Journalism Ain’t Your Friend. ~ Nick Murray

Welcome to RetireMentorship, Your Mentor To and Through Retirement. I am your host, Freeman Linde, Certified Financial Planner®. 

Today we examine the news and the devastating impact on people in general and as investors in particular. No other entity has a more negative impact on you and your lifetime success than the news media.

That’s coming up on the RetireMentorship Podcast.

First, the RetireMentorship Two-Min Tune-In. The primary points of the podcast in two minutes. 

The News Exists for its Own Sake

No other industry has convinced people they need its product more than the news. We are convinced that we need to be in the know, and the news media is happy to oblige our addition. As a cigarette is both the cause and the cure for our nicotine craving, the news does not help us in any real way. It exists for itself, not to benefit humanity. 

The News Is Evil 

Not merely noise or a nuisance, the new is evil. It’s evil in three ways.

1. The News Profits on Fear
2. The News Divides Society
3. The News Dilutes Interest

The News has False Positives.

We think we need the news because of the benefits. They are false, and we’ll cover three:

“We learn a lot from the news!” 

We learn from events, not breaking news.

“We need to be informed so that we can create social change.”

Information overload overwhelms people into complaining about everything and acting on nothing.

“We need to hold politicians/corporations accountable!” 

We have representatives for that. Delegate it, and focus on something you can change. 

Let’s end with a challenge. Instead of complaining, let’s act.

The Challenge: No More News

• Spend time with your family, not CNN or Fox
• Read Books, not news

That’s coming up on the RetireMentorship Podcast.

Breaking News!

You will have to forgive me for this one and permit me to rant a bit. I’ve been thinking about this for many years, and the problem seems to be getting worse. 

The problem: the news media and its devastating effect on us as people and investors. It is one of the most consumed products in America, and I believe it should be one of the least. The news media is a cancer on our society, and we should put it to death. 

Let me make an initial distinction. When I talk about the news or the news media for the rest of the episode, I am not talking about true journalism. There still are good journalists out there. Those who genuinely investigate a topic thoroughly and publish a nuanced and thoughtful exposé. Storytellers of hope and triumph and pensive promoters of constructive criticism. I respect these authors and journalists and their work. Altogether, they might amount to 0.00001% of the total news media. They will be excluded from the rest of this rant. 

My criticisms throughout this episode will be for the rest of the news media.

The Financial News. What Carl Richards calls “The Financial Pornography Network.” The constant slew of market and financial related headlines, articles, and segments put out every day. The 24-hour news drivel of CNN Money, CNBC, Fox Business, and others. The worthless online sources such Market Watch, Barrons, and The Motley Fool. It is a cacophony of useless information driving actual investors to think they should be traders, speculators, or gold-holding troglodytes. The financial news has never once benefited the end investor.

The Partisan News. The talk shows, radio programs, and podcasts designed to entrench people in their own beliefs rather than bring a nuanced discussion. They have but one goal: divide and conquer. Divide the nation, conquer the seats of power. 

The Pseudo-Impartial News. The only thing worse than those who blatantly brainwash people are those pretending to be neutral. Fair and balanced, as in, if you listen to us half the time and our opponents the other half, you may have a fair shot at a balanced view. They claim to cover all sides and are therefore unbiased. As if the frequency and depth you give specific topics over others do not have the same effect as partisan news. They purport to report the truth. True, but they report some truth more than others. 

The Trending News. The useless garbage about other people’s lives to distract us from the garbage in our own lives. The Buzzfeeds and HuffPosts of the world and everything else you see coming through your Facebook feed don’t fall into the other categories. It’s just… noise. Noise that distracts us from meaning and purpose. 

My recommendation: Eliminate all of it from your life. Why? Let’s get something clear right off the bat.

The News Media Exists for its Own Sake. 

It’s not a public benefit. It’s not a public service. It is not a public good.

