Season 1, Episode 3: Extra! Extra! All the Time
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE:
On Today’s Episode:
In March 1974, a Japanese bookseller flew to the island of Lubang in the Philippines to order the surrender of a Japanese intelligence officer. The officer — Hiroo Onoda — was still carrying out his mission from World War II — nearly 30 years after the war’s end.
So why, 30 years later, were Japanese men still fighting in that war?
This is, actually is a story about information — how we get it, and what we choose to believe. But as I researched the topic of news history and the rapid changes we’ve experienced in the news, I think the more important question became this: is having a lot of news sources to choose from really all that bad? Could we ever go back to having less information at our fingertips? And should we? Or do we risk ending up like Hiroo Onoda - isolated in a jungle?
I talked to a news expert, a news junkie, and an expert on depression to find possible answers to these questions.
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very good!
“A great podcast that will offer plenty to a wide range of listeners. The content provides a unique perspective that will keep you engaged and entertained!”
With Special Guests:
Patty Rhule - Patty Rhule is vice president of content and exhibit development at the Newseum, overseeing a talented team of writers and editors who produce the Newseum’s permanent and changing exhibits. Before coming to the Newseum in 2007, she worked at USA Today in a variety of editing roles. She is a founding editor of USA Today, and started her career as an editor at The Huntington (W.Va.) Advertiser and as a reporter at The Herald-Dispatch.
Jonathan Russell - Jonathan Russell is a news junkie with never-ending knowledge on history and geopolitics. He enlisted in the Marine Corps just after 9/11, participating in Operation Vigilant Resolve, the first battle for the city of Fallujah. He served for 5 years and is now working as a medevac pilot in Alaska. In his spare time, Jonathan also takes amazing pictures of Alaskan landscapes.
Tracey Maxfield - Tracey Maxfield is a nurse with over 37 years’ experience. She is certified in gerontology and dementia care and was a regular guest on well-known author and radio host Peter Rosenberger’s show Hope For the Caregiver on WLAC and iHeart Radio. Tracey has written articles on dementia care, medical research and mental illness/bullying in teenagers. She is the Purple Angel Dementia Ambassador for the Okanagan. B.C. and NAASCA Ambassador for B.C., Canada
Tracey experienced her first episode of clinical depression in her twenties and lived with chronic depression ever since. However, nothing prepared her for the acute depressive episode she experienced in 2015. After enduring years of intense workplace stress, harassment and bullying, she plummeted into an abyss of darkness, hopelessness and despair the likes of which she had never experienced before.
Encouraged by a psychologist, Tracey started a Blog, Escaping the Rabbit Hole: my life with depression, to better help her friends understand her depression. Over time, Tracey began to heal and found that out of the darkness and despair, there is hope, there is life after depression.
Since the release of her book, Escaping the Rabbit Hole: my journey through depression, Tracey has become a staunch advocate for Mental Illness and Mental Health Awareness and Bullying and completed the course, Bringing Mental Health to Schools. She has met with children, teenagers and young adults to talk about bullying and mental illness and was one of the ‘Break Out’ presenters at the TEACH 2019 Conference in Jacksonville, Florida.
Resources:
I find it almost impossible to explain ALL of the ideas and influences that come up while researching every episode. So here are just some of my most used and referenced resources for this week’s episode.
No Surrender: My Thirty Year War by Hiroo Onoda - Onoda’s journey, in his own words. I could have done a lot more with this, but I had to get to the point. Future potential for sure!
42 Maps that Explain World War II by Vox - If you were listening to the beginning of this episode and trying to figure out why the Japanese surrender wasn’t easily communicated, check out map #16 on this awesome resource by Vox. Other amazing maps AND links to other map lists too!
Escaping the Rabbit Hole: My Journey Through Depression by Tracey Maxfield - THIS! This is the book that Tracey Maxfield wrote about her journey through depression, which is referenced in the episode. Battling through depression can be deeply personal, but hearing the journey of others can be an amazing way to shed light on this important issue and successes in escaping the rabbit hole.
The Newseum - The Newseum is D.C. has closed its official location. When we recorded the podcast, the closing had already been announced. But the AMAZING news is - the Newseum is still alive and well, sharing their collections on the road and offering additional educational opportunities online and at other locations.
Today's Front Pages Collection at the Newseum - Speaking of the Newseum online -this clickable resource let’s you see front pages of the newspapers all over the WORLD. Wondering what they’re sayin on France’s front pages today? GO LOOK!
Dr. Angela Lee’s Doctoral Dissertation on Speed-Driven Journalism - I go down a lot of weird rabbit holes when I’m doing research and I found this one really randomly fascinating. It’s about how people perceive online news articles based on how they’re written and updated; it’s focus is on demand, speed of reporting, and the perception of accuracy. Fascinating stuff, but warning — super deep.
