On News
I’ve always been the type of person to keep up with the news. It’s not necessarily the best habit. C.S. Lewis wrote in Surprised by Joy,
Even in peacetime I think those are very wrong who say that schoolboys should be encouraged to read the newspapers. Nearly all that a boy reads there in his teens will be seen before he is twenty to have been false in emphasis and interpretation, if not in fact as well, and most of it will have lost all importance. Most of what he remembers he will therefore have to unlearn; and he will probably have acquired an incurable taste for vulgarity and sensationalism and the fatal habit of fluttering from paragraph to paragraph to learn how an actress has been divorced in California, a train derailed in France, and quadruplets born in New Zealand.
He’s probably right. I’m not sure where to find the balance between paying attention to what goes on in the world around me and, as he put it, an incurable taste for vulgarity and sensationalism.
This has come to the fore for me in the recent redesign of CNN.com. They now display a little graph of the most-read stories in the top right. As I write this, Heidi Klum’s Halloween is the most read story. It’s followed by three straight stories about extreme violence.
I have far more questions than I have conclusions, but perhaps the whole of western civilization could stand to take a look at what we’re interested in / fascinated by. Perhaps we should, as Lewis suggests, spend our time on things that will not be untrue or irrelevant ten years from now. I think our wonderous technology lends “news” to being irrelevant/untrue in ten minutes rather than ten years.
That which is new is not true and that which is true is not new.
mKhulu
5 Nov 09 at 8:32 am
Briliant post, Master Mackey. I steal it forthwith.
sd smith
5 Nov 09 at 10:13 am
hey andymac, i saw this on the news:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/world/europe/05calvin.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1257437011-8aROe576g9ShGabKT7f8hw
you think they’ll be serving these zesty beverages at klbc?
gurr
5 Nov 09 at 11:08 am
Really liked the post and found it a bit convicting too. It reminded me of this quote from Spurgeon, “I venture to say that the bulk of Christians spend more time in reading the newspaper than they do reading the Word of God.”
Ken
5 Nov 09 at 12:22 pm
JGurr — you know it. But only for communion.
Ken… that’s even better. I think it’s true. Very unfortunate.
andrew mackay
5 Nov 09 at 6:51 pm
Amen, brother nephew. Now can you do a post on why people like to watch other people get hurt (a la AFV)?
P.S. Finally read Ender’s Game – yikes disturbing. We’ll have to talk.
Love ya
Aunt Deb
5 Nov 09 at 9:21 pm
[...] Andrew Mackey has an outstanding post over at his blog about the importance (or not) of reading “the news.” I very much relate to this as I have a love/hate thing with “the news” and am frequently disgusted by the so-called “straight” news coverage and even more by almost all the opinion talkovereachotherites on the almost entirely unwatchable “news” channels. Still worse, the arrogant and entertaining stupidity of Stewart/Colbert (which is all the “news” a host of people who actually vote get). The news increasingly feels to me like the scene where Dorothy meets “The Great Oz.” Um, I can totally see you back there, dude. [...]
Like Dorothy and “The Great Oz” | S.D. Smith
6 Nov 09 at 6:08 am
If you do not read the newspaper you are uniformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. Mark Twain
“…but I want you to be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil.” Romans 16.19
Well said Mackay. -Hamlet
Hamlet Smith
6 Nov 09 at 6:18 am