“Nothing can be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle….I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing the world of their time….The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.”
- Thomas Jefferson
“I’ve often thought…that if I’d been a journalist in the Holy Land at the time of our Lord’s ministry, I should have spent my time looking into what was happening in Herod’s court. I’d be wanting to sign Salome for her exclusive memoirs, and finding out what Pilate was up to, and…I would have missed completely the most important event there ever was.”
- Malcolm Muggeridge
The Problem
The volume and immediacy of the information available to us is ever increasing. 1805 the news of the Battle of Trafalgar took 17 days to travel the 1100 miles to London; that’s a speed of 2.7 mph. By 1891 when the Nobi earthquake occurred in Japan, it only took the news one day to travel 5916 miles, a speed of 246 mph. Now the news travels around the world almost instantly. At the same time, the general public seems to become less and less knowledgeable about current events and their significance.
The problem with the news is not liberal bias, fear-mongering that encourages passiveness, corporate control, or an entertainment focus.
The problem with the news is a periodicity which makes change and crises the defining aspects of our cultural experience. There must be news, every day. As a consequence, we can no longer distinguish between the important and the trivial. Wisdom has a timelessness and offers solutions to human problems, and this puts it hopelessly at odds with a daily readership – wisdom is not journalistic.
It takes too much time to explain things, to place them in cultural and historical context. And if we bothered to explain things, we might not be able to revisit them every day. The very survival of the news business depends on promoting a view of life as jumpy and disconnected. This is the reason for “liberal bias.” The news relies on change, and change is a fundamentally un-conservative sentiment.
The Op-Ed Page
On the op-ed page we get opinions instead of thoughts, and are invited to confuse the two. We get hints at real, significant conversations but get only clashing statements.
Science Coverage
The pressure of unearthing news on a daily basis means the news establishment must hype all new discoveries and new “trends,” especially ones contravening tradition and convention.This excites interest at the expense of covering real scientific exploration, which is too plodding for the daily news cycle. Science is thus dumbed down, and our understanding dumbed down with it. We are pushed from fear to superstition and back, all around the fringes.
Religious Coverage
The church is the source of true politics. But the church is focused on the eternal, and that kind of contextualization has no place in the daily news cycle. The news needs… news, so everything that once seemed reasonable and good must be challenged, not just now but constantly. Religion only makes the news when it is corrupt – pedophile priests, fanatical cults, and church conflict.
Political Coverage
When it comes to politics, the fourth estate doesn’t expose corruption so much as revel in it. McCarthy’s power was due to the news industry’s need for daily stories, which he happily provided and they begrudgingly accepted.
The Solution
Proposed solution – ignore the daily news. Long before online social networks, news culture created a virtual society that replaced real community. Replace information with involvement in ones family and community life. “Think locally and act locally.”
But of course, I’d be lying if I didn’t disclaim that I don’t always follow my own advice – I’m still working these things out. My favorite news-type blog of the moment is Front Porch Republic – “Place. Limits. Liberty.” News sources I’m ok with: The American Scene – “An Ongoing Review of Politics and Culture.” Politico, the Atlantic (particularly Andrew Sullivan), First Things (particularly the Postmodern Conservative’s James Poulos, the National Review Online, The New Republic, and The New Atlantis, and the Economist.
Questions to Ask the News
If we can’t stop reading the news entirely, here are some questions to separate the wheat from the chaff. Of each story, ask:
- Is this worth re-reading? To re-read a newspaper in a month typically reveals it to be worthless.
- What makes this story important, and how is it different from mere gossip and/or trivia?
And a few questions for general discernment. If I were able to change the news, in addition to the 5 W’s, I’d want all stories to include:
- the relevant longstanding facts,
- how the journalists know what they know (explaining how they get information would disrupt their institutional authority),
- and what they/we still don’t know.
Bibliography
There is much precedent for skepticism. Neil Postman, a freshman read at NSA, not being the least (Amusing Ourselves To Death, 1986). James Fallow (Breaking The News, 1996) and Barry Sanders (The Private Death Of Public Discourse, 1998). C. John Sommerville (How the News Makes Us Dumb, 1999) was my main source for this line of thinking. And of course the unforgettable 1976 film Network. “We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore!”
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