The Effects Death, Traumas And Disasters Have On Mental Health - It was this article that actually got me onto Tracey Maxfield’s site and wondering what she might have to say about the news specifically.
National Archives - The audio recording of FDR in this episode comes from the National Archives (and yes - it was o.k. to use!). If you haven’t checked out this insanely deep online source, you are missing out. SO.MANY.THINGS!
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline - Suicide is mentioned in this episode and we talk about the depression that the news can cause. If you’re struggling, reach out to someone - including the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255). There is even an online chat!
The Was Is Could Be podcast is produced by Liz Russell at To Eat and To Love, LLC. Each episode is carefully edited by Joshua Rivers of Podcast Guy Media, LLC. Our theme music is made by Neil Cross and published by ImageCollect Publishing.
Want more? Follow the Was Is Could Be podcast on Instagram and Facebook.
For advertising or guest appearances, check out the media kit.
Liz Russell: In March 1974, a Japanese bookseller flew to the island of Lubang in the Philippines. His mission - to order the surrender of a Japanese intelligence officer.
Surrender from what, you might ask?
World War 2.
Nearly 30 years after the war had ended, Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese intelligence officer, was still operating in the jungle of the Philippines, working to thwart the Allied mission on the ground there.
This isn’t a story of Japanese subterfuge. The Japanese HAD in fact surrendered to the Allies 30 years before.
So why then, 30 years later, were Japanese men still fighting that same war?
This is, actually is a story about information - about how we get it, and what we choose to believe.
Which really got me thinking.
This is Was Is Could Be - and this is a story of cable news.
[🎶 Theme Music 🎶]
Liz Russell: The Japanese surrendered to Allied forces on August 15, 1945 via a radio address by Emperor Hirohito.
However, Japanese troops remained scattered throughout the Pacific theater. And guerilla fighters and intelligence officers who were assigned to remote and far off places - just like Hiroo Onoda - did not hear about the surrender formally, from a superior officer.
Instead Onoda learned of the surrender via leaflets that were dropped in the jungle. They read things like “the war ended on August 15th! Come down from the mountains!” But, according to Onoda’s autobiography, there were errors on the leaflets that made the Japanese holdouts believe that they were lies. They believed that they were Allied propoganda meant to draw the fighters out of the mountains. Letters and pictures from family followed but still, Onoda believed the information to be a trick. He and his fellow holdouts could not believe that the Japanese would surrender.
So Onoda and his fellow holdouts stayed in the jungle, waiting to be told by a true superior officer that they were relieved of duty.
Onoda was later tracked down in 1974 by a Japanese traveler named Norio Suzuki, who took news of him back to Japan. The Japanese government found Onoda’s superior officer — now working as a bookseller — and flew him to the island to meet Onoda. On March 9th, 1974, nearly 30 years after the war had ended, Onoda was finally officially informed of the surrender and relieved of his duty. He died nearly 40 years later, in 2014.
Every time I hear the term “fake news”, I think of Onoda and his fellow holdouts. What is the term for news we don’t want to hear? Or that we only want to hear from a specific person or a specific network? How about the term for filtering the news through our own culture and our own circumstances? Is that “fake news” too?
But as I researched the topic of news history and the rapid changes that we’ve experienced in the news to date, I think the more important question became this: is having a lot of news sources really that bad? Could we ever go back to having less information? And should we? Or do we risk ending up like Onoda — isolated in a jungle?
I talked to a news expert, a news junkie, and an expert on depression to find possible answers to these questions.
Patty Rhule: My name is Patty Rhule and I am the Vice President of Content and Exhibits at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. We’re a museum about, um, the, the first amendment and the importance of free expression and the first amendment. We try to, with our exhibits both here and traveling, we try to, um, explain to people why that first amendment is so important because too few people even can name all five freedoms of the first amendment. So that's what I'm all about. I, I came from a journalism background. I worked at a small newspaper in West Virginia at the beginning of my career and then went to USA Today and was a founding editor there. And I've been here at the Newseum for about 12 years.
When you look at the course of history and the transmission of news for nearly really most of the past 500 years, it was print and newspapers that were the main way that people got their news. That was until suddenly in the early quarter of the, of the 20th century, things like radio, and then a few years later, television came into play. And now in the past, what, 20 years, we've had digital news, which is completely upending the centuries old print news industry, as well as television and radio. Facebook, Google and Twitter are these powerful distributors of 21st century news. It’s on this vast network of global information and that’s got its pluses and minuses. Um, you know, but for the, for that long period of time, that 500 years when newspapers were the dominant way that people got information, people would wait for the morning or evening newspaper. Imagine that. Imagine waiting until the next morning to find out what happened. Um, you know, they would talk with friends and neighbors. You know, at the time of the pre-American revolution, people would meet in coffee houses, um, and at, at sort of post offices to talk about news that was being transmitted at places where people were gathering, were moving from one place-to-place and could transmit information from a horseback rider who said, Oh, in the town below, this is what's happening there. When major news events would occur, such as the assassination of president Abraham Lincoln, newspapers suddenly started doing special editions. So they would do every few hours when there was an update in the president’s condition. We had an exhibit a few years later that showed this newspaper and the incredible updates that they would do, kind of as the story was breaking, sort of how you would see on social media or digital media today.
