The entry below is being cross posted from Majorie Arons-Barron’s own blog.

Polls show that two thirds of Americans are mentally exhausted and taking a break from a steady diet of news consumption. Count me among them, at least aspirationally. Since the election, mainstream newspapers, cable and network news have bled readers and viewers, most significantly at CNN and MSNBC. I, too, have simply overdosed on national coverage. There are many problems in the world to acknowledge and understand, far more than any one individual can alter in his or her remaining years.

I don’t need a steady diet of daily additions to the Trump II gallery of rogues and misfits, the ill-equipped, inexperienced, immoral individuals who, unless enough Senators get some, ahem, backbone, will ban vaccines, eliminate women from combat positions, decimate our intelligence and law enforcement agencies, terrorize the immigrant population, risk stumbling into World War III and destroying the planet’s climate irretrievably, all the while purporting to manage departments with budgets the size of small countries and no idea of how to do so. A plurality of the electorate seems not to care, and so we have the possibility of Kari Lake becoming the Voice of America to represent us!

My life is certainly not enhanced by tracking every one of Trump’s preposterous utterances. So he wants to annex Canada, Mexico and Greenland in addition to wresting back control of the Panama Canal? That may well be for likely Secretary of State Marco Rubio to handle, not for me. Though, Marco, might I suggest we swap Texas (which wants to secede anyway) and Florida as part of the deal? And I’m going to shut out any ongoing media tally of the incoming President’s lies during the upcoming Administration. News media mishandling of this information and public indifference make the scorecard meaningless.

Trump has promised mass deportations of immigrants, shutting down the country. That may be up to the the tech entrepreneurs that depend on H-1B visas to enhance their work forces, farmers who also depend on immigrant labor to bring their crops to market, and construction companies and health care industries that rely on undocumented workers to remain profitable. Not much I can do about those either.

Trump seduced his followers with lies and false promises, but many MAGA folks not only are unmoved but find his lies part of his in-your-face appeal. They love that he is a rogue. I remain helpless to understand. An outlier, post-election Fox News viewership is up 38 percent.

Trump’s lies and misstatements are not the only lies advanced by the news media. Two pre-holiday news stories demonstrate the point. Two weeks ago, 18 years after three Duke University lacrosse players made sustained national headlines charged with rape, the accuser admitted she was lying. (A statute of limitations in North Carolina protects her from being prosecuted for perjury.) Three days later, the former FBI informer who accused the Bidens, father and son, for taking a $5 million bribe admitted he, too, had lied. (He will get jail time.) Check out the media’s herd-like original wall-to-wall coverage of those two stories.

My husband, whose obsession with the news knows few bounds, recently sent me a Wall St. Journal story about eight people in France convicted for beheading a teacher for trying to teach students about freedom of speech. (My apologies for the reference here- an ex post facto trigger warning). A news junkie can drown drinking from a 24/7 news fire hose. Each new day’s coverage can bring the indiscriminate reader to new lows.

There has been an ongoing migration of audiences from traditional television and newspapers to digital and streaming platforms. Eroding trust in mainstream media has prompted readers and viewers to seek alternative news sources, the news sources on which a majority of Americans say they rely. A full 68 percent of men get their news from Reddit. This, despite concerns about inaccuracy and bias on this and other social media platforms, including X, Facebook and TikTok. This is not a flaw in the system. To generate more clicks, social media algorithms are designed to stir negative emotions and deter rational discourse.

The 2024 election has made it increasingly clear that Democrats, notably its message-challenged campaign officials and overpaid, bewildered consultants, have grossly failed to understand key parts of the electorate and the sea change occurring in how they receive and process news. How to understand and effectively respond to what is happening in new and old news platforms will be an ongoing challenge.

I wish to my readers a 2025 that is happy, healthy and peaceful. I confess that this might only be achieved by taking a break and staying as close to selectively news-free as possible, for as long as possible. And, with a tip of the hat to Edward R. Murrow, as 2024 bids adieu, I simply add, “Good night, and good luck.” We’re going to need it.