5 entries for The News: A User's Manual

As it currently exists, foreign reporting implicitly defers to the priorities of the state and of business, occupying itself almost exclusively with events which touch on military, commercial or humanitarian concerns. Foreign news wants to tell us with whom and where we should fight, trade or sympathize[, but] these three areas of interest really aren’t priorities for the majority of us.

[We might not find Italian politics interesting if we’re living in a different country, yet it’s conceivable to watch a two hour Shakespearean play about Julius Caesar. This is because underneath stories that may have a different reality to ours in the specific, there lies the universals which transcend those gaps. The news might not write like Shakespeare, but would do well to pay attention to these universals.]

A journalistic gaffe is something a powerful person inadvertently says or does in a momentary lapse which (as everyone knows) in no way reflects their considered views and yet which the news seizes upon and refuses to let go of, insisting that the gaffe must be an indicator of a deep and shameful truth.

We should at least be somewhat suspicious of the way that news sources, which otherwise expend considerable energy advertising their originality and independence of mind, seem so often to be in complete agreement on the momentous question of what happened today.

the news cruelly exploits our weak hold on a sense of perspective.

having perspective involves an ability to compare an apparently traumatic event in the present with the experiences of humanity across the whole of its history – in order to work out what level of attention and fear it should fairly demand.

With perspective in mind, we soon realize that – contrary to what the news suggests –hardly anything is totally novel, few things are truly amazing and very little is absolutely terrible.

As currently structured, the news does not ‘see’ the property developer who condemns thousands of people to live in humiliating environments but who nevertheless breaks no laws and steals no money. The most assiduous reporter concerned with fraud won’t be able to put a finger on anyone criminally responsible for the commercial messages that subtly erode the dignity and intelligence of public life or find anyone who can be arrested for a decline in politeness or respect between the sexes.

[Religions take a pedagogical approach in conveying what is considered to be important, and the news could learn from this.]

The status quo could confidently remain forever undisturbed by a flood of, rather than a ban on, news.

The news knows how to render its own mechanics almost invisible and therefore hard to question. It speaks to us in a natural unaccented voice, without reference to its own assumption-laden perspective. It fails to disclose that it does not merely report on the world, but is instead constantly at work crafting a new planet in our minds in line with its own often highly distinctive priorities.