uh, hey, look, I I’ve seen this amazing thing or I’ve seen this distressing thing and I want you to share in my news consumption. I want you to have a look at this as well. you kind of feel obliged because they’re your friends. And I think it’s important to remember that yes, uh, journalism or news is there supposedly to give us information, to give us facts, and that’s really important things. What do you need to know today? You need to know the weather. Perhaps you need to know about the changing tax rules in your country. Uh, perhaps you are concerned about what’s happening with that teenager in Iran. It’s a distressing uh story. Uh but I think it’s important to think that you’re often reacting emotionally to the news. You care about that teenager in Iran because it’s really sad. You feel great sympathy uh for the child and or the young man and his parents. Um and you often feel uh stories that you are affected because perhaps you’re a French person and there’s a story about Macron. So you’re feeling personally that your identity is at stake. And I think that’s important to remember that people are responding to the news already in an emotional way and the news itself is very emotional. Yeah. And part of that is backed up by research. I’ve seen studies saying that we’re hardwired to identify threats and some of this negative news alerts that sort of uh reaction elicits that reaction inside of us. Um Charlie, just wondering like you’re you’re a journalist. Why? For our viewers that aren’t familiar with journalism, that old phrase, if it bleeds, it leads. Tell us why that is such a strong catchphrase in journalism and and should be you mentioned it. It’s kind of human instinct. We all know that we react much more immediately to something that’s frightening. And there’s a really good reason for that. It goes right back to prehistoric times that it keeps us safe. you know, if we’re aware of bad things out there, then perhaps we’re less likely to be hurt. The difference, of course, with journalism, you know, something like, you know, France Vanc, you know, you’re talking about things are happening thousands of miles away sometimes. So, is it really relevant? We did some research a year or two ago where we looked at how people uh clicked on news articles and we could see that the news articles that had very negative headlines, they got the most clicks. That’s not so surprising. But the news stories that had more positive content in them were the ones that got more prolonged engagement. So people read them through. So yes, you know, being uh fearful and frightening is a great way to get somebody’s attention, but if you actually want to hold their attention and get them to, you know, listen to you or to, you know, go through your article and read it properly, then you’ve got to stop frightening them and give them something more interesting, something more meaningful, perhaps something that includes a positive element to it. Yeah. and this news fatigue or the the the impact of of it. It affects the readers or the viewers, but it also affects a journalist and the editors working on the material, doesn’t it? Yeah, absolutely. And you know, the the emotional labor of of of journalism can be very distressing. And it’s because when I was a journalist 20 years ago, you could, you know, you put your program out or you put your newspaper out and that was pretty much it. But now it’s continual. You’re working 24/7. And not just that, but your audience is constantly speaking back to you and other people are constantly speaking back to you on for on social media mainly and usually it’s quite negative. So, you know, you’re right in the middle of a kind of journalistic battlefield with lots of people who have different opinions uh and don’t particularly or some of them who don’t particularly like the way you’ve reported. So there’s a lot of pressure upon journalists and when I talk to them they they’re very keen actually not to always be negative. They say you know we are trying really hard to include uh positive elements more inspirational elements in our storytelling. I’ll give you one example. uh you know remember the terrible uh terrorist in incident in uh Paris, you know the Batclan nightclub uh attacks, absolutely distressing. But there was also some really inspiring stories that people had gone back and were trying to help rescue other people. And I spoke to, you know, a news program that was covering it at the time and they said they got far more uh traffic and attention from the public for those inspirational stories as they did for the stories of destruction and pain. So I think you know we the world is not all negative and so journalism needs to reflect some of the positive aspects as well. I’m not talking about happy clappy news, you know, it’s all lovely and everything’s great and here’s a funny story about a funny dog. Um, I’m talking about trying to show a bit more variety of the human experience. Yeah, we’ll get to that in a moment. I just want to get your reaction on a study real quickly. Another tragedy, the Boston, the terror attack on the Boston uh marathon. Um Allison Hullman from the University of California was working on a study