-Caveat Lector-
FYI, more control of society, more opportunties for mind control, more
opportunities to control the way society lives, breathes and thinks.
1984 may have come and gone, but the control is just beginning...
-------->snip>--------------
**News' Daily Nature Is Dumb And Makes Us Dumber, Says UF Professor
Writer: Cathy Keen
Source: C. John Sommerville, (352) 392-0271
GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- News makes us dumb by dissecting
reality, leaving
the public with no idea of what to make of our times,
says a University of
Florida history professor and author of a new book.
Other writers have criticized media bias, incompetence
and irresponsibility; in
"How the News Makes Us Dumb: The Death of Wisdom in an
Information
Society," C. John Sommerville takes a different tack,
targeting the essential
feature of news -- it's timeliness, which has degraded
into a daily, and often
hourly, barrage of disassociated facts.
"The news began making us dumber when we insisted on
having it daily," he
said. "Now we've lost our ability to discern truly
significant news."
Because newspapers and news broadcasts treat each day
and its events as
being equally important in giving us daily
installments, the reading, viewing and
listening public fail to develop a sense of perspective
about the bigger issues,
Sommerville said.
"The world hasn't always had a news industry," he said.
"The news used to
come irregularly when something happened that was
really important or
interesting. The only reason for making the news daily
is to create an
information industry. If publishers waited for
something to happen, they might
be idle for weeks and their capital assets would get
rusty. So they have
convinced us that every day is worthy of the same
attention."
Compounding the problem is that much of the news is odd
and even bizarre,
and the information is not so much a reflection of the
world as what has gone
wrong with it, Sommerville said. The result is only a
small picture of reality, he
said.
Many midsize dailies' coverage of international issues,
for example, consists of
devoting only about four stories to the world's
180-plus countries, hardly
enough to develop any knowledgeable understanding of
events, he said.
And with the limits of daily reporting, the news does
not pretend to cover the
big issues, Sommerville said. A good example was the
failure of the
Holocaust's original news coverage, with only a
fraction of what happened in
the death camps being reported, and reporters and
editors never exactly sure
how to place the calamitous event into a proper time
and place journalistically.
"Unless one can combine one's news intake with a lot of
book reading or
Internet searching, one would probably do better to
simply ignore the news,"
Sommerville said. "I'm serious about that. I haven't
read a newspaper in two
or three years and I consider myself informed, if being
informed means
knowing what the people around you are talking about."
Instead, Sommerville subscribes to weekly news
magazines but makes it a
practice to set them aside for a month before reading
them. By that time, many
of the issues have already resolved themselves, and he
can ignore the
speculation or hype over what will happen to particular
issues in the days
ahead, he said.
Perhaps the greatest irony in the information age is
that news contributes to the
decline of our intellectual culture by crowding out
other intellectual activities,
such as book reading, serious discussion and
reflection, Sommerville said. In a
televised interview, he said, actor Michael Douglas
once credited his erudite
reputation in the ditzy world of entertainment to his
reading four newspapers a
day, but unless he also reads other things, his brain
likely is crammed with
ephemera, not in-depth knowledge.
The proliferation of news has not even energized us
politically, Sommerville
said, citing studies that show long-term declines in
the percentage of people
who vote.
Paradoxically, the media are not the villains in these
developments, he
emphasized. "Ultimately, it is the consumers of news
who are to blame," he
said. "We have acquired an addiction and newspapers are
just supplying the
market."
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release
issued by University Of Florida
for journalists and other members of the public. If you
wish to quote from any part of
this story, please credit University Of Florida as the
original source. You may also
wish to include the following link in any citation:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/04/990426121751.htm
** FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