And that was what you know, 1860s. Um, in 1920, the news of the election of Warren Harding as president was broadcast over commercial radio. That was a new emerging medium. Um, and ironically Harding was a newspaper publisher and that moment sort of signals the end of newspapers as being the dominant way that people get their news, because radio of course has that wonderful immediacy and the sounds of bombs dropping, the sounds of things happening, gave a sense of immediacy that, um, newspapers could not quite match. Um, and then you have a course in the 1940s television arrives on the scene, and then network television news divisions rise at the end of the 1940s and you've got these 15 minutes evening news broadcast. And again, they're brought to you by three or four white gentlemen, which gives you a perspective on the news. And, you know, Walter Cronkite would end his newscast with, “and that's the way it was”. Um, was that the way it was for the incredible diversity of the American population? I'm not so sure, but there was that very, this is the way it is, this is how we're giving it to you, and there it is. Today you have, you know, an explosion of ways that you can get news and people can be commenting, responding. So it's an incredible change really just in the past. What, 50 years?
Liz Russell: Patty had touched on something important here. You see, today, there is an incredible amount of diversity in the news. But people also say that it causes us only to seek out sources that validate our own feelings or messages. So what was it like when there wasn’t that diversity of opinion?
Patty Rhule: When we were talking about in the 1950s and sixties, you're talking about like, look, look what's happening in society. You know, women are largely, and I'm generalizing here, but women are largely homemakers. They're there at home. The evening news comes on in the evening after dinner, where, you know, people have had their dinner, they've got now gathered to sit and find out what happened that day. Men are the bosses. Men are the people who are, you know, who are out in the workplace and are certainly more influential in the workplace than women are because it's not until a few decades later when women are entering the workforce in a much more dominant way and are shaping and changing the way that we get the news. It wouldn't be the women were like kept out of the living room to watch television in the fifties and sixties. You could be there and watching it, but were they doing stories about, you know, birth control and women entering the workforce and me too experiences? No, they were not, not at that time. They weren’t, and now we have me on Norah O'Donnell on CBS evening news. I'm doing a solo act on the evening news there and so many more diverse voices, so many more women, so many more people of color who are sending news forth to people in different ways on radio, on the internet, on television. So it's really an incredibly more diverse a group of voices that are going out there. So we're getting, I think, a much more kaleidoscope version of what's happening in the world and I think a much more reflective version of what's happening in this country. That’s going to come, in the 1970s when newsroom was television news, words in particular realized that they need to change the way they're doing things to better reflect what's happening in society and women come into the workplace.
Liz Russell: When I’ve talked to people about the news, there is always this question of trust - and whether or not we can trust the news. What is this pattern here? Has this always been the case?
Patty Rhule: Walter Cronkite was once considered the most trusted man in America. There was that element of we believe our authority figures, you know, then you have, you know, the Vietnam War and people talk about that time of social upheaval where younger generations were challenging the tenants that their elders held fast to or challenging people in authority, questioning the government. You had, you know, the Pentagon papers when it, when newspapers revealed that the government had lied to the American people about how well the Vietnam War was going. You had Watergate, um, in which, uh, you know, a president is hiding information and committing crimes before the nation. So these elements are eroding that monolithic trust that people had in our institutions and really, you know, everything that you see happening now is a bit of a reflection of that, of like what happens when, when no one trusts the information that they get. You see, starting from, you know, in the 60s to now trust in the news media is really going, gone downhill.
Liz Russell: I recalled to Patty my memory of the news in the late 90s and early 2000s - which was the height of my childhood. I recalled the news being a short period of time during the evening — something like a news hour or what have you — and I wondered how much the shortness of the news affected credibility at that time.
