How the News is Psychologically Broken and How to Fix It

An Existential “Call to Arms” for the Media

Are you sick of the news? Me too. Most of the time it just seems like the same tragedies, corruptions and horrible stories over and over. It is endless mass shootings, people behaving badly, trump behaving badly, “public servants” corruptly serving themselves and their owners, and constant other stories about how our country is becoming more divided and toxic every day.

Indeed much of the news has become a daily sh*tshow of supposedly unsolvable problems and drama that is not psychologically healthy for anyone to keep watching on a loop, and the majority who regularly watch corporate news are starting to sense it.

This situation with mainstream news is beyond serious and dire because it will kill the news, and if the news dies, our democracy dies with it. That is why in this series, we will cover how the news is psychologically broken, how to fix It and how a big part of the fix is an existential “call to arms” for everyone in the media to protect and defend the freedom and democracy that gives our voices life and purpose.

To be clear about where I am coming from, I have been a news junkie most of my life, because I am eternally curious and the news usually gives me the comfort and joy of being well informed about what is happening locally, nationally and globally. I certainly also know from the news that humanity is far from perfect, and levels of evil exist all around the world, often inflicting great pain, suffering and death on defenseless innocents.

However, my studies at university reaffirmed that knowing what is really going on in our world usually has a calming effect, because what can often appear confusing and scary to an uninformed mind is often very clear when informed with trustworthy, high quality news.

For example, as Russia’s Soviet Union was falling apart, I heard so many people say how confused they were about what was happening, because they were seeing massive changes in a world they did not understand, and it “stressed them out.”

Having just graduated with a degree in the newer discipline of International Relations with a lot of focus on the USSR, I had the fortunate timing of just having spent a few years reading international periodicals, textbooks and learning from my professors exactly how the communist version of the Russian Empire went step by step to where it was at that moment, and what caused it to fall apart.

The starkness between those of us who were well-informed of the situation in Russia vs. the stress of those with no real historical understanding was impossible to miss and an illuminating life lesson. Ignorance may be bliss but there is often serenity in greater understanding.

Then it Just Stopped 

I don’t know exactly how long ago it happened but within the last few years I mostly stopped watching the news. A big part of it was I felt so well-informed by the way I used Twitter and standard news sites, that it seemed like I barely needed much more. I could sign on to Twitter, see what all my online friends, experts and media people I liked and trusted were reporting and that usually meant I knew the news before the reporter’s article was submitted, it was reported on TV or showed up in most places on-line. What more did I need?

I certainly missed seeing familiar well-educated, highly experienced, trustworthy and entertaining journalists, experts and news hosts from time to time, but I didn’t feel the pull or need to be informed by my favorite TV news stars anymore, because every time someone asked me, “Did you hear the news today?,” it was fun to say, “Yeah, I saw that on Twitter a couple of days ago.” I was indeed getting faster bullet point summaries of the news so it felt like the time used to watch TV news shows was better spent elsewhere.

If there was a big story I really wanted to learn more about, I could just go back and visit my media super-friends for the day. I felt very satisfied, informed and highly efficient this way. However, as noted with my international education, I am also a bit different “than the average ranger,” because I have since spent decades learning about global politics, so have less need for the important background and foundational information a good MSM story provides its viewers.

Of course, this was all before Twitter was turned into a far inferior, bare bones, jumbled, toxic mess and politically alienating platform, shadow-banning and throttling longtime users, for no good reason. Indeed, the antisocial CEO seems to be death spiraling the social media company as well as his reputation as a good leader, or even a logical human being. He has literally made everything about the user experience worse and far more obnoxious, seemingly to disguise the ever-increasing obnoxiousness that has been flowing from his mouth ever since he bought the company.

He claimed Twitter as a “trusted digital town square” was essential to the future of humanity, but everything he has done to Twitter has had a negative social effect, so either he was massively lying to everyone and it was always the plan to turn pre-Elon Twitter, “trusted digital town square,” into a toxic, fascist, “Elon bro” love fest and narcissistic psychological operation, or Elon is really horrible at his job, or both.

Of relevance, the loss of a well-functioning Twitter has not caused me to go back to watching corporate news again, because all the brilliant readers, writers and podcasters on Substack have filled in most of my Twitter information void. I still go there to see friends from time to time but it is no surprise antisocial Elon has caused Twitter to lose, “that loving feeling.” The irony is I probably would not have committed so much quality time and energy to Substack if Elon had not narcissistically, illogically and self-destructively forced me to choose between the two by shadow-banning my tweets and sabotaging my Substack on Twitter.

That’s right, not only are all my tweets seemingly shadow-banned for not paying him, my Substack tweets have their previews blocked and the tweets themselves are rendered virtually invisible to my followers as documented by Twitter’s own analytics. It was almost amusing to see many tweets with trending hashtags get few to zero impressions among my 2000+ followers, or anyone else on Twitter unless friends RT’d for a bit more tweet love. The only explanation for zero impressions happening this way is if the tweets are made virtually invisible to all users.

I can only imagine how many more subscribers and much more revenue I could have had if Elon had not sabotaged Substack on Twitter. Yes, Elon’s destruction of the “trusted digital town square” Twitter has caused many content creators to lose a lot of potential money by making the promotional aspect of Twitter not only toxic, but almost useless, even for longtime users, like myself by shadow-banning our tweets from our followers who did not flee the platform due to Elon’s toxicity. I get if you buy a company you can do what you want, but the difference between what was promised to the Twitter board and the public vs. what Elon has delivered seems a lot like fraud, and has cost a lot of us more exposure.   

