In times of economic, environmental or societal crises, and rapidly escalating geopolitical situations, news consumption typically rises. That’s because people seek to stay informed, understand, and react to the changing world. We’re in one of those moments now. Yet, even as the desire to be informed remains, news avoidance is becoming increasingly commonplace, including amongst die-hards who have grown up reading the news daily and those who work in the industry. In many cases, such avoidance is a response to news outlets’ outdated model: The content and its format no longer align with how consumers actually ingest facts and information today, and so fails to meet users’ needs.
The role and evolution of news as a service
News has different roles depending on whether viewed from the perspective of the industry or the consumer:
- Role 1 is to document the facts: research, investigate, verify and monitor the world around us and provide unbiased information. This is the very core of news journalism — its historical foundation. Evolution in this field can be broadly summarized as the tools of the trade, not the trade itself, being augmented by technology.
- Role 2 is to render this information pertinent: facilitate the consumer in rapidly turning this information into understanding, knowledge and learning, thus enabling them to feel empowered to act, change, improve, share and be useful to themselves and society. This is the “customer facing” aspect of news journalism — where its “service value” is delivered to and perceived by the end user.
Evolutions under this second role include different formats (video, audio, multimedia, dataviz, …) and a broader range of topics (environment, inclusivity, social justice, …), delivered by increasingly diverse voices. Yet in principle, it is the same service (fact-based content), in a different format, via a different distribution platform (digital), which leaves this service competing with the plethora of other consumer-focused digital content out there on TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube and streaming, podcasts, etc. Regardless of your age, these platforms — or your AI of choice — are likely the first place you look for information, to learn something new or solve a problem.
Consumer behavior and expectations are changing rapidly, forcing nearly every industry to continuously and significantly evolve their service to compete for attention and deliver value. Beyond the now ubiquitous digitization and personalization, which are so prevalent they are not even deemed a service or competitive edge, consider the service evolution of these examples from everyday life:
| Industry | Core Role | Historic Service | Evolved Service |
| Healthcare | Save lives | Treatment of sick | Preventative medicine / Home testing / Real-time health data |
| Fashion | Clothe / Protect | Produce & Market | Repair services, 2nd hand (Remarket), Bespoke, Customisation |
| Food | Feed / Fuel | Produce & Process | Nutrition info, Provenance & Sourcing options, Diet specific products (Gluten-free, Dairy, …) |
| Banking | Financial services | Cash, Savings & Loans | Contactless payment, Real-time security & fraud alerts, Crypto, Online trading |
| News | Facts | Information & Content | ? |
Each of these “evolved services” either empowers the user and/or increases the ease and efficiency (value) of the service to the user. However, the news industry continues to expect consumers to maintain the same content consumption behaviors and highly value the same historic service, resulting in a user needs gap.
News avoidance
News avoidance is a reaction to this user needs gap and a decline in the value of the service — a service that increasingly requires greater effort and investment on the part of the consumer to render information of use to them, with little or no additional return on investment as an end result. This service/effort deficit is further exacerbated by relentless push news alerts, a “service” which consumers often consider neither news- nor alert-worthy, and perceive as intrusive, time wasting and of little value.
Multiple data and reports tell us why people are turning away from news content, in all its formats. Consumers describe news today as:
- difficult to follow and understand
- too much effort (low value/return on time investment)
Let’s consider factchecking — the core role of journalism and a service the industry has invested millions of dollars, euros and hours in. Let’s ask the question “who started the war in Ukraine?” to three trusted media examples:
- AP provides a long text article, requiring multiple desktop scrolls to consume, that delivers the facts, detailed background information, historic context, images, etc.
- AFP provides a similarly long text article, again requiring multiple desktop scrolls, again with detailed information, quotes and context.
- The Kyiv Independent’s article “Who started the war in Ukraine?” provides a one-word fact-based response: “Russia.” But this simplicity and brevity is lost in the mass of peripheral information and “furniture” on screen including a pop-up, subscribe banner, call to action and a register button. When I forwarded this page to friends and colleagues in the news industry, most of them replied saying they couldn’t access the article and asking if it was behind a paywall!
