🌊 The Curse of the 24/7 News Cycle

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By Max Towey

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. 

It’s 7 PM on a Tuesday and your phone buzzes. You look down at your phone with excitement. What could it be? A text from a friend? A “buy two larges get one large free” promo deal from Domino’s? Your creepy neighbor trying to airdrop you a picture of his feet?

But no – it’s something worse. Your phone is lighting up with headlines.

“Record, life-threatening heat wave sweeps across the country. Stay indoors!”

“Homeless man lights woman on fire in New York subway; released two hours later”

“Iran bombs Israel as fears of WW3 abound”

Just what you needed: A few quick hits of anxiety as you try to unwind from a busy work day. To distract yourself, you turn on the TV and flip through the channels. You end up on Fox News.

They’re doing a piece on how the Blue M&M is now trans and migrants are murdering children. You go up one channel to CNN, and there an anchor is haranguing a guest for deadnaming Pearl Milling syrup “Aunt Jemima.” Your blood pressure rises further as you flip to MSNBC where Rachel Maddow is power ranking dictators – and struggling with the Mussolini vs. Trump matchup. But then you finally catch a break: MSNBC cuts to a Pfizer ad marketing a new anti-anxiety pill.

Tragically, the above is hardly satire. It’s the reality of the 24/7 news cycle. 

The 24/7 news cycle has proven to be a lucrative disaster. While cable companies have raked in views and online outlets have harvested clicks, Americans have become ever more polarized and the victims of soaring anxiety rates. These companies know we can’t help but click on the headline about a homeless man lighting a woman on fire – so they give us that story, despite knowing it’s dark information that most would likely be better without. 

It’s like one of America’s other great inventions: Ultraprocessed fast food. We know it’s killing us but… that Gordita Crunch wrap looks irresistible. 

One of our core principles at RocaNews is that less news is more. We intentionally limit the amount of news we publish so that you’re not getting a steady drip of doom and gloom from the world all day. That’s not natural, and it shouldn’t be normal.

But how did it become normal? Who changed the news and why? And what are the consequences? Time for some history.

On June 1, 1980, Ted Turner’s Cable News Network (CNN) flickered to life, beaming out headlines from a makeshift newsroom in Atlanta. Few in the media establishment took it seriously at first. “Why would anybody choose to watch a patched-together news operation that’s just starting against an organization like ours that’s been going for fifty years?” CBS News president Bill Leonard scoffed during CNN’s early days. Leonard would soon be proven wrong.

Editor’s Note

Thanks for reading. We’re curious to hear your takes on the 24/7 news cycle. Given the power of social media today, is it possible to dial back the spread of news? Is that something society should strive for? We founded Roca to fix this problem. What else should we be doing? Let us know by replying here. 

And if you’re looking for more weekend reading, find our latest stories below:

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Enjoy your weekends. See you tomorrow.

—Max and Max