At what point have we heard enough political news?

A conversation with writer Margaret McMullan about temporarily tuning out

While talking over the presidential election with Margaret McMullan, a novelist and journalist who contributes to this site, she mentioned that she has not read any political news since the vote was called.

Margaret is politically astute and keeps an eye on both current events and historical trends. She worked the polls in her hometown during the election. Her decision to tune out the ongoing barrage of political news seemed noteworthy, yet, not likely unique.

I have likewise limited my intake of political news since the election. Though I still scan headlines, I rarely pore over the articles, and I blow right past social media posts like “Matt Gaetz as attorney general! Oh my God!”

Many of my friends and peers have self-imposed political news blackouts, which got me wondering how a single turn of events could prompt longtime news junkies to tune out, overnight. I don’t think it can be written off to oversaturation or disappointment, though both are no doubt in play.

Journalists – the best ones, anyway -- strive to report objectively, yet like everyone, we all have opinions and political views. Margaret and I both supported Kamala Harris, which is likely the baseline for those of us who are currently avoiding political news.

A common complaint about American voters is that they are increasingly and often willfully uninformed, so the obvious question is whether those of us who are now hitting the pause button are making a similar choice.

To better understand this curious phenomenon, I sat down with Margaret for a more in-depth conversation about it. The following has been edited for length, with hyperlinks added to referenced articles and sites.

Alan:

Margaret, you wrote an illuminating first-person piece for this site about your experience walking through airports wearing a Kamala Harris t-shirt. You worked the polls during the election in Pass Christian, Mississippi, which is something you’ve done before. As a progressive voter in a decidedly red region of a decidedly red state, I’m guessing you were prepared for disappointment when it came to the local vote. But I’m also guessing you weren’t expecting the rest of America to basically become Mississippi. You’ve temporarily withdrawn from the news scene in response to the election. Did you go from excitedly reading everything to reading nothing, overnight?

Margaret:

First of all, to prepare for this conversation about avoiding the news, I made the mistake of reading the news, and seeing which clowns were getting new positions in the crazy carnival cabinet. We are reaching a new level of absurd.

Alan:

Well, that totally skews the narrative, Margaret. But I suspect you didn’t tarry long on CNN.

Margaret:

Afterward, I took to bed. I read my friend Minrose Gwin’s new novel Beautiful Dreamers. Turns out reading fiction about a villain, a con artist and philanderer who won’t go away is more relaxing than living the reality.

Alan:

Back to the original question, did you go from devouring political news to avoiding it like the plague, literally overnight?

Margaret:

I was scaling back on mainstream media before the elections because the skewed reporting read like Republican propaganda. Too many reporters sane-washed Trump while they got nitpicky with Harris. Hardly objective, and the click bait drove me crazy. Then I thought, wait a minute, I can control this. I’m off Twitter but I’m on Threads, a friendlier space. I cancelled my subscription to The Washington Post when Jeff Bezos killed his own editors’ Harris endorsement. I use the trash icon liberally.

After a two-week moratorium, I opened The New York Times and several other news sites today, in order to speak to you with some degree of intelligence. I also wanted to cite some sources.

Alan:

But ultimately, you decided to go with a fictional villain. Have you heard from others who are tuning out political news?

Margaret:

On a morning walk this week, I spotted two TV sets on the curb, for trash pickup. Maybe they were just broken, but it seemed like a sign.

Every single person I know has scaled way back on social media and news. The last time I scrolled through social media feeds, I kept reading, in all caps, GET OFF SOCIAL MEDIA! SAVE YOURSELVES! Irony lives.

We were at a little cocktail party and everyone was talking about how they’re avoiding the news. The Republicans in the room didn’t even discuss him or the election... just their holiday plans. 

My friends are in mourning for America. There’s just a lot of sadness, fear and anger, which is exhausting. I wish the media as a whole would learn how to cover Trump and this historical moment. Clearly, they haven’t learned anything.

Alan:

Of course, if you tune out, you’d have no way of knowing if that changes. I’ve talked to many people with similar political views who’ve reduced their news intake. I don’t think we’re just sticking our heads in the sand or avoiding truths we don’t want to hear. It feels more like we’re conserving energy and waiting. But I suspect there’s more in play.

Margaret:

The New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chaz has a cartoon of an ostrich with its head penetrating three levels of sand. The first level is labeled “Can’t Bear Any News Concerning Trump.” Second level is “Can’t Bear Any News.”  Third: “Can’t Bear Anything.” I’m somewhere between level one and two.

