news

knowing

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I would say that one of the other reasons for our news addiction is ego. Facebook and news publishers understand how much of our identity is tied up in this consumption and that’s what they manipulate. It’s this need to be seen as well informed. We have this great word now: virtue signalling. Knowing everything that’s going on in the world, having an opinion on these news stories, having the right opinion on these news stories, we believe says something about us. We want to be in the club of the elite, smart, informed intelligent, compassionate, interesting people. We don’t want to be on the side of the ignorant people or the people who have tuned out. These are what the publishers exploit.

–Ryan Holiday “Seriously, You—OK, We—Need To Stop Watching The News This Year” Observer

You really might as well wait for a weekly like the Economist to tell you what the net position is at the end of the week.

To follow the daily or hourly news cycle is the media equivalent of day-trading: it’s frenzied, pointless and usually unprofitable. I’d much rather read an item which just showed me the photos or documents. And if you’re going to write some text, take a position or explain something to me. Give me opinion or reference; just don’t pretend you’re providing news. That’s not news.

—Nick Denton: What I Read (2011) The Atlantic

decision

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But you can control you. Employers want to improve the bottom line. You may not get invited to the bar with the boys. But do better, be better, and the odds are the hungover boys will soon be asking themselves how you keep getting such great opportunities.

…

The way I see it, I rose. I made a decision to change the story, to restore my proper place in this election, and I followed through. I was not a scorned lover, intent on making a man bow to me. I was a reporter trying to cover a presidential candidate. The nature of that relationship is one of pursuit.

-Megyn Kelly Settle for More

‘ratings gold’

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While I’ve never tried drugs, I know people who have struggled with addiction, and it is far from a laughing matter. It is like having a nuclear bomb go off in your life, and your family’s lives. What we were seeing was the self-destruction of a man who was failing to conquer a disease that has burdened so many. The ratings gold the story provided simply was not worth it. When Rob Ford died of cancer in 2016, I was glad we’d never added to his public shaming.

 

-Megyn Kelly Settle for More

ecosystem

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At the core of it, viewers think that staying informed and ‘reacting’ to the news is a form of participation (helping their favorite causes, teams or stocks) and elites have taken it for granted that media narratives are a window into the people’s will.

…

Who could possibly handle the incredibly tough job of governing or leading on such tainted information? How can citizens be expected to participate more actively in politics—as familiar as they are with the endless amounts of negativity, scandal and disdain that participants are exposed to? How can citizens be expected to contribute more actively to democracy when they already believe they’re spending hours a day constructively participating in the exchange of ideas?

We’re ‘participating’ in this ecosystem because it’s addicting and because we’re curious. Leaders hunger to know what we want and think—and so we go around and around in a loop.

But the result is that reality is a refraction of a refraction of a refraction.

-Ryan Holiday ‘Want to Really Make America Great Again? Stop Reading the News.‘ Observer

the story

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She had a sudden image of her father, reading a big stack of newspapers from all over the country every Sunday after church, muttering to himself, “That’s not the story, that’s not the story1″ as he dropped the pages in an untidy heap around his living room chair. Of course, her father had been a print journalist, back in the 1960s. It was a different world now. Now, everything was on television. Television, and the mindless chatter on the radio.

-Michael Crichton Airframe

accountability

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In this case, as the ad dollars that have long financed journalism vaporize into the electronic ether, you don’t know with any certainty that the best services that newspapers have provided — holding public officials to account, rooting out corruption — will live on.

If anything, today’s “efficiencies” may even set readers back by pumping out lowest-common-denominator nonsense or, at worst, disinformation.

-Jim Rutenberg ‘Yes, the News Can Survive the Newspaper‘ The New York Times

credibility

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All conservative hosts have basically established their brand as being contrasted to the mainstream media. So we have spent 20 years demonizing the liberal mainstream media. And by the way, a lot of it has been justifiable. There is real bias. But, at a certain point you wake up and you realize you have destroyed the credibility of any credible outlet out there. And I am feeling, to a certain extent, that we are reaping the whirlwind at that.

Charlie Sykes interview with Oliver Darcy