The news is a for-profit industry. They have two goals: ears and eyeballs. They make their money on ads, and they make more money when they sell more ads. They sell more ads by getting more clicks, more listens, and more views. The best way to do that is to pedal fear and outrage. 

The news media is in it for themselves. They will do whatever it takes to get more people to click, watch, and listen.

We are convinced that we need to be informed. We’ve been conditioned to believe that our patriotic duty is to follow the news and be in the know. When I tell people I don’t consume any news at all, the typical response is, “Do you live under a rock?” To which I respond, “Yes. It’s warm and cozy under here, and I get a lot of meaningful family time and work done under here.” 

The news is like a cigarette. We get a puff, and it’s engaging and produces emotions in us. Give it enough time afterward, and we crave it again. It is the cause of desire and the cure for it. And like a cigarette, we think we are deriving some benefit from it. Be we aren’t. It leaves us angry, depressed, outraged, saddened, or some combination thereof. How is that a benefit? 

It doesn’t end there. It isn’t merely that the news is in it for itself.

The News is Evil

Yes. Evil. I am not exaggerating. I believe the news is evil in three ways.

1. The News Profits on Fear

If it bleeds, it leads. If the news can make you afraid, they can keep you tuned in, looking for relief from the fear they’ve caused, a happy ending to the crisis de jour—queue ad revenue. 

I think we all know that the news profits on fear. We know they want to make us afraid and keep us tuned in. Afraid of what the loony left is doing. Afraid of when the radical right is plotting. Afraid of the weather, afraid of foreign governments, afraid of terrorists. Afraid of illegal immigrants, white supremacists, men’s rights activists, feminists, politicians, corporations, heart disease, and COVID-19. And we are worse in the U.S. than in any other country.

Consider this report from the National Bureau of Economic Research from this past November. First, can you think of a more boring place? Hardly a propaganda machine. They report on economics and statistics. Boring. But insightful. Here’s the abstract.

“We analyze the tone of COVID-19 related English-language news articles written since January 1, 2020. Ninety-one percent of stories by U.S. major media outlets are negative in tone versus fifty-four percent for non-U.S. major sources and sixty-five percent for scientific journals. The negativity of the U.S. major media is notable even in areas with positive scientific developments including school re-openings and vaccine trials. Media negativity is unresponsive to changing trends in new COVID-19 cases or the political leanings of the audience. U.S. major media readers strongly prefer negative stories about COVID-19 and negative stories in general. Stories of increasing COVID-19 cases outnumber stories of decreasing cases by a factor of 5.5 even during periods when new cases are declining.”

This finding is punctuated for me when I work out at the YMCA (the only place I see TV news anymore). Regardless of what story CNN is running at any given time, even if it about kids and kittens, they always have an active sidebar taking up a quarter of the screen. The sidebar displays a running count of the total cases and deaths by COVID-19. Even during the commercials, it’s up there. Just in case you were trying to return to some normalcy and enjoy a minute with your family or working out or whatever, let’s make sure we remind you to be afraid. 

The news profits on fear. It’s evil.

2. The News Divides Society

I used to be brainwashed. I probably still am. How would you know, right? Isn’t that the point of brainwashing? Convince people to believe something without them realizing they are being brainwashed. 

I guess that about 96% of us in the U.S. are brainwashed. And we’ve chosen it. We choose brainwashing every time we click back into our favorite news website, tune into our favorite partisan podcast, and like and subscribe to only those news outlets that align with our existing beliefs and values. We deliberately choose to reinforce our own beliefs rather than challenge them or give the other side a shot. 

And all of that news is designed to divide us. It is much easier to keep someone believing in their existing worldview than to try and change it. So they divide us. They continue to push the same narratives, the same stories, the same views to their audience to further trap them in their views. Split the country, 48% to 48%. Then they only have to focus on trying to win three of the last four percent. 

