I was reading another forum and a user remarked that the news is irrelevant in the modern world. The forum tends to be frequented by Zoomers and Millennials, though I have no idea the age of the person who posted this... assuming they are even a person! But I thought about this awhile and I think this person is right.
They're certainly right for a minority of people and I I expect these ranks to swell. But could this be true for the majority?
What do you think? Do you mind the news? Do people around you mind it? Do you know anyone who ignores it all together?
I like this topic but I’m not sure I can answer it concisely.
I “hear” it because it’s everywhere, but I’m often sus when I keep hearing them all talk about the same thing in the same way. So I go off, elsewhere to look.
My mother definitely minds it. Others do, too, but other than my mother, because she likes to talk about it, in my real life, we rarely talk about it and if so, just lightly.
Also, I think it’s funny that when my husband goes out of town I only watch tv to see a movie on TCM. He only watches the news now to get weather or some opinion news program we find entertaining.
Not really irrelevant because it still influences far too many who absorb and believe it without question, without even noticing the personal bias often obvious in the announcer's speech.
@warped It’s definitely relevant, even if you don’t want it to be. You’d probably have to have a lifestyle and mindset that puts you in the type of focus that blocks it all out. Like some sort of anarchist living a self-sufficient life, just wanting to be left alone.
There is also a certain comforting routine to watching the news. I remember eating breakfast before school, my mother would have the radio on an AM station that had some music but was primarily news, weather. Then it was GMA, at 7:00 the show starting with clips of news from the day/night before, a sort of crescendo building to the hosts’ opening greetings and tone of the program. And CNN, the first 24 hour news cycle, revolutionary. My mother likes CNN and I assume it’s a comforting routine for her. My husband and I still get the newspaper and to us, there is some comforting level to that, too, I suppose. We could continue to get news on our tablets but something about being used to the layout of a physical paper seems easier.
lol I used to deliver papers when I was a kid. Now a man drives around and drops them off at the few households that still get them.
But however it’s digested, and whatever is considered news, it’s difficult to escape.
When I was a kid, our paper was delivered by a boy on first a bike, then a motorcycle. When he went into the army, his mom continued his paper route -- on his motorcycle!
For decades I read the papers cover to cover, especially the variety of local papers. The city paper had both a morning and evening edition! Now the few that remain are mostly ads.
Yes, even if you make an effort to seek out sources for news, the mainstream leaks in as background noise. For many who don't make that effort, that ubiquitous background noise is all the news they ever consume, skewed as it may be.
@warped My focus these last 15-almost 20 years has been away from corporate media towards other means of information. And from there one can compare and contrast the two (corporate media/background noise vs others). So now you realize you know as much as they want you to know, even if you aren’t actively engaged in corporate media, because it’s so pervasive everywhere.
That said, people still have families, jobs, lives, to deal with and might not have time to go beyond just the regular news, newspaper, radio, other forms of media. And add to that, many turn to their favorite style or topics for news. And others might not care at all about it.
News on TV is irrelevant because modern news only focuses on the surface of issues or only present censored or altered versions of events. Think of how narcissistic a career as a lying news host can be. Wanting all eyes on them, lying, manipulating or even just doing as scripted or instructed to "look good." The only valid forms of news are internet essays and articles by real people and magazines/newspapers in which a lot of effort and thought is put into the presentation of the information.