“If it bleeds, it leads.” If there is a single maxim that guides the main stream media in their reporting, then it is this. The principle itself is based on a simple calculation: the more carnage, death and human depravity in a story, the higher it appears in the reporting hierarchy. We, of course, are all quick to condemn the media for this. But not so quick that we don’t watch it first. The main stream media is a business, a big business at that, and guided by the law of supply of demand. It is all based on ratings and with so many ways to monitor what we are watching, they know exactly how much is consumed. In other words, they lead with the blood because we watch it. The more we watch, the more we get. Inundated by it, we feel powerless to keep from watching. We watch while covering one eye. But like all things we feel powerless to avoid, it is illuminating to ask why we do it.
Rather than strictly psychological, the answer is more theological in nature. Its genesis is found, well, in Genesis. Returning to “the beginning” of mankind, we find man and woman in Eden made in the image and likeness of God. In His likeness, Adam and Eve are practically unlimited, able to eat from every tree in the Garden except one. Unlike God, they have a single limitation; they cannot eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Their test then will be whether they are willing to accept this limitation or not. The Serpent, the inventor of “if it bleeds, it leads,” leads with “You shall not die” and tells the story of how Adam and Eve can be like God if they will simply take from the tree and eat.
The Knowledge of Good and Evil
Even if the tree itself is symbolic, the limitation itself is real. In order to understand our bloodlust we must first understand exactly what the tree represents. Adam and Eve attempted to know evil without experiencing it. That is, they tried to know it from the outside without participating in it from the inside. This capacity of knowing evil while not experiencing it is something that only God can do. Only God is all holy and can be unstained by it. As Blessed John Henry Newman puts it,
“You see it is said, ‘man is become as one of Us, to know good and evil,’ because God does know evil as well as good. This is His wonderful incommunicable attribute; and man sought to share in what God was, but he could not without ceasing to be what God was also, holy and perfect. It is the incommunicable attribute of God to know evil without experiencing it. But man, when he would be as God, could only attain the shadow of a likeness which as yet he had not, by losing the substance which he had already. He shared in God’s knowledge by losing His image. God knows evil and is pure from it—man plunged into evil and so knew it.” (Parochial and Plain Sermons, Ignorance of Evil).
This is also the sin of Lot’s wife when she is turned to a pillar of salt. Overcome by the curiosity to know the evil of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah without being touched by it, she quickly finds out that to know it, is to share in it. But Scripture is most clear on this when we examine the accounts of Our Lord’s Agony in the Garden. It is the God-Man and only He Who can know evil without actually participating in it. So great is the protest of His human nature that He sweats blood.
One might rightly ask at this point how it is that merely watching “bad news” has anything to do with the knowledge of good and evil. It is in seeing this particular aspect of it that we can begin to separate ourselves from it. Why is simply hearing about “bad news” not enough and why do we crave the details? Why are we unsatisfied with a report such as“13 people were killed in an attack today” but have to know how it happened (video even if it contains the “graphic material” is especially wanted), who the perpetrators were, what their motivations were, etc.? It is because what we learned theologically is proven empirically (or else it wouldn’t be the main part of the consumer news cycle). In short, it shows we cannot just know about evil, we want to know it like Adam knows Eve, that is experience it fully.
What the Tree Offers Us
This doesn’t mean we want to pull the trigger but just don’t have the courage. For most of us its meaning is more subtle than that. It means we want to experience the pleasure attached to the evil even if we do not actually commit the act. It is what the Church calls the glamor of evil, the primal curiosity that brings pleasure from evil acts. We can call it virtual reality evil—all of the thrills with none of the bills. It is what keeps us from looking away at bad car accidents, watching Youtube videos of accidents, going to the movies to see the latest “psychological thriller” and the reason why serial killers gain celebrity. The Devil really is in the details.
The illicit pleasure is not the only effect or really even the worst. This habit of dwelling on depravity is soul deadening. It causes us to view evil through a carnage calculator that relativizes it against the last one or against the greatest acts of reported slaughter. We slowly become immune to evil and see it solely for its entertainment value. I once saw a lady drive into a storefront and no one went to help her even though there were 20-30 bystanders each with his phone in hand recording the accident. Not only does it make us slow to love, but also suspicious and fearful of our neighbor. When bad news gets significantly more play time than good news, we become masters of suspicion and avoid other people, assuming the worst of them.
Returning to man’s Retake in the Garden of Gethsemane we find the strength to overcome the ubiquity of bad news. Our Lord was the one who “resisted sin to the point of shedding His blood” (c.f. Hebrews 12:4) not just to show us His divine power put to win for us the grace to remain pure of heart amidst so much evil. We should become cautious and discerning viewers of the news, even sites and channels we would consider reputable. Avoid getting drug into the details and focus only on headlines. All too often there is nothing we can do personally to combat a particular evil and so knowing the details is simply curiosity rearing its ugly head. Get in the habit of asking yourself why you need to know anything more and you will quickly realize that you don’t.
When St. Paul wrote the Christians in Philippi he knew they too were living in a culture where evil had been glamorized he had what is the most practical of advice, “whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things” (Phil 4:8). We would do well to focus on these things as well, turning away from the bad news so that we can more fully embrace the Good News.