Patty Rhule: Well, you know, the, the big difference there is the rise of 24/7 cable network news. You know, that that's starting in the 1980s with the arrival of CNN and the fact that they are starting to have a 24-hour news coverage that’s not just happening here but around the world. That's also when you see more segmented news programs happening. You know, you had the, the three broadcast networks and then all these cable channels come up and they have a much more targeted audience, perhaps a smaller audience than the network news divisions did in the 1970s at the time of Watergate. These cable shows can tell a much more targeted view of the news. You saw the rise of things like Court TV, which talked about legal news, you know, ESPN online. You saw the arrival of business news on cable and you see Fox News arriving and MSNBC — these very politicized cable news channels that are telling a particular story. There is a value in — you know, people want to see a version of news and events that reflect their viewpoints. People who tune into Fox, people who tune into MSNBC get that better reflected perhaps than they do in the network newscasts, which are much more, I think, broad and um straightforward. Whereas on Fox and MSNBC you see, just as you said, you know, they segue from, here's the news of the day into let's talk about the news of the day and let's have pundits come on and reflect it and discuss it and give their opinions about the news. These are the tricky points where people have to be really good news consumers. Is the news that you're watching meant to inform or inflame? Are you watching or listening to Rush Limbaugh? Are you watching or listening to Rachel Maddow? What is the purpose of her show? What is she trying to do? And you know, how are you responding to it? So it's tricky. It's very tricky. And you know, news analysis versus hard news. People in various surveys are frustrated with this fact that they feel that reporters put too much opinion into the news columns.
Jonathan Russell: Okay. 9/11 was a Tuesday. And at the time I was going to community college…
Liz Russell: It didn’t seem like the news had always been such a divisive thing to me. But I struggled to recall a time before social media when I was glued to TV news. The only moment in my life that I could think of that required a lot of news ]was 9/11. But here’s the rub - I was so young at the time, I’m not even sure if my perception of that event was very accurate. So I asked my brother - who was 18 at the time - how HE recalled the coverage of that day.
Jonathan Russell:…beautiful day and I was in bed, like sleeping in and mom came downstairs and kind of was like, “Hey, are you awake?” And I'm like, “uh, you know, not really”. And she's like, “there's something going on on the news. You should check out.” She said “a plane hit the World Trade Center”. And I think like most people, I thought, Oh, some, you know, knucklehead in a Cessna hit it and, and you know, just kinda like it's happened before. I think a plane hit the Empire State Building like in the forties or 50s or something like that. So I was, that was my first thought. It was like, it was an accident. So I go upstairs and our TV was in the corner of the living room, and I flip it on and there's the well first tower like with smoke billing out of it. And that was like right after, I think, nine in the morning as I woke up. And I was like, wow, this is like something out of like Independence Day or like a movie or something. This is weird. Like this doesn't seem real. And then that is about the time I watched the second plane hit the other tower and I was like, “Holy cow, what the hell was that?” And I was like, “what the heck just happened?” Like I think, I think like most people, I was in super disbelief, like what is going on? There's something like… not right about this. And honestly, terrorism didn't even come into play until like maybe later in the day when the news cycle updated. The news was blowing up. Like every channel had this going. You know, everybody's like — NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN — back then I don't even think Fox News was around back then. So everything was news. Like every channel was news. Every radio station was news — the rock and roll stations, the hip hop station, the top billboard hits station. Everything was news, radio, news, news, news. Everything. And it was like very much a national emergency was kicking off.
And I was a very active volunteer firefighter at the time. I went down to the fire station and everybody was gathered in the little bar in the station watching the news and we were all kind of wondering like what we're gonna end up doing because New York City was looked like an absolute like disaster zone. Every firefighter from like New York to Albany was kind of like on standby or responding to this because it looked like on TV that it was like going to be more catastrophic.
I think we had heard about the Pentagon being hit. So now it was like, Oh crap… multiple cities are being hit by whatever this is going on. And then the word terrorism throughout the day started kind of like becoming a buzzword. I think I was at the fire station when the towers collapsed. I vaguely remember watching that on the news, watching the first tower go down and then the second tower go down. In my head I'm thinking, “Holy crap, there's probably like…” I honestly thought it was a lot worse. I thought it was probably more like 30,000 to 50,000 killed. So like we're thinking, “holy crap”. And then I think it was about one or two in the afternoon. Herkimer County had broadcasted like everybody sort of like get ready type. Um, it was like a weird, something very non-standard tone out for the fire department to be ready to rock and roll.
Like the day stopped. Like you're not going to be doing your band lesson or your math or your English. And I guarantee other teachers were not getting through their day either. Like it was, it was a state of national emergency. Like I had the military fresh on my mind and I was thinking to myself like, this is our Pearl Harbor. Like I'm going to be part of the next greatest generation and I probably don't even have to enlist cause I'm going to get drafted. Like that's how serious it was. Like everybody was like, this is going down, this is the next World War III. And it was a very much a state of pandemonium and it went on for awhile for like a good month and well maybe not a month, maybe two weeks. And then that started to kind of peter out. But the news cycle was just blown up. I mean like worse than I'd ever seen it, I think worse than any of our parents had ever seen it, worse than any of our generation. The only generation that probably had seen something more pandemic or pandemonium, whatever the word is, was the World War II generation, when Pearl Harbor was hit. But when Pearl Harbor was hit it even took a day or two for like people to get the word on that. So for us it was immediate. You know, it was like turn on your TV now, you know, back then it was probably like turn on your radio or something.