And above all, make sure that your half think’s the other half is the enemy. Make sure they hate them. How dare they want what’s best for the country in a different way than you want it! Hate them.

3. The News Dilutes Interest

How do we make sure that real change never happens? Make sure that everyone feels like they must care about everything. 

When we feel like we need to know about so many topics and so many events, it dilutes our interest. The sea of colors devolves into a swamp of brown. We are overwhelmed by our choices, and we shut down. Social media certainly doesn’t help with this, but the root is often the news. 

Shock and awe. Overwhelm. Don’t let them focus on any one interest for too long, or they may pursue that, and we will lose them as an audience. So distract. Give them something new to fear or be outranged. Switch again. This way, they will keep coming back for more. 

The news is in it for themselves, not to inspire change and improve lives. It’s not their job or their mission. Their job is to attract ears and eyeballs. 

The news is evil, making us afraid of things beyond our control, encouraging and promoting hatred and division among neighbors, co-workers, and community members. Overwhelming us into doing nothing but come back for more. The news is a cancer in our society. It must be destroyed. 

You may be thinking, “Yes, but what about all the positives? It has negatives, sure. But freedom of the press is the first amendment! A free press is the backbone of our country!”

Let’s look at the positives of the news. They are false.

The News has False Positives

We think we need the news because of the positive benefits, but they do not outweigh the negatives. They are false positives. We’ll cover three objections to my declaration that we should avoid the news.

“We learn a lot from the news!” 

People often assert that important information is gleaned from the news and helps us make decisions. They may even pull some line like, “Those who don’t learn from history are destined to repeat it. We need to know what’s happening so we can avoid mistakes in the future.” I submit to you the following rebuttal.

We learn from events, not breaking news. 

I agree that there are future-forming events in the world in our present time, events that shape our geopolitical, environmental, social, racial, and economic outlook. And I do think it’s important to be aware of these events and contemplate the implications. But this is a far cry from tuning in to them as they unfold. 

Far too often, we hear of the beginning of events as they begin and are delivered in front of us but never hear a resolution. And how often is the initial impression wrong? We never get the whole picture and thus never learn the entire lesson from the event.

Most breaking news is sensationalism designed to entertain or cause fear or outrage. We don’t need to learn it as it is breaking. Instead of spending our time and energy hearing a bunch of half stories, we could instead limit ourselves to completed stories where the resolution is in place, and the lessons are learnable.

I once saw a headline on a news channel that said, “Breaking News – Senate Continues to Debate Resolution.” I don’t remember what the resolution was intended to do. But the fact that they were continuing means that it had already been underway. And the fact that they were still debating means they hadn’t reached an end. Something that is neither starting nor concluding is, by definition, not breaking news.

The only breaking news you should hear as it is breaking is, “A hurricane is imminent! Evacuate!” 

Watching the news as it breaks and claiming that you are doing it to learn important life lessons is like drinking from a firehose and claiming it is because you are thirsty. There are other ways to quench your desire that are less wasteful and damaging. 

“We need to be informed so that we can create social change.” 

People bring up the role of current events in social change. How can we make society better if we don’t know what’s going on? How can we make it less racist if we don’t see the racism that goes on all the time? How can we make it more just if we don’t see the injustice? How can we create more opportunities for people if we don’t see who is taking advantage of them?

We need the news (the thought goes). We need to see what’s happening in the world around us so we can change it. We need to be good citizens of our community, nation, and the world, and to do that we need to know. Abandoning the news is sticking your head in the sand and pretending the problems don’t exist. It takes a lot of privilege to be able to do that. 

A lot of the principles from the first object apply here. We don’t need to hear about every stage of an event to create social change due to the event. But I admit, we must act on some events as they unfold to create change. Wait, and we lose the opportunity. 

But that doesn’t mean you need to hear about all the other nonsense out there to tune in to the few current events that have the potential for change. If it is important, and you are going to do something about it, you can take the initiative to regularly check in on the progress of specific events as they unfold. 

