Succession is a Reality Show: Why I’ve Stopped Watching the News
For years I tried to stay up to date with the news cycles. I thought that being informed made me a good citizen and it was my responsibility to consume daily news. I felt too guilty to step back from the constant stream of pain, suffering and hardship being delivered through regular ‘Breaking News’ notifications. Didn’t my privilege as a cis, white, middle class woman mean I had to push through the discomfort to face the truth of the world around me? I came to the same conclusion as Nina Miyashita in her recent Refinery29 op-ed, that disengaging from these programs and averting my eyes from the news was a luxury, and continuing to bear witness to abuses in society was my duty.
It wasn’t until I started working as a campaigner and became the main person responsible for our media engagement, that I realised this binary way of thinking had been created by the systems of oppression I wished to undo. Who had decided that daily news consumption was a moral marker? And how did it benefit them?
The vast majority of news media in the Western world is predominantly run by white, wealthy men. Recent research from Reuters studied 100 top media outlets across four continents and found that none of the top UK editors were non-white, while the USA had only two non-white editors. Around 80% of journalists in the UK come from an upper class background and the vast majority of news sites in the UK are owned by four male billionaires. In America the picture is largely the same, with most news outlets also being owned by a handful of male billionaires. None of this feels particularly surprising though, after all, Succession is far from fictional.
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These top level executives and editors hold an enormous amount of power over what each outlet considers to be “news-worthy”. While we are told that the news is an unbiased reflection of reality, it’s more accurate to say that it portrays a version of reality as filtered through the eyes of this particular group; one that has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. All too often the news is a white man’s imagination, portrayed as fact.
On a day to day level this can mean that parts of life that are invisible to this group go unreported. At the extreme it can lead to outlets influencing the news; such as when large newspapers threw their weight behind the Leave campaign during Brexit and helped to secure its victory.
News publications have to ensure continued readership for their survival. One of the best ways to do this is to turn the news into a high-stakes drama, with memorable heroes and villains, flashy images, big headlines and highly emotive personal stories. We’re so used to this form of news reporting that most of us aren’t even aware it is rooted in a marketing strategy developed by Joseph Pultizer when he purchased the New York World in the late 19th century. Not only are large outlets deciding what parts of reality are worth broadcasting, but they are making it addictive to watch on purpose.
It’s also highly convenient for these news sources to adopt the narrative that in order to care for the world around us, we have to be plugged into a form of content which has been named legitimate by past and current power structures. It means that these groups get to decide what’s important and what isn’t. They get to choose the frame through which we view the world, and decide what information is more valid than others. Simultaneously, they get to label other forms of content, which lie outside their structures, invalid.
New technology has always changed the way we consume the news, each time offering greater immediacy yet bringing with it rising fears about declining standards. In recent years 41% of Gen Z in the US have reported obtaining news through TikTok, provoking yet another wave of concern about the ‘death of journalism’.
But TikTok allows users to spread their message directly to followers, and creators often employ humour and storytelling techniques to help people to understand world issues. Some of the most intriguing content comes from those whose viewpoints and perspectives are rarely shown in mainstream media, such as those who shared videos from Ukraine’s front line or indigenous creators who are sharing their culture in ways we have never seen before.
Without the hierarchies of an editing room, we get an unfiltered look at how life is unfolding all around the world. This not only threatens established media outlets’ ability to control the narrative, but it threatens their overall credibility. Imagine how hard it would have been to share World War propaganda if people at home were watching TikToks about life in the trenches.
TikTok is far from perfect, but its failings simply hold up a mirror to the uncomfortable parts of news culture that often get overlooked. TikTok’s algorithm, which prioritises polarised viewpoints, reflects a media landscape in which there is often little room for nuance. The proliferation of ‘fake news’ across social media isn’t a new phenomena; propaganda and ‘fake news’ has been around for hundreds of years. By creating a narrative that newer forms of news are ‘less legitimate’, more established structures get to avoid looking at their own limitations and reinforce the idea that they are the one, true form of unbiased news out there.
Effective activism comes from our capacity to hold a vision of reality which is beyond how things currently are and take steady, sustainable steps in the direction of the world we want to create. This requires empathy, creativity, community and strong relationships. While the news asks us to skim read the world around us, really effective change-making asks us to go deeper and strengthen our capacity to hold the nuance of all that is. The world we want to create is born in our imagination - make sure you aren’t spending all your time in someone else’s.
Words: Sarah Laverty
