Well said! Breaks clear the mind and let you find patterns on your own.
It seems to me like what we want from the ‘news’ is help identifying interesting questions and help us tease out the patterns. I’m hopeful emerging technologies will help us do that more efficiently and in a way that doesn’t make us so depressed. 😔
I thought Tolstoy captured news saturation really well.
“Stepan Arkadyevitch took in and read a liberal paper, not an extreme one, but one advocating the views held by the majority. And in spite of the fact that science, art, and politics had no special interest for him, he firmly held those views on all these subjects which were held by the majority and by his paper, and he only changed them when the majority changed them—or, more strictly speaking, he did not change them, but they imperceptibly changed of themselves within him.”
For me radio has been a companion most of my adult life. CBC in particular. That's a lot of news. And today a ton of repetition. And terribly misguided. Take food banks for example. How many of the people flooding the food banks are carrying $1000 phones? Get real. People have figured out there's free food there. Duh.
I have trouble stopping listening though. I still want the comfort of intelligent voices chatting about current affairs. The nonsense is killing me.
Because each of we news junkies still only have the one vote each, and most people are not news junkies, I'm increasingly wondering what the "media narrative" even has to do with the next election outcome. I get the Vancouver Sun, on paper. I live in a condo with 18 units. I'm the only paper, though nearly all are over 40.
The various victories and defeats of "controlling the narrative" (say, is Canada still really loyal to Israeli policy, or could an Israel-criticizing pol get elected?) may only sway 10% of the population, and them not that much.
Which, come to think of it, means the only thing that can really affect an election outcome is the 25-words-or-less "vibes" that do filter down to people who do *NOT* read news?
Is that why newspapers seem to relentlessly promote certain basic narratives - "the economy is bad", lately - because that's all that gets through? And they don't need to worry about counterfactuals because 90% don't read far enough to get those?
I've blogged about two "economy is bad" efforts, lately:
1) We Can't Afford Thanksgiving Dinner (when it's the cheapest meal of the year)
Fun has been made of the NYT's: "Employment up, inflation down: Why That's Bad News for Biden" relentless "vibes" for months, and now the CJR has given them a scorching. The notion that even our most-admired news sources are embedding a 25-words-or-less "vibe" into all their coverage, which is often counterfactual to their actual news reports, is quite real, now.
However, it is mightily important to develop the skill of rejecting (or skipping) news. When things get too far from "common sense" the skill to recognize such stuff is very valuable.
Well said! Breaks clear the mind and let you find patterns on your own.
It seems to me like what we want from the ‘news’ is help identifying interesting questions and help us tease out the patterns. I’m hopeful emerging technologies will help us do that more efficiently and in a way that doesn’t make us so depressed. 😔
I thought Tolstoy captured news saturation really well.
“Stepan Arkadyevitch took in and read a liberal paper, not an extreme one, but one advocating the views held by the majority. And in spite of the fact that science, art, and politics had no special interest for him, he firmly held those views on all these subjects which were held by the majority and by his paper, and he only changed them when the majority changed them—or, more strictly speaking, he did not change them, but they imperceptibly changed of themselves within him.”
Thank you for delaying the "truth, which is different from fact" piece, you're 100% fight that's too much for November...
For me radio has been a companion most of my adult life. CBC in particular. That's a lot of news. And today a ton of repetition. And terribly misguided. Take food banks for example. How many of the people flooding the food banks are carrying $1000 phones? Get real. People have figured out there's free food there. Duh.
I have trouble stopping listening though. I still want the comfort of intelligent voices chatting about current affairs. The nonsense is killing me.
Because each of we news junkies still only have the one vote each, and most people are not news junkies, I'm increasingly wondering what the "media narrative" even has to do with the next election outcome. I get the Vancouver Sun, on paper. I live in a condo with 18 units. I'm the only paper, though nearly all are over 40.
The various victories and defeats of "controlling the narrative" (say, is Canada still really loyal to Israeli policy, or could an Israel-criticizing pol get elected?) may only sway 10% of the population, and them not that much.
Which, come to think of it, means the only thing that can really affect an election outcome is the 25-words-or-less "vibes" that do filter down to people who do *NOT* read news?
Is that why newspapers seem to relentlessly promote certain basic narratives - "the economy is bad", lately - because that's all that gets through? And they don't need to worry about counterfactuals because 90% don't read far enough to get those?
I've blogged about two "economy is bad" efforts, lately:
1) We Can't Afford Thanksgiving Dinner (when it's the cheapest meal of the year)
http://brander.ca/stackback#thx
2) Black Friday shows that the economy is bad;
If sales are down, it's because people have less money to spend;
If sales are up, it's because they have less money and need to find bargains.
Not kidding. The two versions were on the same CTV news page today. Whatever the facts about Black Friday, they proved the narrative either way:
http://brander.ca/stackback#blackfriday2
Fun has been made of the NYT's: "Employment up, inflation down: Why That's Bad News for Biden" relentless "vibes" for months, and now the CJR has given them a scorching. The notion that even our most-admired news sources are embedding a 25-words-or-less "vibe" into all their coverage, which is often counterfactual to their actual news reports, is quite real, now.
However, it is mightily important to develop the skill of rejecting (or skipping) news. When things get too far from "common sense" the skill to recognize such stuff is very valuable.
.. mebbe time to write about Canada’s Elected ‘Public Servant whores & pimps ..’
If you have a more ‘genteel take’ please feel free to hold forth .. eh !
Last I looked - this AM - no shortage of ‘Paid Prostitution’
“truth, which is different from fact” - when did truth become synonymous with belief rather than fact?
“objectivity - which doesn’t exist” - that’s your belief! ;)