How Media Is Shaping Our Reality

We’ve known for a while that the news media has a short attention span. The term “48 hour news cycle” was de rigueur twenty years ago. After that, it was clever to say the “24 hour news cycle.”

Now there’s no more time constraint at all. The news is on all the time, every day. You can stream it, podcast it, watch it on TV, listen on the radio. You can broil it, bake it, fry it.

And not only is the news on all the time, it’s almost always inducing you to moral panic.

We might be tempted to say “that’s only Fox News doing that!” But it’s not true. For the last two weeks, CNN and MSNBC have broadcast an endless steam of “Trump won’t concede / this is unprecedented / this undermines confidence in our elections.”

Well, that’s all probably true. But perhaps the more pertinent question is — what can I do about it?

Certainly some people are stirred to action by current events. They take to the pen and write editorials. They might join a group or form a group. They hope to spread awareness. But let’s face it, the most common response is to argue about it on social media. At the very least, to feel anxious or angry or sad. And, really, to hiss and boo at the other side.

There’s only so much we can do about national politics. We can vote for the president once every four…