This was 2001. We didn't have Facebook. Social media hadn't been really around yet. I don't even think I had a cell phone. So CNN actually was kind of a first original 24 hour news cycle. And that was the go-to source. Like turn on CNN or turn on NBC. NBC would only be on if there was a special report. So CNN was the go-to. And I remember when CNN came around, it was like right around desert storm. Desert Storm kind of had its own… it was the first time a war was sort of involved, you know, 24 hours news cycle.
I was glued to it. Everybody was glued to it. Like I said, the day came to a grinding halt. Like anything and everything you had going on stopped. And I think most people were like that. It wasn't like, especially after the second plane hit and then after those towers collapsed there was, and like, you gotta keep in mind the radio was not like the standard like, “Hey, we got this news.” The radio sounded like somebody giving like almost up to the minute updates, and the same with the news. Like the news cycle now a lot of times will kinda just say the same crap over and over again. Like the news cycle then was kind of coming in with like up-to-the-minute and there were all kinds of other rumors like another plane hit. There was another rumor that like there was other targets and there was a lot of rumors going around but not like there would be today with Facebook or any of the other nonsense.
But it seemed more real. The funny thing was like people weren't like grabbing guns and locked and loaded. People were kind of like kind of like stunned. I mean they just weren't really, there wasn't a whole lot of mobility going on. At least where we were. Maybe down in New York City there were all kinds of… well I mean in New York City people were running for their lives. I mean you saw those towers coming down and we were getting footage of like people running like as that second like tower was coming down. Some of that came out like later in the day, but like you'd see like those New York City firefighters just like the smoke clearing and like the dust and everything was just gray and then backed up traffic along all the bridges in and out of New York City. And then, you know, rumors of like fighter planes in the air. And I mean it was crazy. Like it was legitimately freaking pandemonium. So I can't stress enough how chaotic it was just from everybody's brain and the way it was being broadcasted. So… and of course I was 19 years old, so like, what was I going to do? Like, you know, I was kind of just waiting around to see how things unfolded, but I was glued to it. I didn't have anything going. I mean like the day was over and even, it was funny, like we were getting ready the next day, like, or even a day later, mom was like, “you're going to class”. Cause I was like, “I'm not going to class. Like if they call us to go down in New York City to do whatever I'm throwing on my gear and I'm going with the firetruck”, you know, so it was kind of weird.
Every channel was saying almost the same stuff. Everything. Everybody was glued to the same thing. It's not like now where one channel will have something and another channel will have another thing or everybody was glued to this one event that going on and there wasn't a different interpretation of it because nobody had anything to interpret yet. Everybody was just getting up-to-the-minute like what was trying to go on and, but there wasn't like a spin on it at all. And it was probably the one time in my life where I could say like… Liz, there was not literally like, I don't remember a spin on any of it. Everybody was so shocked and like, “holy crap”, there couldn't have been a spin on it. I mean, it really, it really did unite the nation in a real visceral sense and everybody was super patriotic for the next couple of months.
Liz Russell: So, since I was pretty young and I don’t really remember this too much - were people using the internet then to follow what was going on - like news websites or anything, since this was pre-social media?
Jonathan Russell: They weren't logging on to find out the latest and greatest from this new source. People were glued to the TVs. They were like, “turn on the TVs, have your TVs on and make sure they're on kind of to keep an eye on like if there's any changes”. The internet wasn't a thing. Smart phones weren't a thing. It was all flip on CNN and I'd have to look, I can't remember when Fox News came around. I think it was a couple of years later. So CNN was like the go-to 24-hour news and then like I was saying, NBC, CBS and ABC all popped on with their special report and basically all TV had been canceled for like a couple… it went on for awhile. I want to say it was like a couple of days, couple of weeks even of like all the TV shows that you'd watch on NBC at night. Like no, there was none of that. It was all news everywhere. News on TV, news on the radio, everything. I remember… so I had classes the next day at Herkimer and I was driving from home to there, which is like an hour and a half drive. And I would just have the news on and that went on for like four or five days where it was just news and I was just sitting there driving my little crappy Toyota going. I would drive that thing to class, you know, and listen to the news while drinking coffee. We had students from the New York City area who… I don't recall any of them getting killed in it or anything or had family. Well I think there was one or two girls that had family members killed, but a lot of students like weren't coming to class because they were from that area.
