When the News is too New

            Think back to some news headlines you’ve read, heard on television, or were told about by a coworker during a slow day on the job. You will probably recall several titles suggesting some new up and coming breakthrough in healthcare that will spell the end of cancer, or a drastic political shift that will surely turn the tide of the entire nation, or perhaps even a charity that is doing great things to help end world poverty. Now think about the people that are still being diagnosed with cancer, the senators who are still voting in Trump’s favor, and the billions of people around the globe who are still struggling with crippling poverty. There seems to be a discrepancy here. I swear I remember reading in the second sentence of this post that we just fixed all of those things. Why are they still a problem?

            It turns out change is slow, and the news is on too damn often. For anyone in a long-term relationship, marriage, domestic partnership, or just has a roommate who is home all the time, you know that after a couple days of talking to each other day after day, you occasionally run out of new things to tell them.

“How was your day?”

            “Well, I had the day off of work, so I stayed home, and binge watched the first four seasons of Friends while eating cereal out of the box.”

            Yes, in this scenario your roommate is a complete deadbeat. But the point is, there is only so much going on in the world to talk about. Sometimes you hit a lull. The news is no different. If they actually did cure cancer, every news station would be reporting about it for weeks, but you can only cure widespread disease states so quickly, and so the rest of the time they just throw in little breakthroughs, or even just promising outlooks that haven’t actually been fully tested yet, because what else are they going to say. This Just in, Cancer is Still NOT Cured.

            The same goes for every facet of life. There may be some political shifts here and there, especially amid a small sample of a population, but for the most part, people stay just as aligned with their politics as they always have. Large shifts in ideals take place over generations. Millennials are clearly more accepting of gay marriage than baby boomers were, and we’re all more open to exposed legs than the people of the fourteenth century. Change happens, but it is not this overnight shift they try to portray. In the meantime, the news is stuck reporting on how people today have a less negative view on marijuana, although when it comes down to a vote, we see that plenty of people are still opposed to its legalization. There is simply not enough news for the news, just enough for an enticing headline.

            -AMS