Confessions of a newsaholic
My name is Tom. I’m a newsaholic.
Because of my addiction, I’ve caused pain to my family and friends. I’ve suffered low self-esteem, guilt and despair, loneliness, fear of abandonment, anxiety, increased anger and distress.
I’m ashamed that I can’t slake my thirst for news and opinion, even sometimes swilling toxic online rotgut as if from a paper bag.
I’ve fallen far, having been schooled in the craftsmanship of news, the responsibilities of its power. I worked over two decades as a newspaper reporter and columnist when print ruled, when journalism required integrity.
I admit hating today’s news, which not only mirrors society’s intellectual and civic rancidity, but encourages it. Today’s news is low entertainment, a cognitive opioid bridging the wasteland between Swamp People and Duck Dynasty.
Karl Marx was wrong — religion isn’t the opiate of the masses. News is. I blame it for our public odium.
Our daily degradations called news consist of “Who got dissed?” “Today’s epic fail!” “Which Kardashian is the ultimate gold digger?”
Especially online, news is of people being mean — as if some kind of evil spore got in the water and is making us bad to the bone. Yet I can’t stop drinking it in.
The common courtesies and decencies I grew up with in the news business and in life appear gone. We’re not nice to one another anymore. We’ve lost respect for one another and ourselves.
I hold the door for people yet seldom hear the “thank you” that formerly was a given. Who goes first at a four-way traffic stop now depends on who’s feeling most entitled. Even funeral processions are no longer respected.
The emotional fabric that binds society into a workable sum is torn. The rules we depend on to keep us together, to make navigating life safe for everyone, are not just under assault — they’re about to be defeated. Hate is winning.
We can’t blame it all on Donald Trump. He’s just society’s excuse for pulling the cork from the hate media bottle that’s been fermenting dystopian bile for years. News is the delivery drug.
Today, few seem willing to address the decline in civility that’s necessary to lubricate democratic harmony. It’s not easy. If we tried to confront rude, selfish people every time they crossed our paths, we might never do anything else.
For instance, take online reader comments, a noble news industry nod toward “citizen journalism” that’s morphed into a permanent gauntlet of vilification and misery, where only the hard dare tread and people say things formerly reserved for the bowels of Hades.
Sometimes I can’t resist looking just to see how far people will go to demonstrate the death of decency — a symptom of my news addiction.
It’s like bathing a cat in the shower — never fun and frequently painful, which is why I rarely do it.
One provocateur using a fake Facebook profile to comment under a recent column was frustrated by my lack of reaction to the online inanity.
“Mr. Fulks? Why don’t you engage in conversation with the public when they accuse you of lining your pockets with Adam Hill’s money?”
Then later: “Tom Fulks, speak up. We are calling you a fake. A disinformation agent for Team Adam Hill.”
A denial is never enough. A nasty retort, though tempting, won’t end it. Provocation is their purpose. Truth doesn’t matter.
So I don’t bother. I know I should respond with love and kindness, like Jesus would do, but I’m too lazy to deign it.
These many for-profit charlatans seem of the opinion they represent “the public,” someone more than themselves: “We are calling you a fake.”
They apparently believe the rest of us answer to them, self-anointed Star Chamber prosecutors who presume they’re entitled to interaction with their targets.
They’re Sid, the mean kid in “Toy Story,” who pulled wings off flies to watch them suffer.
They’ll probably never comprehend they have no standing in the community, that they’re owed answers from no one. They’re cowards — afraid of sunshine — who deserve nothing but pity for their delusion.
My first city editor years ago had a sign above his desk: “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.”
Confirm the facts. That was news then. Now, the online Sids — phony citizen journalists all — would rather insult their own mothers than check their poison for truth.
I should give up news and opinion. Better that than more guilt, despair and distress.
But I can’t.
My name is Tom. I’m a newsaholic.
Liberal columnist Tom Fulks is a former reporter and opinion writer. He has been a political campaign consultant for many local races. His column runs in The Tribune every other Sunday, in rotation with conservative columnist Matthew Hoy.
This story was originally published August 27, 2016 at 3:56 PM with the headline "Confessions of a newsaholic."