It was super different than it is now. I mean that was what, 19…18 years ago. And part of it I think was also back then I was a little bit more naive just being a 19-year old. But I think most people trusted the news back then, at least in that, for that event. I mean there was like… historically there was always been like news like, except for maybe like Walter Cronkite, there wasn't a spin on things like there is now. The news now Liz, I don't believe anything that's on the news. There's always like the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing and I'm not talking about politics, but there's some spin on everything. There's an agenda on everything…
Liz Russell: I asked Patty Rhule about 9/11 as well, hoping to confirm my brother and I’s memory on this.
Patty Rhule: Because the 9/11 happened in the morning, t was pretty much people who are watching um, the morning news programs — Today, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning — or listening on their radio on their way to work that people got the information, the news about the 9/11 attacks. And then of course, when people got to a television set somewhere, people were riveted by that coverage because, you know, the fireball, the horrible images, the, these such iconic towers in New York City going down in fireballs were impossible to turn away from. As to where the conspiracy theories, how they got shared… certainly there were people who were going to the internet for maps, to see more information, family members who are looking for lost loved ones were posting stories online about them and you got more first person accounts on the internet. So people were going to the internet for more information than they were getting on television. So it was just kind of, um, starting out as a source for individual consumers to get news and information that way.
But you should know, that's your generation’s “where were you when” moments, but you know, 50 some years ago in 1963 when I was little, that moment was the assassination of president John F. Kennedy. At that time, Walter Cronkite was the news anchor for CBS News. He broke into an afternoon soap opera to tell the nation that shots had been fired at the President’s motorcade in Dallas, Texas. I was home from school, I can't remember if I was sick that day, but um, my mother got a phone call and we had a phone, believe it or not, that was on the wall, it wasn't in her pocket. It was on the wall in our kitchen. And I saw her have this phone conversation and it was really the first time I ever remember seeing my mother cry. That's how I got the news. I don't remember watching it on television cause again, I was just five and I'm sure my parents probably wouldn't have wanted me to be watching that. But that is the way that most people got the news. I think at one point in time during the JFK assassination weekend, 95% of television sets were tuned into that coverage.
And that starts four days of unprecedented commercial-free coverage by the TV networks at the time. They started with that bulletin. They kept giving news updates through the next four days until the president was buried on the following Monday. You also amazingly, incredibly got to see on NBC when they were covering the transfer of the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald from the city to the County jail and the man named Jack Ruby showed up and on live television you saw him shoot Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin, who later died. So it's like on television, — on live television, — Sunday morning, people saw a person being murdered. It was an incredible period of time, but it's kind of a parallel to what happened on 9/11.
Now we talk about conspiracy theories — again, that frictionless nature of the internet, the ease with which people can get information, both the good and poor, make it easier to spread bad information. You know, sometimes when you go and when you Google on the internet, um, 9/11 conspiracy theory websites come up before, you know, the good solid information from news organizations, historians, government authorities, et cetera. So yes, it's a very powerful way of distributing not just good information but bad information.
Liz Russell: I wanted to understand - how does this shift in the news REALLY affect us. How does confusion over what’s real, and perpetually dealing with the news from the outside world affect the average person if we’re not involved in the news. If the news isn’t about me, why should it bother me so much.
Tracey Maxfield: I'm Tracy Maxfield. I am a soon to be retired nurse…
Liz Russell: Tracey is an expert on depression and anxiety. After experiencing her own acute depression and attempting suicide multiple times, Tracey wrote a book called Escaping the Rabbit Hole, about her journey out of her own depression. Since then, she has been working primarily with children and teenagers helping them to deal with and understand mental illness, suicide and bullying. Based on her experience, I wanted to hear what she thinks about the role of the news cycle on the average person’s psyche.
Tracey Maxfield: I mean if you're a very well-adjusted person who can kind of dissect the news and determine fact from fiction and then kind of look into it further. Yes - news like that will instantly trigger anyone. So flight, fight, fight response, it's then how you react to that determines what happens then in your brain and body. And so yes, the well-adjusted person that can talk things through with other people will feel that angst and will continue to when we see images, like when we see the fires right now in California and as caring people, we, we look at that and we think, “Oh my God, that's terrible”. And then we'd go in the panic of, “Oh God, I can't even imagine a lot of how I would feel if it happened to me”. And then we can move on. Other people get caught up in it and get overwhelmed. And if they already have a predisposition to a health problem or a mental disorder, then that's gonna trigger things.
And we’ve become a society where negativity fuels us. And I think this is why there's so much hatred and bullying and racism and fear, is we want to be loved and liked and validated and supported and accepted. It's just that human connection. It's a human quality that… it's that tribal thing. We want to be part of something which is meaningful, and we are an important part of that. And so, in a day, let's say we receive five positive things… five positive comments or emails or messages about us as a person, whether or not it’s our looks, our ability, our work ethic. And then along comes one negative comment. We allow the one negative comment to drag us down or we perseverate on that and “no one likes me and what can I do to make it different? And I'm no good”. And we forget about the five positive that we've just received.
