THE BULL
Penning the Bull each week can be a workout. Sometimes I write, then rewrite, and rewrite again. Such was the case this week. My initial header focused on who to pick for the right and wrong of local, state, and national news—whether through print media, news networks, or the so-called “cable networks.” But that all changed about 30 minutes later Sunday night when one of those very “cable networks” tossed out a new term that stopped me in my tracks: News Fatigue.
Boy, did that hit strongly, and after thinking that over for a few minutes, here are my new thoughts on the media in general, no matter if you are in Clay Counties all over the country, or what state you live in, news fatigue is a real thing.
As a veteran of Nebraska’s smalltown community newspaper business, I truly believe that news fatigue has been a real thing. Remember, I grew up in a newspaper family. I didn’t know anything else. I did as my parents did. When you got home, you watched the national news at 5:30, and the local news at 6. We read the local daily newspapers, such as the Kearney Hub, and the Grand Island Independent. On Sunday, you gleaned through the gigantic Lincoln Journal-Star and the Omaha World-Herald papers..hey it kept me busy for several hours.
We listened to Walter Cronkite and Tom Brokaw on the national level, but I always remember asking my parents, in general, “What’s that mean?” Questioning what was going on. I remember historical events that took place on national television and in the local and statewide newspapers.
But when I heard the term “News Fatigue” this past Sunday night, that struck a chord with me, because it’s not wrong.
I still uphold the Duncan family tradition, I pay attention to what’s in the news. I still watch the local news on television, I still watch the “big 3” news networks such as NBC, ABC and CBS, but when you mix in the so called “cable networks”, all of which have taken sides, including the “big 3’ networks, the news can absolutely wear you out, it does bring on a fatigue of sorts...if you let it. Evidently, in the past several years, fatigue has even affected me, because I find myself hitting the mute button like crazy, or simply changing the channel, not so I can get to the news that Tory Duncan wants to hear, but to avoid the negative angles that network news, and even print publications take these days.
You can take a story, like me jamming my knee into the kitchen table and coming to tears over it, and even though I know that isn’t news, that topic alone would take on “umpteen” different angles depending on what news outlet you choose to follow.
It’s taxing on one’s brain, if you are a channel surfer like me, to the point that I often turn to streaming television to take me back to the late 60s and 70s so I can watch the old shows, such as Green Acres, All in the Family, the Jeffersons, Happy Days, and so many more great old shows, which now that I think of it, is a whole other column in it’s own.
News Fatigue...It IS real, and this is coming from a guy who is in the news business!
