Journalism and news in times of catastrophe and enshittification

I pace my small apartment for almost an hour after interviewing a fellow journalist in Mexico who was kidnapped by organised crime groups. Another day, a source has been arrested, another dies in a suspicious car accident. Others tell compelling stories of saving rivers and stopping powerful corporations. I feel alive when I work. But often also worried, deeply sad, and overlooked.

I also work as a global features editor, and the news comes in throughout the day, announcing more horrific events. Another oil spill, more destruction of the environment, of cultures, of people's youths and their futures.

Committed with such impunity, it sometimes leaves me questioning the impact of my work. The repetitive and ongoing nature of such injustices can also make journalism feel routine and close to pointless.

These are tough times for people reading or listening to the news, and for those real journalists who challenge economic and political power rather than aligning with it. But we must continue to stay informed—ignoring the bad news won't stop it.

Courageous journalism is needed more than ever, but it is being smothered by online platforms. Social media, search engines, and the web are increasingly enshitified—inundated with advertising, incorrect information, AI delusions, and mundane, vacuous viral videos.

It is an information crisis and a justice crisis all at once. But just as excessive consumerism and the approximately 48,000 overflowing landfills across the world are a clear call to only use what we need, these crises also embody within them a call for deep change, for a reckoning.

AI dominance begs us to return to everything that is humanising, creative, and real. Injustice and the climate crisis call for structural action and a strengthening of good journalism. The mainstream outlets beholden to corporations and in denial of empire and inequality are increasingly and obviously, useless.

Media outlets and other sources of information, like search engines and social media, are skewing perceptions about what matters. The amount of attention and space given to different regions, issues, and people forges a hierarchy of concerns.

Issues covered tediously can risk desensitising, normalising,and numbing. But overlooked news and silence numbs in malevolent and long-lasting ways, infusing populations with extremely high levels of tolerance and deflection.

Mass hunger in a world that produces an excess of food is a raging nightmare, deserving of daily coverage and strike action until it ends. Yet most people are accustomed.

For the journalists and outlets with integrity, at times it can feel like there is nothing left to say; that we've reported the injustices over and over. That all we are doing is documenting how the house is falling apart. This is indicative of a need to take things to the next level.

So how do we do good journalism, when everything is at stake and none of the polluting and warring criminals are held accountable? How can our news reading and news producing be useful, even as long-term worry exhausts us and narrows cognitive flexibility and creativity? How do we ensure clarity and care, without also falling apart?

The algorithmic boosting of low-grade and commercial content, accompanies the burying of critical insight and investigation. Amid catastrophe, injustice, and repression, the key sources of information — rather than enlightening — are calculated to numb and dull people.

The social media, information, book, and media landscapes are rapidly deteriorating as ad load is growing to ridiculous amounts. Every other post is sponsored content or online recipes. Many articles are unreadable without a browser or tools that remove all the ads. Our feeds are industrial swamplands of sponsored content and viral AI videos and stories. And for some demographics, objectified images of women.

Even newsletter spaces like Substack boost existing privilege (almost all the top newsletters are by men) and seek profitability. Meanwhile AI search engine summaries are discouraging direct reads of alternative media outlets. First page search results are likewise dominated by corporations like Expedia, United States outlets (even for users who aren't there), and mediocre click-bait websites. It's hard to compete, and our in-depth reporting can feel like feeble feathers in a hurricane.

Further, people expect shorter and short content. Two minute videos are now too long. Scrolling and short formats promote habits and standards that reject complexity, discomfort, intention, depth, process, and contemplation, and instead—especially when combined with e-consumerism—a desire for instant results is fostered.

Algorithmic curation and content recommendation based on predicted interests is understandably tempting for people who are overworked and exhausted. Intentional decision making is a mental load after a long day of work, caring for others, dealing with bureaucracy or discrimination, or working through trauma.

But being selective about news, information, and entertainment is practically a radical act amid such a deluge of crap and with companies like Meta supporting the right and suppressing alternatives and resistance (for example the restrictions Meta placed on Lula’s accounts during the Brazilian elections).

Intentionality is particularly necessary for international news, where regions like Latin America, Africa, and Asia have to wrestle for relevance in a rigid hierarchy of life that ranks them lower. Injustice here must be hundreds of times worse to capture interest. Indigenous towns drone bombed and eliminated aren't interesting enough. The recent gold mine collapses in Sudan and the millions forcibly displaced there, barely register.

Readers and reporters can gain back some control over their local and international news consumption with scheduled news time and short lists of strong pro-people, pro-planet media outlets and newsletters like mine, Excluded Headlines, which seek to re-balance world news coverage.

Well-written or produced news is actually good for us. It orders the chaos and gives it meaning. Depth and clarity around the causes and forces behind the horror is important for knowing how to put out the fire, as well as for our own well being and for informing our collective decision making.

Good journalism also restores a sense of freedom and relief after all the enshittification. It reminds us that not everything is garbage.

Avoiding the bad news won't help with handling reality. But the type of awareness matters, and a profound awareness of global and local forces is important for countering isolation, and for experiencing the patterns as history takes place that reveal connectedness between issues, resistance, and events, and for never falling into the trap of tolerating harm.

On the other hand, the banking system of education, AI, and low-quality media, by fostering an inability to think critically and under-representing oppressed peoples, can strengthen systemic class, race and nationality, gender, sexuality, and disability violence.

Hence, media and information isn't a side note to life, it is decisive. And the best journalism isn't done from the sidelines, but from the battlegrounds and fields.

Parachuting into another country or into an issue to cover them doesn't work. Reporting from a couch or a mansion, from the pinnacles of privilege, and from the corporate headquarters of empires isn't journalism.

Not greenwashing, not whitewashing, not spinning away the injustice, sugar-coating disregard and cruelty, justifying the intolerable. Not the naive glorifying of right-wing forces in Global South countries, or platitudes of balance and neutrality from outlets very much aligned with corporations and Euro or US-centric and pro-war perspectives.

Interestingly, despite the glut, most people (86% globally) do recognise climate change as serious, for example. And that is where the hope is. About 56% of people think about climate change on a daily or weekly basis, and a poll of ten European countries found 77% of respondents believe that companies should be held responsible for environmental harm.

The difficult next step is facing up to the fact that protecting the environment and building true global equality and justice involve some discomfort and uncertainty. Tweaking shower times and donating to charities won't cut it. Ending societal and structural addictions to petroleum involves effort, confrontation, and deep change.