And what happens is that just builds into more negativity. In my book, I call them ANTs, Automatic Negative Thoughts, which was the phrase coined by very famous psychiatrist, Dr. Daniel Amens on the West Coast. And he said that we keep buying into the negativity and it doesn't allow us time to step back to think of the realistic fact-based information and also the positive qualities. And this is again for adults, this negative news media is sensory overload.
We all have our faults. We all have our positive qualities, but we bring with us our learned experiences, our social skills, our education, our work ethic and our childhood experiences. All of this forms us into a person and depending on a) the baggage that accompanies us into adulthood, and then everything we picked up along the way determines how we respond to it. And lots of people have trunks and trunks with them, and their response to negativity is going to be with more angst and negativity.
This is why we have such an increase globally in depression. Depression is an epidemic from children, teenagers to adults, to older people globally. Suicide has increased. It’s tripled. It's all a response to the world around us and what we interpret the expectations about the people, which not necessarily are true, but we buy into it because we listened to what we're being fed.
Liz Russell: So I have this theory that basically the things that are happening right now feel bad because we are dealing with them but that they’re actually not that different from other timeframes. In other words, human nature IS human nature. And in fact, I tend to think there are periods in our lives that were worse - I think of like the number of serial killers in the 70s and 80s. How do you think that the way the news has changed affects our perception of it.
Tracey Maxfield: I don't even watch the news now. I watch it in the morning and I don't watch it for the rest of the day because it's the same story regenerated with a few more red alert comments to trap you to come and listen to it. And we know that this does not help the brain because your brain is triggered into this fight, flight, fight mode. The anxiety starts, the inflammatory chemicals started to churn out, we become hyperreactive and hypervigilant and we're fed this steady diet.
We always believed that the news was truthful and objective. And gave us the facts. News is now fake ,or they misguide us, or they only give us a little bit of the facts and this bias because sensationalism and headlines win, and we’re that instant gratification society and that's what they're doing. I mean, newspapers are dying out because people don't want to sit and read two pages of facts to help us make an informed decision. They want instant — I want to go on social media, I want to turn on my TV, I want to get the information from the newscaster’s mouth. I like him. He's good looking. He's trustworthy. He's telling the truth and we know that that's not necessarily true.
And you know, what I find is the ultimate contradiction: we want to know everything that's going on in the world. And yet the irony is we don't know who our neighbors are. And we don't want to know and we don't want to get involved. But those are the very people that we do need to know and for all sorts of reasons — not only because it's human kindness and nature, and they may need help, and together you may find that you're able to help each other. But also you need to know — is the person that's living next to you, a drug dealer or a criminal or a rapist or a sex offender or a pedophile. You know, it's like, “Oh yes, look what's going on in Australia. They need to take care of those people. They need to deal with that”. And it's like, do you actually even know what's going on in your own neighborhood? How about actually looking at and working together and see what's going on in the area where you live and what your kids are being exposed to? Let's start there and then work our way up. But we never do that. We always like to reach out and criticize people from a thousand miles away. “This is what Britain needs to do with Brexit.” It's like, really? How about you need to find out why six kids have been murdered at the end of your road. We've become very disengaged from our reality of life surrounding us and we've kind of cocooned ourselves into our own homes, and are , fueled by what's on the news without actually taking time to think, “Oh gosh, look, there's an eight year old man next door who fought in the war and he's all alone and he's eating cat food,” you know, and the next thing he's dead in his home. I never even knew. Isn't that sad and shameful? But that's what we've become. We've become disengaged from what's around us, what's close and personal to us.
Liz Russell: I’ll be frank - this response from Tracey upset me. It made the global news issue feel very local for me. So I asked - what can we do?
Tracey Maxfield: I don’t know if and when that's ever going to change. I think everything begins with education… educating people, um, to start identifying right from wrong is this fact, is this real? Now how do I respond? And that's going to take a lot of work cause we have a lot of people set in their ways with the belief system that we're not able to sway right now.
I mean the first thing they need to do is to stop, you know, kind of weaning themselves off 24-hour news and kind of, you know, say, okay, I'm going to check the news three times today, you know, morning, lunchtime, evening. That’s it. And then talking about it with others to kind of dissect fact, fiction. But I think it also, it's asking yourself — I always ask because of what I went through down in the rabbit hole — when anything ever happens to me, I always ask myself, is this given you meaning in your life? Knowing this information? Is it giving you meaning? If it is, what are you going to do about it? You know, what - asking yourself: like what can you do to help? I think let's get back to basics and start taking care of one another.
