Comment by danmaz74
Comment by danmaz74 4 days ago
I completely understand why, but on the other hand democracy relies on citizens being informed about what's happening. The risk is that one day, you wake up and there is no democracy any more.
Comment by danmaz74 4 days ago
I completely understand why, but on the other hand democracy relies on citizens being informed about what's happening. The risk is that one day, you wake up and there is no democracy any more.
I'd like to get a little pedantic here and suggest it's not reading the news that's so problematic, it's 1) watching it, and 2) scrolling it. Not that print can't be effective propaganda, but it's less optimized to the task than 1 and 2. The passive pawns can't get enough of either.
On one hand I can see where you can draw this argument from. But on the other hand I don't think daily consumption of the huge quantity of news that exists is necessary for having a decent political opinion, especially given that most news is inflammatory junk (at least in my country). I just don't need a 5 page breakdown of every single event that some corpo decided to shove down our throats.
Also - and maybe I'm naive for this - I don't really need news to inform my political opinion because the current state of affairs is so far from my ideal world. Like no matter what could reasonably occur in the news, I still know who I'm voting for on polling day.
> I completely understand why, but on the other hand democracy relies on citizens being informed about what's happening.
The point being made by the author is that "following the news" nowadays has nothing to do with being informed. Instead, it became about being constantly bombarded by a barrage of noise and nonsense to constantly grab your attention.
So instead, by finding a monthly publication giving him an overview of the local, European and world news, the author is looking for a filter removing all the unnecessary noise. And the month granularity should be more than enough to allow him to be informed about important changes.
I completely agree. The author is incredibly naive on the "I asked myself how much of this actually affects my daily life". If there's one thing that absolutely affects your life, it's politics. Maybe not today, and maybe not immediately in a meaningful way, but it will affect you.
I completely disagree. The past 50-70yr of "people ought to care and be involved" type sentiment has resulted in mostly only the people who have nothing better to do and no serious problems having an outsize effect and in some subject areas completely dominating the political discourse to the detriment of literally everyone else and western society generally.
You mangled Jefferson a bit. He wrote about education, not news. He didn't imagine the the non-stop firehose of slop and advertising and propaganda we endure and call news. What passes for news today describes the opposite of critical thinking and education.
No evidence supports your sentiment. Find an example of democracy that arose from citizens "being informed about what's happening." The Athenians limited democratic participation to a small educated elite. The American Founders had the same instinct, excluding more people than they included.
Demoracy dies in front of our eyes right now, in the USA, the most media-saturated culture in history. You might blame that on an ignorant and uncritical population. You might call them uninformed, or misinformed. As Jefferson understood the problem doesn't come from people not reading the news, but rather people not educated enough to understand, think critically, or even care.
The fact that this is downvoted really says it all. "I don't read the news" is pretty much dependent on one's profession being insulated from changing events. Which is not surprising why it's a popular opinion amongst technocrats that would rather not have democracy in the first place.
Excerpt from link:
For the rest of the news, I am considering subscribing to a magazine that covers important events in Germany, the EU, or the world every few months. This kind of format filters out short-term noise and fear-driven stories.
As we said in the UK in my childhood, "Today’s news is tomorrow’s chip* paper".
In October 2024 I would not have guessed that we'd ever see masked agents killing people on the streets of major US cities, or the US administration immediately accusing the victims of being armed terrorists. Things can change rapidly. By allowing things to get this bad, we have unfortunately forfeited our right to pretend things can't change rapidly. Let's plug in; fix this situation; and then folks can go back to ignoring the news.
Just because news orgs are incentivized to be controversial and attention-seeking doesn’t mean that the world isn’t changing rapidly.
Personally I think once a week magazines / reviews are a good compromise. I’m not sure how useful reading 3 month old news will be.
> on one's profession being insulated
Even this is privilege. Try "one's identity".
Last year, legal immigrants were fine. Today, their kids are kidnapped and used as bait to take them to Alcatraz. And that's not even the identity I'm mostly referring to.
Very cool stance OOP, thank you for identifying yourself as the type of centrist heaven will reject at the gate and angels will never get tired of the reaction to the shrug.
I'm not sure it's a good idea to be intellectually dishonest if you care about seeing the change you want to see.
Kidnapping kids is what they are doing?
Can't wait for your apocalyptic cult to wither and be forgotten.
Reading the news and being informed are two separate things. Being an informed citizen, the kind that democracies need to survive, also requires 1) being informed of history and 2) understanding issues in depth.
People who consume a lot of news tend to have very shallow understanding of a broad range of current events. Worse they tend to be passive receivers of news instead of active seekers of information with intent to understand the world.
As a result, they are very susceptible to manipulation through selection of what makes the news they tend to consume. They become passive pawns in political power struggles.