Is it OK to turn off the news?

Sam Hawley: Hi, I’m Sam Hawley, coming to you from Gadigal land. This is ABC News Daily.

If you’re listening right now, you’re probably not a news avoider, someone who’s checked out of consuming what’s happening in the world. But you probably do know someone who’s finding it pretty hard to handle the news right now, particularly with the Israel- Gaza war. So-called news avoidance has been on the rise for years. Today, co-author of the annual digital news report, Carolyn Fisher on what it means for democracy. Carolyn, I want to talk about how we consume news and this term news avoidance and what that means and the data that we have on it. So let’s come to that. I gather most people listening now are not news avoiders, but it is difficult to watch at the moment, isn’t it, with the Israel-Gaza war, it’s confronting.

Caroline Fisher: It is confronting.

News Grab: Across Israel, dawn sirens anticipate the horror to come.

News Grab: Israeli rescue workers are still finding more bodies. Another hundred in the tiny farming community of bury.

Sam Hawley: Scenes of sheer desperation after deadly explosions in Khan Younis, a refugee camp in southern Gaza.

Caroline Fisher: I think if it was the only negative thing happening in the world, people might cope with it better. But it comes on top of a couple of years of very heavy, negative, confronting issues which are then covered by the news. And I think cumulatively that has a real impact on people. It weighs on people and they do start to avoid news, you know, to protect themselves.

Sam Hawley: But surely more people would be tuning in right now, given a major world event is unfolding, than switching off? Or is that not necessarily right?

Caroline Fisher: Look, what we tend to see with major events is that there’s a peak of interest. So, we really saw it clearly, and there was a lot of research done at the beginning of the Covid pandemic. You know, we were all locked at home. There was a massive surge in news consumption, and we were all glued to our TV sets, you know, for the daily press conferences to find out the latest numbers.

Dr Kerry Chant: So there were 18 locally acquired cases of Covid to the 24 hours to 8 p.m. last night.

Daniel Andrews, Former Victorian Premier : We have 2159 cases of coronavirus in Victoria.

Gladys Berejiklian , Former NSW Premier: We need to extend the lockdown a further, at least a further two weeks.

Caroline Fisher: And when big events do happen, yes, there is that initial increase of kind of eyeballs, I guess, when these major news items break. But after a while people do start to turn away from it because it’s very repetitive and it’s grinding and it wears people down. They have to make decisions then about how much they can cope with in those small gaps in their own life.

Sam Hawley: Alright. Well, Carolyn, let’s unpack this term ‘news avoidance’, because studies show more and more people are switching off. So what do we know?

Caroline Fisher: So, this year we’ve been asking this question in an annual survey of the Digital News Report Australia, which is part of a big global survey with 46 countries. This year, 69% of Australians said that they avoid news sometimes, occasionally or often. And that’s the second highest, actually, level among the 46 countries in the survey. And it’s actually marks a 16 percentage point rise in news avoidance since 2017. So it’s quite sharp. You know, it’s not that everyone’s turning their back on news altogether. It’s that people are making selective and intelligent decisions about, you know, when they consume news and what types of topics they want to pay attention to.

Sam Hawley: It’s more prevalent among women.

Caroline Fisher: Absolutely. Women avoid news more than men. Young people avoid news as well, more than older people. Australian women are much less interested in news than men, and they consume much less of it.

Sam Hawley: Well, we know that news can be hard to watch, but what are the other reasons for turning off?

Caroline Fisher: So there’s a range of reasons. So last year actually, we asked a range of questions about what motivates people to avoid news. Nearly half, so 49%, said that they avoid it because there’s too much coverage of politics. But 44% of people said that they avoid news because it has a negative impact on their mood.

Sam Hawley: Interesting.

Caroline Fisher: Nearly a third say that they’re worn out by the sheer amount of news that floods their lives. A similar proportion say that they find news untrustworthy and biased, and so that’s why they avoid it. Around 16% said that the news makes them feel hopeless, that they feel that there’s nothing that they can do with the information that they receive.

Sam Hawley: We mentioned their bias… In a recent Andrew Olly lecture, my colleague Leigh Sales identified bias as one of the key reasons that she thinks people are avoiding news.

Leigh Sales: Some reporters prefer to be activists and crusaders rather than fact finders or straight reporters. They enjoy their heroic status among the tribes of social media, or their own subscribers. I’m not sure they can even identify their own bias,

Sam Hawley: She says a lot of consumers just want objective and impartial reporting. They can still get that, though, can’t they?

Caroline Fisher: They can. It is absolutely available. There’s just a huge choice out there, and I think people need to know where to go to get that quality news. But she’s absolutely right. All of the research shows, you know, our research, international research shows that perceptions of bias are the key driver to low trust in news. It’s interesting because audiences are really aware that, you know, journalists have their own personal perspectives. They have their own political leanings and their own attitudes, beliefs, life experience. And they think it’s unrealistic to think that journalists aren’t going to bring that to their work. The key thing is about the political interests and commercial interests of news organisations. That’s a really big driving factor. We do find that the majority of Australians do say they want impartial, independent news, but can I say it’s very generational. So, it’s older Australians who want that. Younger Australians are much more open to newer narrative point of view journalism. They find actually journalists expressing an opinion kind of refreshing, and we don’t know whether that will change with age, whether or not younger people will, will start leaning towards more impartial news or not, or whether or not they’ll, they’ll bring this through with them as they get older.