On the bright side, I still hope and believe that the most likely outcome for Twitter is that Elon will be forced to surrender it eventually, and it can be put back to the “trusted digital town square” it was pre-Elon. Perhaps as a public utility? Unfortunately for Elon, he has proven to be an extremely antisocial person who is seemingly having some narcissistic breaks with reality due to massive childhood trauma and drinking too much of his own politically extremist kool-aid, which means he is never going to succeed at running a social media company, but I digress.

The First Revelation

The first revelation of a psychological crisis within the news came from a recent conversation with a new paying subscriber. What she shared about why she valued CNI made me realize a deeper reason behind why I barely watch MSM anymore. She said what made Counter-Narcissist Intelligence different from most other news and information is that CNI is “solutional.” A light bulb went off!

Ever since, “solutional” is my new favorite word, CNI guiding light and one answer to why the MSM is broken for so many of us. What solutional purpose does it serve to watch the news report the same old tired problems over and over, or give a play by play of another predictable slow motion political train wreck on a daily basis? At what point does it stop being “reporting the news” and become a mind-numbing desensitization project of repeated traumas? Breeding psychological hopelessness by telling people almost nothing ever seems to be positive or ever gets solved is aiding and abetting global evil.

I suspect part of the reason Joe Biden’s poll numbers are so low is because corporate media is more interested in reporting tragedy porn and showing political toxic bomb-throwers for clicks and profit instead of reporting positive things Biden is working on fixing, or he has already accomplished. Whether you like Biden or not, he has to do his job in spite of the total opposition of a financially captured and subservient (to the greedy billionaire caucus) empty shell of what was once known as the Republican Party. Governing is hard enough with fairness and cooperation. Unfortunately, I can only imagine how hard it is to operate with total obstruction because those real world effects seem rarely reported.

Of course, there is some reporting on the total obstruction of the Senate’s newest non-genius and likely CTE stricken Tommy Tubberville of Alabama who is alone in holding up 100s of senior military promotions and pay increases for months, due to a personal grandstanding as an extremist, but I have yet to see a story about how military individuals and their families are being hurt by not having the raises and promotions they have worked so hard for and deserved to have months ago.

In the past, a few interviews of service-people and their families enduring hardship due to a politician would normally send that politician groveling to a TV for forgiveness. How many times in corporate media has Tubberville been called out for aiding and abetting America’s enemies by “not supporting the troops?” One assumes that if it is not being reported much online, it is not being done much on MSM TV either. Again, there is a ridiculous lingering problem, MSM has the power to help, but seems it would rather keep gaslighting us with Tubberville’s idiocy, obnoxiousness and recalcitrance.

Are you listening MSM? You can shill for self-serving billionaire authoritarians and their destructive flying monkeys like Tubberville, thinking you will be fine, but you and your family will never be safe in their power-mad dystopia they narcissistically crave. In fact, the profitability and future viability of your profession is facing the existential threat if you don’t evolve quickly, or in some cases more accurately, re-evolve into the “solutional,” non-gaslighting public service and defenders of democracy the media is supposed to be.

Media-esque figures like the kind Thom Hartmann, Mary Trump, Bandy Lee, Dean Obeidallah and many others are currently putting out there is media worth watching, because unlike most MSM, they propose real solutions to real problems. They see a problem, they clearly explain the problem and tell you logically what they believe needs to happen to fix the problem. Whether you agree with their views or not almost isn’t even the point. Unlike the vast majority in the MSM, they are courageous and put themselves out there as fairly unique by going beyond the strict reporting standards and being solutional, as the best news and information should be. As the old saying goes, “It is easy to complain but what is your solution?” We should all appreciate and support them and others like them for their contribution in trying to save our democracy from those who would destroy it, “to feather their own nests.”

“We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American Eagle in order to feather their own nests.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Four Freedoms Speech January 1941

I am sure some will say I am conflating “opinion” with “journalism,” but the last time I checked, there was this entire channel of all Republican opinion and propaganda called Fox, that is treated as legitimate and actually called “News” by most in MSM. Even after they just had to fire their top “personality” and paid a $787 million settlement to Dominion Voting Machines, because they lied about their integrity in support of trump’s “Big Lie” that Democrats stole the election from him, they are still called “news” so any opinion vs. news argument falls flat. Icymi, Fox’s billionaire owner Rupert Murdoch has always shown all the signs of being in “that small group of selfish men” FDR told us to beware of.

Again, step one in MSM saving itself and democracy is to become more solutional and for stations like CNN and others to recognize they will never be trusted again if they keep reporting reality and unreality as the two different sides of politics, or keep reporting completely false and manipulative political propaganda as news, because that is the exact opposite of solutional. By giving legitimacy to the illegitimate, they are making things worse and are empowering, “that small group of selfish men.”

Of course self-serving narcissists are always solutional, but their solution is always the same. Put them or their minions in charge, give them power, the purse strings, everyone does what they are told and they will promise every sucker’s fantasy ever dreamed of. In the end, the narcissist and their minions grab everything they can, blame others for the people getting little to nothing of what they were promised, and all this is indeed a wonderful outcome for the shameless pathological narcissist because they view other humans as nothing more than tools to get what they want.

I recognize that being solutional goes against a lot of journalist training but if more in the media do not start getting solutional, the first American fascist regime will soon end journalism itself, which the MSM better see as a clear existential crisis, before it is too late to do anything about it. Be solutional or go extinct MSM. Your choice.

Sam Ray © 2023-2024 Counter-Narcissist Intelligence