Alan:

That cartoon was published during the previous Trump administration, so, obviously, we’ve been here before, though it does feel different this time. Do you think our decision to withdraw, even temporarily, represents a sea change? Are we becoming like other voters who pick and choose what to know? Or is it just shock that will eventually wear off?

Margaret:

People, especially women, are triggered by this guy. So, right now, I think people are being gentle with themselves because we know what’s coming. We can’t believe we’ll be forced to hear his voice and look at his face for the next four years. And we’re not even talking about what he will actually do, starting in January. I really don’t want my mood or my health governed by him or his news cycles. Again.

Alan:

For anyone who’s familiar with U.S. history -- which appears to be a vanishingly small cohort of Americans, it’s obvious the nation has been struggling with potential chaos from the beginning. Ben Franklin wrote that during the revolution, as the delegates were arguing in Philadelphia, he stared at the carving of a sun on the back of George Washington’s chair and wondered if it symbolized the sun rising or setting on America’s radical experiment.

The question that comes to mind is, in tuning out the news, aren’t we just limiting our ability to respond to a new kind of chaos? Or is this a temporary reaction, like when you see a car plunge off a bridge, and it takes a few seconds for your brain to process what happened and take action? I say that as someone who once watched a car plunge into a flooded river and I took a remarkably long time – like, 30 seconds -- to act.

Margaret:

My 30 seconds will take another week. Then I’ll try to glean enough from reliable news sources to know what to do to help. So, yes, my news blackout is temporary. We don’t want to be willfully ignorant.

Alan:

You have family history when it comes to experiencing this kind of election shock, dating to Austria in the 1930s, when the Nazis came to power and your mother’s family was compelled to flee the country. You’ve written very movingly about that.

After ending up in the U.S., your mother went to work for the CIA, and for the rest of her life she was hypervigilant about fascism. I’m curious, did any U.S. election ever prompt her to react the way we’re reacting to this one?

Margaret:

After the 2016 election, my mother became increasingly anxious. Her doctor grew concerned and told her to stop reading the news. She was appalled by Trump. Like J.D. Vance, she said, “Trump is America’s Hitler.”

The last vote she cast was for Biden. She was so excited. She honestly thought that was the end of the orange monster. But my mother prepared me for fascism and hate. She used to say, “It can get so much worse.”

When friends tell me everything will be fine, I can’t help but think that’s what my relatives said to themselves right before they were arrested, loaded into cattle cars and murdered in concentration camps.

Alan:

That’s a sobering thought. You spent some time in Hungary on a writing fellowship, which informed your book In My Mother’s House. Hungary elected a rightwing strongman, Viktor Orbán, whom Trump has praised, and who has undermined democracy, compromised the judicial system and restricted the free press. I assume you keep in touch with a few people in Hungary. Did any of them impose a personal news blackout after Orbán came to power?

Margaret:

Friends in Hungary followed the U.S. election news daily. Here’s what one dear friend emailed me: “What’s happening in the US is more shocking for me than anything in my poor country. I grew up in a one-party system, and I think I will die in a one party ruled country, governed by a half-crazy autocrat, who I used to look up to at the beginning. But looking back I can see it is how our history goes. I like to think it used to be different in America.”

Alan:

This presidential election was arguably influenced more than any previous one by misinformation and lies. It’s like people on opposing sides now occupy entirely different realities. Who knows how the use of A.I. will exacerbate things.

Do you think the tendency for voters to inhabit political echo chambers and rely upon cherry-picked or even fabricated “facts” has anything to do with us tuning out the current political news? We obviously consider ourselves informed voters who rely upon documented facts, yet we can’t discount the triumph of the other side’s approach. Is our reaction partly due to concern that being informed is no longer relevant, that elections are going to be decided by people who in many cases are either uninformed or grossly misinformed? As in: What’s the point in knowing the truth?

Margaret:

It’s stunning to watch Putin and Russia’s influence on the entire Republican party and the elections. Where is the concern for our national security? 

David Brooks recently wrote about how the election was decided by people with high school educations. See? I read a little news.

Republicans do not want smart, informed voters. There’s a term for this: useful idiots. So, they’ve chipped away at our education system, banning books that cover slavery, civil rights and any other uncomfortable chapters in our history. Remember taking civics classes to learn how democracy works? Gone. There are more and more homeschooled children, but there are few if any homeschooling guidelines. The coming administration will likely go after programs like Head Start preschool and special education, allocating more resources to private education.