But that leads to the deeper issue: you won’t. You won’t take the initiative to track a story manually. Unless updates are fed to you by algorithms or acquaintances on social media, you will forget about it and move on. And it’s not because you are heartless and cruel. You just get distracted by the next news cycle.

Information overload overwhelms people into complaining about everything and acting on nothing. We are told to care about everything!

Care about whales and racism and the minimum wage and police brutality and sex trafficking and transgender athletics and homelessness and global warming and #MeToo and the opioid crisis and vaccines and the looming student loan crisis and cancel culture and healthcare and immigrant children and inmates on death row and the foster care system and on and on and on. And we haven’t even gotten to your personal problems yet!

We are tossed to and fro, like a sailboat in a maelstrom. There are so many things to care about that we end up not genuinely caring about any of it. We give it lip service, perhaps with our fingers on a keyboard. We repost, comment, tweet, and vent about the problem and injustices. And in the end, we do nothing. 

Think back. What we the last problem that you were reminded about from something in the news that got you worked up. Something that made you complain, either to someone in person or inspired a post, repost, or comment on social media. I’m sure whatever it was, it was a worthy cause. 

Now let me ask you this: How much money did you donate to help solve the problem? How many hours did you volunteer to make an impact?

Zero. 

We say something about everything and do nothing about anything. 

The news does not help us make a change in the world. It merely helps us complain about the world. 

“We need to hold politicians/corporations accountable!” 

How would we know about all the corporate greed and corrupt politicians without the news to tell us? How could we hold them accountable without valiant journalism to shine a light on their dark deeds?

We have representatives for that. Delegate it, and focus on something you can change. 

You don’t need to hear about everything that goes on in the world. We live in a republic. We elect people to represent us and pay attention to those things for us. You don’t need to follow politics. You can’t do anything about it anyway, other than vote. And you don’t have to watch every move they make for 730 days before you vote for or against them in the next election. 

A. You’re probably going to vote for whatever party candidate you belong to anyway. Why pay attention to politics at all if you are simply going to scan the ballot for the (R) or (D) and mark those circles? B. Most people don’t remember what actions politicians took over the last two years. They decide based on what the politician said over the last two months. 

But what if we stopped doing that. What if we ignored on ongoing garbage of everyday politics that the news throws at us. What if we evaluated a politician’s actual actions over the last two years when we decided to vote instead of basing it off the platitudes and propaganda they spew in their campaign speeches in the two months before an election? Perhaps if we gave it more critical thought instead of subjecting ourselves to media brainwashing, we wouldn’t be in the political climate we find ourselves.

We do not need the news. There is nothing gained from being fed stories about problems from all over the world that will elicit negative emotions and that you will do nothing to solve. 

You may be asking yourself, why is he talking about the news? Isn’t this a financial podcast? Other than mentioning something about money porn, this hasn’t been financial at all. Please don’t tell me this is going to turn into a politician pod!

First of all, it’s called the “financial pornography network.” Aptly named. 

And second, because all news, not just financial news, has a devastating impact on people’s finances. And ignoring the news has profound benefits to your finances.

Do you know who didn’t get caught up in the Dot Com mania of the late ’90s and early 2000s? Those who didn’t watch the news. Do you know who didn’t panic out of the market in 2008 and 2020? Those who didn’t obsess over news that their values had plummeted. Do you know who sleep better at night and find meaningful outlets for their time and money? Those who don’t watch the news and take that time to do something worthwhile.

So here is the challenge:

No More News

I challenge you, starting today, to avoid all news for the next thirty days. 

If you have any news apps or bookmarks, delete them. You can get them back. If you get any news emails, unsubscribe from them. You can always resubscribe. If you get all your news from social media, preferably delete those. Or set a screen time limit on them so that you have no more than 10 minutes on them a day. If you have limited time, you won’t waste it on news stories. You’ll skip to what matters.

