I have certain rules I live by. My first rule: I don't believe anything the government tells me.– George Carlin
by Aaron Swartz
Some people start their day by reading The New York
Times. Others end it by watching the nightly news. Some
get it from The Daily Show. Others download it from a
variety weblogs. Some keep up-to-the-minute by following
CNN. Others have instant news updates automatically text
messaged to their phone. But everybody seems to agree:
it’s a citizen’s responsibility to keep up with the news.
Everybody except me.I think following the news is a waste of time.
Some people agree with me on a small scale. Some point
out that the cable channels are obsessed with bizarre
crimes that have little larger impact, that they worry too
much about horse-race coverage of politics, that too much
of the news is filled with PR-inserted nonsense. But they
do this because they think these are aberrations; that
underneath all this, the news is worth saving. I simply go
one step further: I think none of it is worthwhile.Let us look at the front page of today’s New York Times,
the gold standard in news. In the top spot there is a story
about Republicans feuding among themselves. There is a
photo of soldiers in Iraq. A stock exchange chief must
return $100M. There is a concern about some doctors
over-selling a nerve testing system. There is a threat from
China against North Korea. There is a report that violence
in Iraq is rising. And there is concern about virtual science
classes replacing real ones.None of these stories have relevance to my life. Reading
them may be enjoyable, but it’s an enjoyable waste of
time. They will have no impact on my actions one way or
another.Most people will usually generally concede this point, but
suggest that there’s something virtuous about knowing it
anyway, that it makes me a better citizen. They point out
that newspapers are a key part of our democracy, that by
exposing wrong-doing to the people, they force the wrong-
doers to stop.This seems to be true, but the curious thing is that I’m
never involved. The government commits a crime, the
New York Times prints it on the front page, the people on
the cable chat shows foam at the mouth about it, the
government apologizes and commits the crime more
subtly. It’s a valuable system — I certainly support the
government being more subtle about committing crimes
(well, for the sake of argument, at least) — but you notice
how it never involves me? It seems like the whole thing
would work just as well even if nobody ever read the
Times or watched the cable chat shows. It’s a closed
system.There is voting, of course, but to become an informed
voter all one needs to do is read a short guide about the
candidates and issues before the election. There’s no need
to have to suffer through the daily back-and-forth of
allegations and counter-allegations, of scurrilous lies and
their refutations. Indeed, reading a voter’s guide is much
better: there’s no recency bias (where you only remember
the crimes reported in the past couple months), you get to
hear both sides of the story after the investigation has
died down, you can actually think about the issues instead
of worrying about the politics.Others say that sure, most of the stuff in the news isn’t of
use, but occasionally you’ll come across some story that
will lead you to actually change what you’ve been working
on. But really, how plausible is this? Most people’s major
life changes don’t come from reading an article in the
newspaper; they come from reading longer-form essays or
thoughtful books, which are much more convincing and
detailed.Which brings me to my second example of people
agreeing with me on the small scale. You’ll often hear TV
critics say that CNN’s up-to-the-minute reporting is
absurd. Instead of saying, “We have unconfirmed reports
that—This just in! We now have confirmed reports that
those unconfirmed reports have been denied. No, wait!
There’s a new report denying the confirmation of the
denial of the unconfirmed report.” and giving viewers
whiplash, they suggest that the reporters simply wait until
a story is confirmed before reporting it and do
commentary in the meantime.But if that’s true on a scale of minutes, why longer?
Instead of watching hourly updates, why not read a daily
paper? Instead of reading the back and forth of a daily,
why not read a weekly review? Instead of a weekly review,
why not read a monthly magazine? Instead of a monthly
magazine, why not read an annual book?With the time people waste reading a newspaper every
day, they could have read an entire book about most
subjects covered and thereby learned about it with far
more detail and far more impact than the daily doses
they get dribbled out by the paper. But people, of course,
wouldn’t read a book about most subjects covered in the
paper, because most of them are simply irrelevant.But finally, I’d like to argue that following the news isn’t
just a waste of time, it’s actively unhealthy. Edward Tufte
notes that when he used to read the New York Times in
the morning, it scrambled his brain with so many different
topics that he couldn’t get any real intellectual work done
the rest of the day.The news’s obsession with having a little bit of information
on a wide variety of subjects means that it actually gets
most of those subjects wrong. (One need only read the
blatant errors reported in the corrections page to get
some sense of the more thorough-going errors that must
lie beneath them. And, indeed, anyone who has ever been
in the news will tell you that the news always gets the
story wrong.) Its obsession with the criminal and the
deviant makes us less trusting people. Its obsession with
the hurry of the day-to-day makes us less reflective
thinkers. Its obsession with surfaces makes us shallow.This is not simply an essay meant to provoke; I genuinely
believe what I write. I have not followed the news at least
since I was 13 (with occasional lapses on particular
topics). My life does not seem to be impoverished for it;
indeed, I think it has been greatly enhanced. But I haven’t
found many other people who are willing to take the plunge.You should follow me on twitter here.
October 20, 2006
Keep in mind, the news media are not independent; they are a sort of bulletin board and public relations firm for the ruling class-the people who run things. Those who decide what news you will or will not hear are paid by, and tolerated purely at the whim of, those who hold economic power. If the parent corporation doesn't want you to know something, it won't be on the news. Period. Or, at the very least, it will be slanted to suit them, and then rarely followed up.– George Carlin
Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation.You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own, and control the corporations. They've long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear.– George Carlin
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