We have to take care of one another before we can take care of people around the world. And so just get a little more involved in your family first. That's what I would say, family first, school, then community. Get to know your kids, get to know your family, get to know what's going on. Then actually what's going on at school and what's going on in the community because that's everything that you're exposing your kids to and ultimately do we not all want to make them safe, safe from harm and want them to be able to go on and have wonderful, productive lives as adults. So I think it's yes, step in the way.
And also it's when you see negative news, um, look for something positive in life. I had to, when I was healing, when I was trying to escape the rabbit hole, my psychologist told me, um, you have to start expressing gratitude everyday. And I kind of laughed and said, I want to die in darkness. I'm so hopeless. There is no future. I'm just managing to get through each hour. And he said, if you want to escape the rabbit hole, you've got to start looking at positives in life and expressing gratitude and looking at what is beautiful around you and what gives joy. And it took me about two weeks to figure out what that meant, but it did change my focus. And so I think everyone has to, you know, look at, yes, these horrible things happened in the world. I can't really do anything about it, but, you know, they may decide they could donate some money or something, but… what else is going on in my world that's around me that gives me joy and what could I do to help make it better?
Everyone should ask themselves, you know, what could I do to make the world my little community around me a better place? Um, and what would give me joy? I think it, sometimes it's this, it's the more simple things, that would make a difference. Like to make the donation of to the food bank. Do you go and visit an elderly neighbor and take a stew or a casserole? You know when people may laugh and go, “yeah, right”. But we have to get back to, it takes a village to raise a kid. And so you've to know your village, you got to know your community and small steps begin with, with kindness and compassion for other people and understanding.
Liz Russell: I asked Patty a similar question - how can we be better consumers of news?
Patty Rhule: My advice would be, you know, be smart about things if something does, you know, it's just like anything. If it sounds like it's too good to be true, it probably is. Um, you know, we are, what is your news source? Are you getting your news from a blogger you've never heard of who's posting something that's appearing all over Facebook or are you going to a legitimate news organization that interviews people, that uses documents to mint a story, that interviews a variety of voices to get information that, um, you know, uses words and language that sound more reasonable, that don't sound exaggerated or designed to inflame rather than inform. Look at your news sources, you know, who are you going to, what are your sources? Is it a news source that has a particular point of view? What's the point of view? You can say that just about any human being is going to have a point of view on something. So, so take the long view and look at what the news organization is all about. Have they been around for a long time? Um, you know, do they have a political perspective? You know, Fox News obviously leans toward a conservative side, a more Republican side, so you'd know what you're getting on Fox News is going to have that slant of news. So watch it, keep that in mind. Say, okay, that's what they said. Well, what is the other side have to say? Perhaps then you switch MSNBC to get a different perspective. Too many people are creating these sort of news bubbles for themselves where they only receive news that reinforces their views of the world. I think that's a dangerous thing.
Patty Rhule: It's a very dangerous thing. You know, we see how divided the country is. You're either pro Trump or anti-Trump. You're either this way or that way. There are no shades of, maybe we can work this out. Maybe we can compromise. So that's one way to do it. Just, you know, kind of think about things, think about things. Take your time on important information before you share something. You know, are you just reading the headline that's really provocative and designed for you to click share? Or have you read the whole article and found out what the real story is? You wouldn't want to be a person who was sharing junk news. So don’t. Think about it before you click share to all of my Facebook friends. Make sure you're not sharing bad news and bad information. You wouldn't want to be the person who's click ended up having a horrible result on someone else or someone else's life.
And these things are happening in the real world where bad things are happening because of information that is incorrectly and wrongly shared and perhaps for a reason to push one perspective forward or another. So we live in tricky times. I mean, on the good news side, a lot of voices are out there that weren't being heard 50 years ago. You know, in the bad news area, um, maybe there are some voices that shouldn't be heard, you know, maybe these conspiracy theory folks, um, you know, are causing more harm than bringing to light new sides of stories.
Liz Russell: My brother Jonathan had a similar idea - be more vigilant consumers.
Jonathan Russell: I just don't take things at face value at all. And that, and that maybe I'm rare. I just think you people need to like really look at patterns the news has, like buzz words and themes, and maybe if you're a super liberal person, watch Fox News, don't get mad. Let's see what they're saying. Or vice versa. If you're super conservative, watch NBC, MSNBC — see what they're saying. But it's hard to not, I mean there's this like outrage culture now and this like meme culture - it’s like very hard to read into things.
Liz Russell: So, could we ever go back to a slow news world? And should we? I don’t really know the answer to this. It’s clear that the news can be a frustrating topic for everybody right now. It also seems that there’s value to having a variety of information available, news when we need it, and more representative set of news channels.
If anything, all of my research concurs on this: it’s up to us to be educated, diligent consumers of any information thrown our way.
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