News can turn trauma into bad reality TV

Recently my virtual therapist asked me how I was feeling about the events that took place after our nation was attacked by a mob of white supremacists. (This is a beyond normal sentence for anyone who is surviving the first month of 2021). We didn’t even discuss COVID-19, the deadly virus that has killed more than 2 million people worldwide.

I have been so enmeshed in what’s going on in the news that I haven’t even missed indulging in my favorite “Real Housewives” franchises. Why watch a trashy reality show, when you can just watch the news? Because that is exactly what the news has devolved to.

Whether its MSNBC or Fox News, both ends of the spectrum — liberal or conservative; all are at fault for the proliferation of the 24-hour news cycle. For me, the beginning of the addiction to the news was the live footage of the O.J. Simpson chase and subsequent trial.

The O.J. Simpson case certainly made for good TV, but those were real people who died, victims of horrible, brutal murders. I was just 12 years old and had no clue about the depth of this story, the domestic abuse, the racial implications — any of it. It was my first glimpse of the shock and awe of the onset of reality TV and the 24-hour news cycle.

The best reality TV is watching network news in the United States of America, and the whole world is watching. We even had a bona fide reality TV show host as the president.

I’m a generation of the middle. A “Xennial” if you will. Someone born in an era when there was virtual no technology other than a cable TV and a phone (a landline phone).

We watched the birth of the internet. It was a big deal to have a computer in your house, or more than one television. My generation saw technology evolve. And with that evolution came a price — the addiction.

With the pandemic we spend more time staring at our phones than we do each other. Bloggers and influencers blur the boundaries of real and fake. Is an influencer pushing a product because they truly believe in it or because they are getting compensated? Is that really how you look or are you using a filter? We can quite literally shape our own realities with impunity.

Who is banned from Facebook or Twitter? Who gets a disclaimer after a post? It’s not a First Amendment issue. It’s a “who’s in control of the information dissemination?” issue. News networks have an obligation to be truthful and unbiased.

I have a unique and deeply personal connection to the destruction caused by the 24-hour news cycle. I was a trainer at SeaWorld who was there the day a horrible accident occurred, and a veteran trainer was killed. The 24-hour news cycle ate it up like candy. It became consumer fodder and dehumanized the trainers that actually lived through it. Our trauma became reduced to a salacious story.

This only got worse for those of us who lived through it when CNN, a well-respected and trusted news network, started playing the movie “Blackfish” repeatedly on their network.

Marketing itself as a documentary, “Blackfish” took aim at SeaWorld’s treatment of its killer whales and capitalized on the death of Dawn Brancheau by presenting a false narrative surrounding her death and the treatment of SeaWorld’s killer whales, particularly Tilikum, the whale involved in her death.

I remember how proud I used to be, going to the grocery store in my SeaWorld uniform, but pride turned to dread after “Blackfish” aired on CNN. The conversation shifted from, “Oh, I recognize you from the shows!” to “Did you know the dead girl?” or “Did you see the whale eat her?”

I started to throw a hoodie on to go to the grocery store to avoid this line of questioning from complete strangers. Looking back on it, CNN playing “Blackfish” was the original version of America binge watching “Tiger King,” and marked a cultural acceleration that incentivized similar programming.

Everyone who has seen “Blackfish” thinks that they are a certifiable expert on killer-whale captivity. Despite my 11 years at SeaWorld working hands-on with the animals, including killer whales and Tilikum specifically, and my 16 years as an industry insider with a law degree, my experience pales in comparison to the knowledge of my husband’s uncle or Cheryl from Publix.

As we all navigate through our new Orwellian reality, I’m still holding out hope that one day I can meet my therapist in person instead of seeing her online. This time she’s not asking me about white supremacist mobs attacking our democracy in the middle of a pandemic that’s killed 400,000 Americans.

But until that day comes I’ll try to curb my addiction to the “news.”