The average IQ in the United States is 98. In Mississippi, it’s 95.8, the third lowest. Depressing, but true. There is a vast population of people in the U.S. who blindly follow, just as the Germans did in the 1930s.

Alan:

Playing the devil’s advocate, is it just that the truth hurts? Are we simply practicing avoidance behavior, based on the expectation that there’s not going to be any good news for people who think like us? I’m wondering if voters of other political persuasions felt this way when, say, Barack Obama was elected.

Margaret:

Remember when Obama got elected and Republicans stocked up on guns and churned out all those awful racist memes? They spent years – years – complaining. Then, after Biden was elected, Trump whined about rigged elections, trashing the incumbent 24/7, which was basically campaigning. I’ve got some angry memes in me, too. I just won’t press send.

Alan:

Whatever the root cause is, and however it eventually resolves itself, assuming it does, our current aversion to political news probably brings joy to conservatives who are obsessed with owning the libs. You know, “They can’t even read the news!”

Margaret:

Exactly. My mother would tell us to snap out of it and get back to work.

Alan:

A colleague recently mentioned that the 2016 election was a shock because so few people saw it coming, but that this election was a different kind of shock – we were forced to recognize that we were just wrong, that we’re clearly out of step with the majority of Americans. They’re reading different stories and creating entirely different narratives, and for now, theirs is the dominant one, which is disorienting. How, if we all tune out whatever doesn’t fit our narrative, do we ever find anything like a shared reality?

Margaret:

I don’t think we were wrong. I’d still rather be us than them because we’re on the right side of history. Half of the country wants to watch him burn everything down. I’m resorting back to my mother’s old playbook: Get your house, your papers and yourself in order. Stay calm, but plan for the worst. Trust no one. It’s a strategy, but it’s not a happy way to live. She would also advise me to stay informed. I’m just not there yet.

Alan:

I can’t fully withdraw because I edit this site, which covers political issues. We have to understand different vantage points, stay on top of the news and report objectively, regardless of our own opinions. But we’re talking about our personal feeds here, and how we respond to a potentially grave national crisis. What we’re doing in the short run will likely influence the longer term.

I continue to read a few political commentators, like The New York Times’ Ezra Klein, who seems more circumspect and less alarmist than most. I learned a lot from his recent podcast with Jon Stewart, which was one of the few deep forays I’ve made into politics since the election. I’ve been ignoring Stewart, too, though in the past he was one of my go-to guys. It feels strange to be tuning out even him.

Margaret:

That was an excellent, informative conversation to listen to -- baby steps back into the news. So, thanks for that. I was also able to read Heather Cox Richardson yesterday. She might be the broth I sip before the main course.

Alan:

One reason I scan the political headlines but typically don’t read the entire article is that I’m no longer interested in hearing from people who are trying to read the tea leaves, or lay blame, or just grab attention. That goes for all forms of media — conservative, progressive, mainstream. It’s all kind of annoying and bewildering. Sometimes it’s more prudent to wait and see.

Margaret:

Exactly. I can’t stomach the blaming or rehashing the campaign.

Alan:

Yet a lot of people are having a profoundly different experience – they’re very much enjoying the show, which is probably why a lot of them voted the way they did. They wouldn’t think of changing the channel. We, on the other hand, have actually pulled the plug, at least for now.

A friend of mine recently said he was reading a series of political headlines aloud to his partner and she responded by inserting her headphones to drown him out with music. It’s tempting to reduce our exposure to unwelcome and potentially enervating stimuli. In a way, it’s like going through a phase where you only feel like listening to instrumental songs.

But we obviously can’t sustain this. You and I are journalists. We’re also voters who have a stake in the country’s future. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism, but it’s also about how we see and understand the world around us, which feels pretty menacing right now. It feels healthier and more productive to focus on other things, but how long can we do that, given what’s at stake? How do you see people like us moving forward?

Margaret:

A friend said these next few years will make for great late night TV. It’s politics as entertainment, and some people can’t wait to watch the world burn down. Turn up the volume! Elon Musk bought himself a showman president and many people are giddy for the coming carnival. I’m not one of those people. I prefer an efficient, boring government with sound policies and plans.

We can’t make ourselves sick with the news or with worry over things we imagine could happen but have not yet happened. We can only live our lives, control what we can control and prepare. Rest. Exercise. Eat well. Get strong. Read. Repeat.

Mental and physical health is necessary if we’re going to resist. Temporarily tuning out is just one way to do that.

Alan:

For now, at least, you have Beautiful Dreamers.

Margaret:

And I’m very grateful for that.

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Image: Pause/play button, via Creative Commons