of mental health at the time in 2013. coincidentally coinciding with that attack. Here’s the write up from the BBC. Uh, quote, “By chance, there were some people in the study who had firsthand experience of the bombings, and it was indeed true that their mental health suffered. But there was also a twist. Another group had been even more badly shaken. Those who had not seen the explosion in person, but had consumed six or more hours of news coverage per day in the week afterwards.” Charlie, that challenges certain principles within psychology. It also challenges our notions of ju just how impactful our stories are uh in the newsroom. That’s right. You know, you often actually fear the the the the distant or the unknown more than you do what is present. I mean, a good example is around immigration. People often people who don’t have many immigrants living near them are the ones who fear the immigrants the most. And I suspect one of the reasons is because of very negative coverage of immigrants. you know, they’re supposed to be all taking our jobs and committing crimes and yet the people who know immigrants are less fearful of them. So indeed media has this way of setting an agenda, framing an agenda and of course playing to people’s uh fears and prejudices. Uh so there is a kind of responsibility there I think. Yeah. And back what to what you were saying earlier, some advocates are pushing for what’s called solutions based or solutions focused journalism. This can sound like a gimmick, but if you look at it closely, it’s just saying we’re going to take reporting beyond just highlighting a problem and try to find what alternatives there are. Is that right? That’s right. And it’s a real movement that has been pushed in the last 15 years or so. Actually, you know, this isn’t a a new problem at all. Um I think it’s it’s very good. I think journalists I think in a way it’s just good journalism actually that if all you do is spread fear and horror and distress then you are not representing uh the world properly. proper story tells you that in the round what is happening and that as I said with the batter clan story can in even the worst kind of story uh can include positive elements and part of the sort of constructive positive news technique is to do other things. It’s to give a bit of context to see well is this the worst ever thing that could have happened but then also to think of possible ways of addressing it. So, yep, we’ve got a problem with climate change. We’ve got terrible forest fires. We’ve got the terrible fires in Marseilles, for example. But, so, what can we do about this? What are the steps that people are taking both to prevent perhaps the fires directly, but also to what can we do? What can society do to address, for example, climate change? So it’s it’s not a question of suddenly, you know, uh completely going happy clappy and pretending that everything’s lovely in the world, but it is a question of trying to tell stories, I think, in a in a better journalistic way, digging a little bit deeper, going a bit more into the context, and absolutely this is critical, foregrounding the human element, you know, treating people with empathy and respect when they’re involved in the news, and also treating your audience with empathy and respect thinking about how your uh audience is going to react to things and whether also they understand. I think one of the worst things you can do is show distressing imagery or have horrible headlines and then you don’t explain what’s really going on. Uh again, research shows that the more people know about something, the less they’re going to be upset or or frightened by it. Uh good words to end on. Charlie, thank you so much for your time. Charlie Beckett, professor at the London School of Economics. Thank you. And that brings us to our quote of the week, and it comes from a New Yorker cartoon. You either love them or hate them. This one is from Barbara Smaller on April 22nd. Quote, “You do realize that just because you stopped watching the news doesn’t mean it stopped happening.” That’s it for this edition of Scoop. Thank you for watching and please stay tuned to Friends 24. [Music]

The 2025 Digital News Report has found that the proportion of people with a high interest in news has fallen across every age group. Avoidance comes with a lack of trust and engagement. Some journalists advocate practicing “solutions-focused” journalism. FRANCE 24’s media show Scoop discusses all this and more with Professor Charlie Beckett, head of the Journalism and AI project at the London School of Economics.
#news #journalism #informationfatigue

Read more about this story in our article: https://f24.my/BJA4.y

🔔 Subscribe to France 24 now: https://f24.my/YTen
🔴 LIVE – Watch FRANCE 24 English 24/7 here: https://f24.my/YTliveEN

🌍 Read the latest International News and Top Stories: https://www.france24.com/en/

Like us on Facebook: https://f24.my/FBen
Follow us on X: https://f24.my/Xen
Bluesky: https://f24.my/BSen and Threads: https://f24.my/THen
Browse the news in pictures on Instagram: https://f24.my/IGen
Discover our TikTok videos: https://f24.my/TKen
Get the latest top stories on Telegram: https://f24.my/TGen