How to control the overwhelming fire hose of news

Having trouble keeping up with news that seems to be flowing out of Washington with even more fire-hose ferocity than usual? If so, you're not alone.

Almost seven in 10 Americans (68 percent) feel worn out by the amount of news there is these days, according to a Pew Research Center poll in June.

That was notably higher than the 59 percent who reported feeling exhausted by the high amount of election coverage, compared with 39 percent who said they liked having so much news.

That's not surprising, considering how much news President Donald Trump and his administration have produced, much of which they would rather not have made.

Just think, for example, of some of the recent fleeting stories that, in the pre-Trump era, would have dominated headlines for days.

In the past week, for example, The New York Times reported that, shortly after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, the bureau launched an investigation to see if the president was working on behalf of the Russian government. He angrily denounced the report and the Times ("Fake news!").

Yet, considering this was about a president who, among other questionable episodes, once cheerfully shared classified documents with Russia's ambassador during a closed-door Oval Office meeting, news of the FBI background probe left me feeling more relieved than shocked.

But that news barely sank in before The Washington Post two days later reported that Trump had gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The measures included his taking possession of his translator's notes.

Meanwhile, the longest-running government shutdown in history was closing some offices and holding up thousands of paychecks in an impasse between the president and congressional Democrats over funding of a wall on the Mexican border.

It is worth remembering that Trump had agreed to a bipartisan funding plan but then reneged after he was ridiculed by Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and some other conservative commentators for breaking his campaign promise of a wall. Sensing his base was crumbling, Trump demanded a wall or nothing. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, burned once already, refused to send anything to the Senate floor without Trump's promise to sign it, if it passed.

Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer and his fellow Democrat, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, held tight to their "no wall" position in a modified version of Napoleon Bonaparte's advice: Don't interrupt your political rival while he is destroying his own approval ratings.

But, as if the real news were not anxiety-inducing enough, Trump and his enablers held fast to his alternative version of reality. He blamed Democrats for the shutdown after promising earlier to take the blame himself. As for the questions about his Russia relations, he held to his statements that the only election conspiracy with the Russians was not his but that Hillary Clinton's campaign worked with a "deep state" of pro-Clinton FBI agents and others.

All of which reminds me of a Harvard study in 2017 that found China's government pumping almost a half-billion fake comments into Chinese social network posts over a year. The posts in fact did only one thing, the researchers said: "shower praise on all things China." Since the fake posts tended to emerge with events that might stir political unrest, the researchers reasoned that their sole purpose was to distract unhappy citizens from the temptation to organize "by stealing users' time and mental energy."

In similar fashion, the constant stream of tweets and statements from Trump that often have only a passing relationship to facts seems to be aimed at reassuring his base more than winning new converts. Pundits often speak of the "perpetual campaign." Trump is making it a reality.

What can we do about "news anxiety," which many in the psychiatric community say is a real malady, particularly in recent years? If you feel afflicted by it, mental health professionals advise limiting news or social media exposure, especially of the more sensational anxiety-inducing sort.

Psychologist Deborah Serani of Adelphi University, writing in Psychology Today, advised steering yourself away from sensational headlines and cable TV news and toward stories that offer depth, explanations and possible solutions to problems at hand.

That's healthy advice. After reporting the latest scandal or atrocity, it is reassuring to know that there is a rational path out of the problem at hand, if only we can persuade our political leaders to follow it.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)