We are locked in a constant battle where conflict and immediate answers to complex situations is what we seek. The capacity for a narrative to unfold over time and inform us of what is going on is lost in the shouting matches, gotcha moments, and forced shame of not looking good or sounding certain on camera. In this world you are not held accountable for being wrong or not knowing what you are talking about. If you speak with authority you are given authority because you are on television.

Why does cable news matter to this blog? The answer is that the narratives and subsequent behaviors of our culture are being driven by 24/7 news cycle and are not allowing us to think through the complexity of our place and time. In fact, the talking heads are shouting down complexity and replacing it with their opinions. As long as you have a poll to push, a heated piece of information, a group to affiliate with and advocate for, and/or a loud voice that can talk over others you can make a point. The accelerated pace of news and opinion in this dynamic creates a tension that is addictive. You want to be a part of the argument, choose a side, be in the know. But, unfortunately this style of putting out information is often not informative and mostly destructive.

We can feel this tension of trying to push through the desire for immediate answers and simple narratives that pit people and groups against each other in every case we take. Human beings are heat seeking missiles fueled on the immediacy of conflict. The corporate news executives driving the hourly narratives of the day know this and exploit it for ratings gain. John Podesta on Matt Yglesias’ blog post for Think Progress states:

On the cable networks, the intensity of conflict is what drives their shows, so everything is turned into a referendum,” said John D. Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress, who served as chief of staff for President Clinton and the co-chairman of the transition team for Mr. Obama. “It’s worse than it was four years ago, and its worse than it was four years before that. It’s on a new slope.

This “intensity of conflict” merging with real time technology in the form of cable news creates an impression that there is no resolution, only ongoing tension with little to no relief. You can feel this same tension where conflict is perpetuated in the mental health and family court systems. But, it is our media platforms that I believe are primarily driving the narrative of conflict with the focus on the sprint of a moment, rather than the long distance run of a lifetime.

A narrative to be positive and sustaining must possess details and facts that are based in how conflict arises and is then resolved through negotiation and compromise. If a situation cannot be resolved and the tension remains then the narrative should focus on why this is happening and where and when the parties involved have to let go and move on. The goal is to learn how to hold the tension and understand that conflict is a part of the ebb and flow of life, not what we seek most of the time. This process requires time, a moderate temperament, and an ability to hold complexity and tension for longer than a moment. There is no immediate gratification, or referendum in this approach, which is why our work is so difficult when trying to get people to resolve, not seek, conflict in the form of a referendum.

Referendums, like conflicts, are lived in the moment and addictive if sought out for their own sake. In the absence of a longer term, historical, perspective our lives feel like a series of conflicts because the intensity of them overshadows those times when we are able to resolve an issue, find peace and move forward with our lives. In article titled “Why You Shouldn’t Watch the News: The Psychological Effects of Current Events” by Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen on suite101.com she writes:

Why shouldn’t you watch the news? Because it can actually make you dumb, according to a University of Florida history professor. In How the News Makes Us Dumb: The Death of Wisdom in an Information Society, C. John Sommerville claims that we can’t discern truly significant events when we watch the evening news every day. In the news everything is equally essential; we don’t develop a sense of perspective about what the bigger, more important issues are. The psychological effects of current events can destroy positive energy.

Why you shouldn’t watch the news

Sommerville writes that the daily news isn’t an accurate reflection of what’s really going on in the world today. It indicates what’s going wrong with our world – how much death and destruction has occurred and how many murders/suicides/bombings/explosions went down. But it doesn’t portray neighbors helping neighbors, communities banding together to raise money for cancer research, cops catching criminals, diseases going into remission, babies born healthy, personal achievements celebrated, milestones passed, or victories won! You shouldn’t watch the evening news because it rarely shares good news.

What Sommerville states here is an important part of a larger perspective or narrative that can bring more healing and resolution to a conflicted worldview approach to delivering the news and information. It starts with balancing the amount of information we are receiving to reflect all aspects of life, not only conflict.

In an article from Wired Science titled “Twitter, Facebook Won’t Make You Immoral — But TV News Might” highlights the following:

Most people who read a handful of words about a friend’s heartache, or see a link to a tragic story, would likely follow it up.

But following links to a video news story makes the possibility of a short-circuited neurobiology of compassion becomes more real. Research suggests that people are far more empathic when stories are told in a linear way, without quick shot-to-shot edits. In a 1996 Empirical Studies of the Arts paper, researchers showed three versions of an ostensibly tear-jerking story to 120 test subjects. “Subjects had significantly more favorable impressions of the victimized female protagonist than of her male opponent only when the story structure was linear,” they concluded.

A review of tabloid news formats in the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media
found that jarring, rapid-fire visual storytelling produced a physiological arousal led to better recall of what was seen, but only if the original subject matter was dull. If it was already arousing, tabloid storytelling appeared to produce a cognitive overload that actually prevented stories from sinking in.

Whether tabloid storytelling formats are becoming more frequent is uncertain, but anecdotal evidence suggests it’s true in broadcast media.

“Quick cuts will draw and retain a viewer’s focus even if the content is uninteresting,” said freelance video producer Jill Bauerle.
“MTV-like jump cuts, which have become the standard for many editors, serve as a sort of eye candy to keep eyeballs peeled to screen.”

“The sense that we have here is that videos have become briefer,” said John Lynch, director of the Vanderbilt Television News Archive.
While evaluating coverage of the plane that crashed in the Hudson in January, he noticed that producers “would intersperse a little video of the plane with the reporter talking and various New Yorkers who saw the event, then go back to another shot of the plane at a different point. With a similar kind of incident 20 years ago, they would have shown footage the whole time.”

If compassion can only be activated by sustained attention, which is prevented by fast-cut editing, then the ability to be genuinely moved by another’s story could atrophy. It might even fail to properly develop in children, whose brains are being formed in ways that will last a lifetime. More research is clearly needed, including a replication of the original empathy findings, but the hypothesis is plausible.

“If things are happening too fast, you may not ever fully experience emotions about other people’s psychological states and that would have implications for your morality,” said study co-author Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a University of Southern California cognitive neuroscientist.

The idea that “compassion can only be activated by sustained attention” strikes at the mind and heart of how conflict is perpetuated and sustained not only in the media, but extended to every other aspect of our lives. We cannot tolerate others because we are too in the moment and unable to stay focused on the total story as it unfolds. Conflict is the opt out, the place where we stop thinking and remain stuck in a quick edit where we are told how to think and feel. Our morality and empathy erode because they are not being used by us, but created for us.