On Apathy
This blog post is brought to you by a Twitter thread.
Recently, CNN took to their social media pages to release a headline along the lines of “There is no state, county or city in the country where a full-time, minimum-wage worker can afford a two-bedroom rental, a new report says.”
Like clockwork, I saw many people I follow repost, share, and demand accountability, but a Twitter user reminded me of why I felt like this was frustrating: this isn’t news.
And this isn’t the first time that CNN has even reported on this issue. Compare the article they just published in July, with another one they posted in 2018. Before they went back and changed it, someone pointed out how they even recycled the same images. While there is nothing wrong with educating people who may not know, the issue isn’t that CNN is presenting information on an important social policy issue. The problem is that they felt a need to present the information as new.
Here is the comment from the Twitter user who inspired this post:
“These issues may be new for some but they are not new. Framing it as new implies a passive relationship to the problem: Your role, as a newsreader, is to simply consume the info rather than recognize a sustained crisis.
When a crisis is treated as new, the focus is on just spreading awareness. When a crisis is treated as chronic, the focus is on finding actionable means to fight it. By constantly framing this sustained crisis as new, we are removed from the obligation to take action.”
I am often frustrated by journalism’s approach to capturing our world’s most pressing issues and how much language can foster apathy.
To be clear, feelings of apathy can be normal. But in the richest country on earth and in the middle of a pandemic, the fact that Americans can’t afford rent in any state, county, or city is insane. By framing this issue as a new or emerging one, rather than an urgent and crucial one, it puts the burden of processing this information on us. This is why we need more solutions based— solutions driven— journalism. Publications that report not just on the problems, but the actions be took to combat those problems.
Doomsday headlines and angles tend to garner hopelessness or a lack of concern, but we can’t afford that.
I encourage journalists to do better.
cover image by https://unsplash.com/@jannerboy62