The World can seem a scary place and if you watch the news every night or read the newspapers then it can seem every where you look bad things are happening which is why many people tell me they just don't bother anymore.
Research from the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland found that more and more people are limiting their consumption of news or generally avoid news and current affairs because it makes them feel emotional distress, sadness, fear and anger that sometimes affected their mental health.
Amongst younger people climate anxiety is a real thing, affecting their study, work and sleep and making them feel completely overwhelmed so they switch off and disengage and this may allow some emotional relief but it is only treating the symptom and the disease continues merrily on, the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Donald Trumps madness, the Ukrainian War and environmental disasters still go on, its just that you don't know about them.
Not reading or watching the news can be dangerous and there has been a decline of newspaper circulation and even news viewership especially in the age of social media misinformation and i do understand that, it is depressing but i do wonder about where the withdrawal leads.
As a journalist, the fact that so many people have basically stopped, or at least tried to stop, reading or watching the news is a concern as they then make choices based on ignorance and poor education of the subjects, as Trump himself said : 'I love the poorly educated'.
Turning off the news dramatically increases the danger of not knowing enough to know what is true and what is misinformation that one should understand for our own good, how can you hold our politicians to account if you don't know what they are doing and they don't want you to know and that is playing directly into their hands.
I do get it, we lose many new recruits to Journalism because we get to see and hear things before they get sanitised for public consumption and some are traumatic and there are things i have seen which i wish i could unsee but as you are not going to be able to avoid the events of the World, or the effects on your life, surely it is better to know the Who, Why, When, Where and How of what is happening then stay ignorant until it's too late.
Saturday, 8 February 2025
Missing Out On The Why, When, Where, Who and How
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
pull your head out of the sand or wherever else it might be.
journalists in all media destroyed their credibility and the traditional news sources by using the disinformation methods of ignoring facts, purposely misconstruing facts, and even creating facts.
we, as a society, do not want people making decisions based on incorrect data or understanding. but for the past 3 or 4 decades journalists have proven that they are not a trustworthy source of accuracy or truth. FOX only came into being and dominance because of journalist malfeasance at CNN, NYT, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBS, NPR, WaPo, et al.
how did this happen? well, journalists (now well known to be deceivers) worked in cahoots with politicians (long known to be liars) to produce disinformation to advance their (journos and politicians) political views. this is how journalists have fallen to the miserable status of politicians when polled about trustworthiness.
another source of facts and understanding that has destroyed itself is science. recently released (and vetted reports) have revealed that 85% of scientific papers are not vetted (a major change that occurred since circa 1980), and that upwards of 50% of scientific papers cannot stand the scrutiny of proper scientific vetting. Further, it seems that a new trick from scientists in the scientific community is to publish papers referencing their own papers creating the false perception of vetting... yes, scientists cheating to get more government grants... imagine that.
finally, we get the piece de resistance of false information, dubious journalists publishing dubious comments and findings, from dubious scientific papers and dubious scientists, attempting to get government funding from pols with dubious personal and political ambitions instead of seeking truth. That is a lot dubiousness…
of course, journos can and do say, "i don't understand what it means, i just quote the experts". Right... how convenient that what the scientist, economist, et al claims aligns with what the journo thinks (btw, 95% of US professors vote for the democratic party and have pushed universities and curriculum left) about the given topic (environment, equity, economics, ethics, etc. - hey “The 5 Big E's”).
so, for all you journos out there, the cause of your demise can be found in the mirror or your latest selfie...
As I never grow tired of telling you, do not base all journalists and journalism on the standards of American journalism which nobody holds to a very high standard. It’s like saying all cars are terrible because your own is terrible.
well, i do have some experience with british journos too... not much difference.
Some tabloid journalists possibly but broadcast journalists would very quickly be ex-journalists.
i'll give you this... the bbc is a bit better than npr. but the bbc would be leftist in the US.
The right here call the BBC leftist and the left call it too right wing so must be doing something right if neither side are happy with it.
that is a bold conclusion.
i watch the US version and read its publications. bbc is not more fact based than npr. npr uses facts, well, if you count "expert opinions" as fact...
the problem with both is that neither is factually complete. they both ignore facts. are they:
1.) lazy?
2.) biased?
3.) ignorant?
4.) all the above
i pick option 2.) they are both biased, and that results in them dismissing facts on a regular basis... factually incomplete...
Post a Comment