Sam Hawley: Donald Trump springs to mind for me because, of course, he dismissed news sources and he popularised the term ‘fake news’…. .

Donald Trump, Former US President: A few days ago, I called the fake news the enemy of the people. And they are. It’s so insulting when they write phoney stories that they know are fake news. One of the fake news networks. The fake news. You are fake news.

Sam Hawley: Was he just reflecting on community scepticism about the news, or did he help drive a mistrust of the news?

Caroline Fisher: Look it’s both. It does have a really negative impact. So, we have asked people about this. And in fact, in this year’s survey, we asked Australians about whether or not they hear criticism of the news media and where they hear it from in Australia, they’re most likely to hear it from their friends and family at 44%, and 38% said that they hear it from politicians. Now, unsurprisingly, in the US, 58% said that they hear criticism of the news media from politicians. What’s interesting, the correlation there is, is that those people who say that they hear criticism of the news media a lot, their trust in news media is lower. It’s important that our political and community leaders, you know, uphold the role of a free press in a democracy and not denigrate it because it’s, you know, it’s such an important pillar.

Sam Hawley: Not to mention the emergence of social media, I guess.

Caroline Fisher: Okay, so you’re quite right. It’s a huge reason why social media would be a very key reason. Because, you know, in the digital environment it’s much easier to access information and it’s now much easier to avoid information. If you’re on your phone, you can just scroll past it if you’re on TikTok. You know, news won’t even barely come into your feed unless you specifically kind of look for it and filter for it. Curate for it. You can live on social media and really not see much news at all, particularly on Facebook, which has deprioritized news. So yes, absolutely. The growing use of social media will definitely have a role to play in news avoidance, because it just makes it so much easier to avoid.

Sam Hawley: So, Carolyn, tell me, is there anything that news organisations can do to encourage people to stay informed, to encourage people not to switch off?

Caroline Fisher: Yes, of course, news organisations need to listen to their audiences and they need to pay attention to the research. And can I say, I think that many of them are. Our survey told us this year that more than half, 56% of audiences in Australia say that they prefer some positive stories. Around 50% said that they also want stories that suggest solutions, rather than just pointing out problems. They also want journalism that holds power to account, investigates wrongdoing and provides, you know, coverage of the latest developments, etcetera. So, it really is, I think, about shaking it up a little bit more, a little bit more light and shade in coverage and not just going for the most conflict dripping headline that you can find. I mean, I really think that perhaps it is time to give the old adage, ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ a rest. And look towards hope a little bit more, giving people information that will be useful to them to manage the huge issues that are just, you know, rocketing towards us all. That’s that real sense of helplessness, you know, what am I going to do with this information, you know, feel absolutely terrible that so many people were killed in Gaza today? Well, what am I going to do about it? You know, I can’t pay my mortgage and my daughter’s sick. What do you want me to do? So, I think we need to be cognisant of that.

Sam Hawley: Well, Carolyn, of course it’s okay to switch off from the news sometimes.

Caroline Fisher: Absolutely.

Sam Hawley: But what does it mean for society if this decline continues, if people continue to avoid the news and those numbers keep growing?

Caroline Fisher: It is problematic. I mean, of course, the health of a democratic society is theoretically based on a rationally well-informed populace. Of course, that information doesn’t have to come from the news media. That’s one of the issues facing the news media and why it’s in such economic straits. People can be informed and go straight to the source of other reliable sources of information and be informed. That way they don’t have to come to the news media. Is it a crisis in that sense? No. There are a lot of people who are doing that. They’re choosing to go straight to government sources or straight to expert sources. But then there are a lot of people who are being swamped by misinformation. You know, the poor-quality dross spilling out all over the internet. And that, that is really problematic. Education is really important in trying to teach people about what a quality information source is. Trying to get them to be more selective about the types of information sources they choose, but it could end up being that they choose sources that aren’t the news media for a whole range of reasons. Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing for democracy. That’s a hard thing for news organisations.

Sam Hawley: Yeah. Alright. Well, the message, of course, from us is don’t switch off ABC News Daily.

Caroline Fisher: (laughs)

Sam Hawley: Carolyn, thank you so much.

Carolyn Fisher is an associate professor of communications at the University of Canberra and the co-author of the annual digital news report.

If you would like some light relief, we covered the power of Taylor Swift and Swift Genomics last Friday, and that’s in your feed.

This episode was produced by Bridget Fitzgerald, Nell Whitehead, Sam Dunn and Anna John, who also did the mix. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I’m Sam Hawley. ABC News Daily will be back again tomorrow. Thanks for listening.