11 entries for The News: A User's Manual

[Journalism has a chance to present culture in a psychological order that helps us orient, but often submits to promotional calendars resulting in bestseller lists and cinema charts, as if popularity would be the most useful factor in making decisions.]

[Choosing of what we wish to be informed requires knowing ourselves well enough to not selectively ignore what we need; perhaps it’s a position that could be prepared for with therapy.]

[Political news could draw us into how our society works and equip us to improve it intelligently. Word news could humanize foreign cultures and add context beyond dramatic events to help break us from fixating too locally. Economic news could go beyond standard figures to instill understanong of the human realities behind our goods. Celebrity news could be refocused on people from who we can learn how to be better and realize our own talents. Disaster news could help us feel grateful for every pain-free moment. Consumer news could point us to what can help us live a more fulfilling existence.]

[As humans evolved from a time where not much would change, where when something that did might be important or deadly, we need to readjust our perceptions to clarify that what is novel is not always important.]

[We most desperately avoid introspection when forming awkward but vital ideas, and that’s when the news grabs us.]

[Not everything we need to round ourselves out can be found in the present; for some perspectives we will need to look to the past for ideas that will still be in our thoughts tomorrow.]

[Children, wildlife, and heavenly expanse of the galaxies can give us relief from the news-induced self absorption that our time and moment is the most important.]

Art is a tool to help us with a number of psychological frailties which we would otherwise have trouble handling: our inability to understand ourselves, to laugh sagely at our faults, to empathize with and forgive others, to accept the inevitability of suffering without falling prey to a sense of persecution, to remain tolerably hopeful, to appreciate the beauty of the everyday and to prepare adequately for death.

[‘Dining, Travel, Technology, Fashion’ headings can be renamed to ‘Conviviality, Calm, Resistance, Rationality’ as those are what we seek to acquire from our consumption in those domains.]

[The powerful in Europe often decorated their rooms with a human skull, positioned in a way to get their attention, so that they might be reminded of death and refocused on more important considerations in life. The bad news of our day can function as the modern version of those skulls.]

[Hearing about a plane crash that doesn’t affect anyone we know can still transform us into a panicked relative or air accident investigator: we want to research details and receive regular updates (which media organizations will happily use for their purposes]

[Societies where everyone wants to be famous also fail to prove that being ordinary will make you feel respected adequate for basic dignity.]

[If celebrities have become so as a response to emotional needs not being met during their formative years, a child wanting to become famous can be a useful gauge to how well the parenting is going]

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.