I can’t argue with your premise because I agree, but the empirical data shows that if anything there is a positive correlation between accessibility of information and further descent into… whatever it is you’d describe is our modern situation.
It may not be causative but it’s also not really a sufficient counteracting force.
This strategy was laid out by Steve Bannon in the old frontline PBS interview where he called the media “the opposition party.”
“They’re dumb and they’re lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time,” he said. “All we have to do is flood the zone. … Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never – will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity.”
Also see Vance’s recent comments about how nobody would hold Nixon accountable for watergate if it happened today, it would be lost in the next news cycle.
If you read a wide spectrum of news sources with high standards (established non-tabloid newspapers and reputable long form publishers), I would be willing to bet that you are far better off (pick any metric) than someone spending the same amount of time with OAN/Fox/Daily Mail, etc.
This goes for someone anywhere on the political spectrum; I'm not just picking on the right. I would much rather live in a society of people that I don't necessarily agree with but that get their information from sources that value truth, than live with people of the same ideological bent, but only get their news from propaganda.
I can have a conversation with someone who thinks we're on the wrong side of the peak on the Laffer curve and wants to lower government spending. I can't have a conversation with someone that heard that immigrant run daycares are feeding pets to children and that we should cut daycare programs from the government budget.
The only solution for a thinking person is to read widely and synthesize all your knowledge into a slightly more accurate picture of the whole.
Social media and fringe alt media can be bad for people with cognitive issues, but that’s not a reason to get rid of them.
(Note, there are many times when both the MSM and most of the alt media present a distorted picture! I would argue the ongoing Iran crisis is one of those times.)
I respectfully object to this. I’m thinking of research that was done a few years ago, measuring American’s knowledge of current events. The folks in the research that leaned right were generally more informed - meaning, they knew about a lot more currents events. But they were also overwhelmingly wrong about what they ‘knew’. Further, folks on the right tended to rate themselves higher than left-leaning folks wrt their knowledge, even though they were wrong a lot more.
a) there are more other things than ever before too. Used to be folks would watch the nightly news because there were only four channels or so to even watch. Now you have endless options.
b) the competition between all the news options means that more of them are leaning into opinionated content that you’ll either identify with on a tribal basis or get outraged by, because that gets more views. Informing the public is a secondary goal.
What situation are you talking about?
The world is less violent, more affluent than 30 years ago, but appears to be the opposite due to 24/7 news cycle.
Expanding out to the entire world and choosing the arbitrary point of thirty years ago doesn’t change that fact.
Even for USA,
1. The 90s were the most violent period in terms of crime.
2. Corruption has neither increased or decreased in the last decade.
3. Other than the 2020 election during the pandemic, the number of votes cast has increased in every election contrary to your claim.
> The 90s were the most violent period in terms of crime.
So any increase in violence from, say, five years ago to today doesn’t matter because it isn’t as bad as the 90s? ICE agents killing people and detaining others without recourse is just a big whatever?
> Corruption has neither increased or decreased in the last decade.
How did you arrive at that conclusion? Because the corruption of the current administration is widely known and goes beyond even the conspiracy theories of what the previous administration did.
> Other than the 2020 election during the pandemic, the number of votes cast has increased in every election contrary to your claim
Voter suppression does not mean “reduce the overall number of votes cast nationwide”. It is a deliberate attempt to prevent certain voters (i.e. the ones who are going to vote against you) from successfully casting a vote. And the simple act of trying to do that is notable even if it isn’t a success. If someone repeatedly tried and failed to break into your house you wouldn’t shrug your shoulders and ignore it.
If you’re ignorant of all of this then you’re proving yourself a great example of why paying attention to the news actually does matter.
Paying attention to the news can be almost anything from pointlessly harmful, to entirely necessary. "The News" isn't just reading outrage coverage and politics, world events beyond the muttering of politicians and business leaders exists. There's also such a thing as curating and moderating your intake, as well as dealing with underlying issues. A lot of people who feel overwhelmed or made helpless by the problems in their lives take that energy and apply it to global problems instead, especially young people.
That's not the news being "toxic" like nicotine and smoke though, that the collision of emotional instability and reality.
Just enough to stay roughly informed, yet not drowning in it.
* You can have direct email feeds about the things you find important.
* You can use RSS readers curated to your interests.
* You can listen to podcasts.
* You can—gasp!—talk to people around you who are more knowledgeable than you on these areas.
News websites make money of you visiting and staying on their site, so they give you stuff that will get you to come back. Their interests are almost certainly not aligned with yours.
If you define your own priorities, you can define for yourself what it means to pay attention and be informed, and then seek "news" specifically on those topics.
Non profit news also doesn’t have the issues you’re describing. Sites like Propublica do incredible work.
The reality is that everyone has a perspective. That person you have a conversation with doesn’t necessarily have an unbiased opinion. They may have incentives if their own to convince you of something. That’s why a varied media diet is a better option.