By nature, fact checking is historic, rather than future-focused. All three sources report historical facts (role 1) to answer the question “who started the war in Ukraine?”. Yet despite years of effort and billions in investment, the service approach (role 2) is not very different from a digitized version of what would have appeared in newsprint decades back. This approach is far from the needs and expectations of digital content consumers who lack the time, skills and context required to process lengthy texts and transform historic facts into useful information and knowledge that empowers and equips them for their future.
Stuck in shock, denial, frustration or depression
Digital consumers today parse the value of content rapidly (in less than two seconds, and certainly less than one scroll) before deciding if it’s worth investing in and engaging with further. Content that evokes fear, shock or insecurity triggers a natural emotional response: a rapid decrease in morale and confidence, and consequently, a further reduced capacity to process complex information and transform it into useful knowledge that could help manage fear or navigate the issue at hand.
Source: Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation
Another component of news avoidance surfaces in the Kübler-Ross Change Curve. The curve depicts the typical emotional reactions to negative news. Based on the five stages of the 1969 Grief Curve, it provides a structure for understanding emotional responses to and progression through change, from shock and depression, to feeling capable of engaging with a situation and ultimately integrating the change. The most common response to bad news is to plunge into one of the first four stages: shock, denial, frustration and depression. Left in these stages, resignation and an inability to take action sets in.
Counseling, skills training and support are commonly employed to facilitate progress through these emotions to the stages where morale starts to come back up and you feel like you have some understanding of the situation, can take agency and start to feel empowered. But what happens when we don’t have the skills (media literacy, historic knowledge, geopolitical context, critical thinking), support resources or even the time to start progressing through the stages before being pulled back into shock, denial, frustration or depression by another shock? That is, what happens when we are shocked anew each time we receive a push notification, news alert or engage with the news cycle?
This is one of the other major reasons cited for news avoidance: the negative effect it has on mood, along with a sense of fatigue and overload. News, as a service today, is primarily depressing information that you don’t know what to do with, don’t know what to do about or don’t have time to react to.
What is to be done?
Alongside news avoidance, AI use is rising and becoming an increasingly common user behaviour.
Let’s revisit “who started the war in Ukraine?” and, adopting this trend, ask Google’s and OpenAI’s GPTs this question.
Source: Screenshot taken on March 14, 2025
Source: Screenshot taken on March 14, 2025
In the cases above, Gemini and ChatGPT both deliver factual and historically accurate information (role 1). Both render these in a pertinent response to the question (role 2). However, their service differs significantly from trusted news sources in two key ways.
Both LLMs go beyond the “historic service” approach and deliver a service more closely aligned with current digital consumers’ habits, needs and expectations:
- Short, easily digestible information, zero scrolls required.
- A prompt box allowing you to dig deeper, or query anything you don’t understand in their response, enabling you to make this information more pertinent and of great value to you.
This is now the “evolved service standard” digital users expect, and many industry sectors are rapidly adapting to deliver on.
Google’s lucrative search engine business, feeling threatened by the service level GenAI offers and users now expect, recently announced its latest Labs release AI Overviews, which aims to take Chrome closer to this ChatGPT/Gemini service and user experience.
The news industry is also starting to experiment. The Independent recently announced the launch of Bulletin, a platform based on Google Gemini that publishes bullet point briefings designed for “seriously busy” audiences.
Conclusion
News avoidance is not necessarily a sign that people don’t want accurate news and information. It may well instead be a reflection of a service gap: Most geopolitical, socio-economic, environmental and even sports alerts and headlines throw news consumers back to the beginning of the emotional change curve. Meanwhile LLMs and chatbots provide (usually) accurate information, with zero scrolls, and the opportunity to evolve or refine the information and rapidly enhance its pertinence and value to you. What’s stopping people from rapidly drawing value from news information and having a chance of progressing through the Kübler-Ross Curve?
Newsrooms, agencies and journalists must remain committed to role 1 and document the facts, research, investigate, verify and monitor the world around us and provide unbiased information to consumers, citizens and societies.
But if we want unbiased, fact-based, accurate information to be valued by consumers, citizens and societies, the news industry needs to recognize when even the most ardent of news consumers are turning off push alerts and avoiding the headlines.
Kristen Davis is CEO and Founder of CinqC.
