Mulling News
I'm a bit of a news addict. When I had cable1, and I was all alone, I maintained a hearty diet of cable news and panel shows. I was the kind of person who watches CSPAN2; I knew this was bad when I started watching the British parliament and Tony Blaire discussing obscure (when you're a Ugandan living in South Dakota) topics.
A bug was lodged in my head, however, a few years ago when Philip Greenspun wrote the following:
I've been without Internet, email, or telephone (brought the phone; forgot the charger) for two weeks here in Greece and therefore have missed out on the news. Checking today from Santorini it appears that absolutely nothing actually new has been reported. Hurricanes and typhoons have struck various places that get hurricanes and typhoons every year. People who have hated each other for a long time continue to skirmish. Politicians have given speeches and interviews where all questions are answered vaguely and blandly. I've long thought that it is much better to invest time in books and magazine articles rather than the newspaper and every time that I'm away from the news this belief is deepened. Yet most people can't resist reading the newspaper in the morning or clicking the "News" icon in the Google toolbar. Could this be a source of economic and intellectual stagnation?
A very creative and productive friend says "I've found that if I read the New York Times in the morning I won't get any serious work accomplished for the rest of the day." His theory is that because the information in the newspaper is scattered, without supporting background information or sustained argument, the result is a disrupted and scattered focus in the reader's mind.
Just a few weeks ago I read an essay by Michael Crichton, the popular novelist where he asserted much the same. I found the essay "ho-hum" but a paragraph about the news has stayed with me:
The first is that there is nothing more sobering than a 30 year old newspaper. You can't figure out what the headlines mean. You don't know who the people are. Theodore Green, John Sparkman, George Reedy, Jack Watson, Kenneth Duberstein. You thumb through page after page of vanished concerns - issues that apparently were vitally important at the time, and now don't matter at all. It's amazing how many pressing concerns are literally of the moment. They won't matter in six months, and certainly not in six years. And if they won't matter then, are they really worth our attention now?
Without even addressing the problems of a 24 hour news cycle, there seems to be less to the news than we're conditioned to think. Why does the news matter? What does that awareness mean? I can't go back 30 years but I have a hard time throwing away old newspapers. I've got an old NY Times (November 13, 2005) that I thought I'd look at for the first time to see how much context I'd put to the leading "hard news" stories, which were:
- Kofi Annan's first visit to post Saddam Iraq
- Fears voiced over Medicare changes
- Yale students and professors unhappy with the Alito nomination
- Homeless in Zimbabwe belie Mugabi's claims
Not as vague as a 30 year old newspaper but not very relevant either. Annan's lukewarm attitude toward Iraq is the same, and probably not much of an impact over the long haul. Medicare has changed, and I'm sure some people are still voicing fear (including a story I heard this morning on NPR), liberals at Yale and elsewhere are obviously unhappy about Alito (but can't really do anything about it), and Robert Mugabi, the madman, still runs Zimbabwe, still oppresses his people, and still has his country headed further down the gutter.
It makes me wonder why we are so attracted to news, and why we need it. Especially in a place like Sioux Falls, why would the news matter?
As I think about this it's no surprise that a large part of "news" is entertainment. The gruesome and sordid stories appeal to that darker half - which in some is bigger, or more refined, than in others. For the lower brows and superfluous intellect there are court cases: Scott Peterson, O.J. Simpson, and Michael Jackson. For the snobs there's the nightly suicide bombing reports from Iraq, the endless entertainment of the Israeli-Arab conflict, and the political jockeying in Washington.
Another part of the news that pulls us in is the idea of being connected: connected to each other, connected to what's happening, and connected with a vague idea of "the big picture." I remember that one of the things that I disliked about growing up in Nairobi was that no one reported on us. We were off the map, so to speak - irrelevent. To be a part of a place that was making news (CNN no less!) still gives me a sense of importance and visibility, even when I cognitively understand its misguidedness. It's also interesting to see how news connects us to each other; the feeling of the people in public during a national tragedy, and the sympathy in that vague sense we all have of a social conciousness.
And, of course, even though most of it will never apply to a common life, the news does affect us. It's been interesting to be here in South Dakota and to get a different picture of an event like the Iraq war - this place is littered with veterans who experienced things firsthand. It's been a mental exercise to connect George Bush, Saddam Hussein, WMD, and these quiet South Dakotans in a direct chain, one affecting the other.
I'll always be a news junkie but perhaps, as Greenspun was pointing out, reading a good book or essay is better than 1000 words that will disappear into irrelevance like an obsolete weather report. In the least it sets my focus to the editorial where people are processing a larger picture of what's current.
1CI06 notwithstanding; the plan is in action.
2Yeah, that bad. I do watch the streaming stuff sometimes.
7:48:01 PM 
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