No more news feeds for thirty days. 

Some of you who try this will have a lot of time on your hands. Here are some suggestions for what to do with it. 

• Have a conversation with your spouse.
• Talk to your kids or parents. Or both.
• Connect with friends, new and old.
• Laugh.
• Read books.
• Volunteer with an organization that is attacking the problem that most pulls on your heart.
• Donate some money to a cause where you can see the impact. If you have to, spend the time you would have spent on the news working to earn a bit more money. Then donate that. 
• Rest. Your body and your mind. 

For me, I read books. Well, listen to them mostly. The average time spent writing a news article is two hours. The average time spent writing a book is two years. They tend to be of higher quality. 

Even if you just did that. Read books instead of the news. Listen to books instead of the radio or political podcasts. Your mind will be blown by how easy it is to get through books when you no longer consume any news. I average a book a week. Nonfiction. I don’t have more time than anyone else. I simply don’t waste any of it on frivolous news.

If you’re intrigued by the idea of reading books instead of news, I want to help. I’ve read a lot of books, some much better than others. I’ll be releasing a mini pod called RETIREAD. The episodes will show up in this feed as bonus episodes. They will be short, 3-5 minute episodes that focus on different books and some key takeaways for me. It will be an easy way for you to decide if the book sounds interesting to you and if you want to invest your time into it instead of the meaningless drivel on your Facebook feed. Stay tuned for those. 

Here’s the good news about the No More News challenge. After thirty days, you can always go back! You can jump right back into Fox News or CNN or Buzzfeed or whatever Facebook is dishing up for you. By all means, dig in!

And then see if you don’t realize how much happier you were without it. Maybe not in the first week, when the pull of the outrage machine beckons to you, like nicotine in a cigarette. But as you consume another bite of news that enrages you and realize you aren’t going to do anything about it and it helped neither you nor anyone else, you will likely also remember the last two weeks and the peace you had. My guess is, you’ll abandon it altogether. For good.

That’s what I did. I quit the news and social media at the start of 2015. I’m the happiest person I know. 

“But how can you be a financial advisor without keeping up with what’s happening in the financial markets and the global economy!?”

That’s a different topic for a different day. I do not need to watch the news to give good advice and make good plans. If something comes up that affects my clients (it rarely does), I’ll hear about it and research it specifically. I don’t need to stay tuned to the incessant newsfeed 365 days a year to catch the one thing that matters. And neither do you.

No More News for thirty days. Try it. I dare you. Your psyche and your lifetime investment returns will thank you. 

If you have friends that are constantly talking about the latest news or political event instead of doing something useful with their time and emotional energy, I invite you to share this episode with them. Perhaps they would consider joining you on your No More News challenge. 

If you have questions about this topic or any other topic, you can send an email to Questions@RetireMentorship.com. Or you can call us and leave a voicemail at 1-855-6-MENTOR (663-6867). We will respond to you directly, and if we get the same question repeatedly, we’ll turn it into an episode.

Next week, Smoking is Hazardous to Your Wealth! We often focus on the health costs of smoking. But what about the cost to your wealth? The good news? It’s very easy to quit. That’s right. It is very easy to quit smoking. I don’t smoke, and statistically, you don’t either. But this was so fascinating to me I had to make it an episode. I think you’ll find it interesting too. 

Thanks for listening, and we will see you next week. 

This article is educational only and is not intended to be investment, legal, or tax advice or recommendations, whether direct or incidental. Again, this is not investment advice. Consult your financial, tax, and legal professionals for specific advice related to your specific situation. Never take investment advice from someone who doesn’t know you and your specific situation. All opinions expressed in this article are the opinions of the people expressing them. All performance referenced is historical and is no guarantee of future results. All indices are unmanaged and may not be invested into directly. RetireMentorship is not affiliated with any Registered Investment Advisor, Broker-Dealer, or other Financial Services Company.