By Tom Robotham
For the last decade or so, I’ve been in the habit of turning on CNN first thing in the morning, and letting it run for hours until it was time head to campus for afternoon classes. Often, it was background chatter while I prepared lectures, graded papers or attended to various household chores. But there were times when I was riveted to the screen. On January 6, 2021, especially, I was wholly absorbed in the network’s coverage of the unfolding insurrection, feeling horrified but also comforted as the reporters shared my shock and disbelief while the mob attacked our temple of democracy.
At other times, the panel discussions left me with mixed feelings. Some commentators, like Van Jones, were consistently eloquent and insightful, leaving me with hope that saner voices would prevail in our national debates. Others, like Scott Jennings, regularly enraged me with their sycophantic defenses of Trump’s most egregious words and actions.
On balance, I’d have to say that the network’s programs angered me more often than not—and that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Anger, after all, can be channeled as energy. Yes, it sometimes clouds our thinking, but in other moments it can be clarifying. Hundreds of my online commentaries over the last few years—and many of my essays—were formulated during moments of reflection on what I’d seen and heard from the station’s reporters and pundits.
All of that came to an abrupt halt, late in 2024, after I moved to a new apartment. When I signed my lease, I called Cox and ordered internet service for the new place. When they asked me if I wanted cable as well, I told them, “Not right now.” I still had cable at my old place, since I was dividing my time between apartments while I gradually moved things. I figured that once the transition was complete, I’d order cable anew.
I still haven’t—and I have no plans to do so. First of all, it’s saving me a lot of money. At the old place, my combined cable and internet bill was well over $200 a month. Now, with internet alone, it’s $70. That in itself would justify cutting the cord, but there are other benefits.
For one thing, CNN has changed dramatically. For years, I defended it—and rightly so, I think—against right-wing friends who thought it was too liberal, and lefties who thought it was too conservative. (Many on both sides admitted that they didn’t actually watch it, but they had that impression.) The reporting struck me as truly fair and balanced, especially the dispatches from the Middle East. Over the last year or so, however, the panel discussions have become increasingly inane, as management has watered them down in an effort to create a veneer of balance. They seemed to be an endless repetition of predictable right-wing and left-wing talking points rather than fresh and thoughtful dialogue, informed by intelligence and expertise.
When I learned recently that their best anchor—Jim Acosta—had quit after management told him he was being relegated to a midnight time slot, my sense that I’d made the right decision was reinforced.
Some of my friends told me I should keep cable for MSNBC, especially since Rachel Maddow was back to five nights a week. But the truth is—while I almost always agree with her—I find her to be a little tiresome. She—and other hosts on the network—seem to belabor points for an hour that they could make in 10 minutes.
Cable has other things to offer besides news shows, of course. Occasionally, I enjoyed watching reruns of Gunsmoke or The Andy Griffith Show on TBS. I watched a fair amount of live sports, too, especially tennis during the major tournaments, and sometimes football games on Sundays.
The thing is, I can still watch those old TV shows via various streaming services, and with greater convenience. Lately, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying older episodes of Gunsmoke, which they never air on TBS, with a young Burt Reynolds playing a “half-breed.” I’d forgotten that the early shows often dealt seriously with the problem of bigotry, not to mention greed, cruelty, abuse of power, mob hysteria and contempt for the law. It’s not a stretch to say that the show has caused me to think deeply about the most pressing concerns of our time just as much as CNN ever did. As for sports, I can take or leave football. Come baseball season, I’ll renew MLB.TV, which I screen on my television through Firestick. And when the French Open rolls around, I’ll sign up for the Tennis Channel, if I feel that motivated to watch it.
Meanwhile, I get my news and political commentary from The New York Times, Le Monde, BBC, NPR, and The New Yorker. For commentary with a dose of humor, I regularly stream Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, John Oliver and Bill Maher.
The difference is, all of this is done with intention. Turning on CNN, by contrast, had become a mindless habit, like chain smoking.
It was a habit easily acquired. I’ve never known life without television, and I became addicted in early childhood when I’d watch religiously after school, on Saturday mornings, before bedtime, and sometimes while eating a Swanson “TV dinner” in its little tinfoil tray.
Now, as I write these words, I’m struck by how quiet it is in my apartment—and how precious and peaceful that silence feels. I’d been wholly unaware of how heavy doses of CNN broadcasts were affecting me. Even when it was at its best, its incessant pharmaceutical commercials were irritating. There’s something unsettling about being told throughout the day that you very likely have every disease known to man and that you’d better start taking a dozen new medications, even though there’s a chance that the drugs themselves will kill you.
The silence seems all the more golden, given the turmoil we are now living through. So much is at stake, and this is not the time to completely check out. It’s essential to keep up with the news and, as we digest it, to consider whether there’s anything we can actually do about it. But I’ve come to realize that keeping my blood on “boil” is not the answer either—which is why I’ve largely given up on Facebook as well as cable news. Like the latter, social media presents the illusion of being a platform for serious public discourse and dissemination of information, when in reality both are designed to fuel the fires of rage, fear and anxiety.
I do still value authentic in-person discussion of politics, but having burned myself out on cable news and social media, I’ve been finding lately that I’m also more selective about that. I’m not alone in this regard. Every week, I gather with close friends at our favorite pub, and near the end of a recent meetup, one buddy observed that we’d gone the whole evening without talking politics, which we used to do routinely. That wasn’t intentional; it’s not as if we’d made a pact, or something. It just didn’t come up.
I can’t speak for my friends, but I know that the reason I’m more selective about digging into the latest outrage is that I’m no longer subjecting myself to the fires of fury all day long.
In short, it turns out that cutting cable isn’t just saving me a hundred fifty bucks a month. It may well be saving my sanity.
