Out walking yesterday late afternoon, I mentioned that I put an absolute embargo on news consumption after a certain hour of the day, which in effect is dinnertime (though admittedly I can't escape discussions of news items at the dinner table). He was surprised. I consider it absolutely essential not just for mental health but for basically being able to think for myself. In all too many ways we have allowed ourselves to become utterly hostage to the news cycle and thereby to its purveyors both right and left, who are only too happy to segment us neatly into right and left, all the better to define a target demographic and thereby sell ads, which is after all how they make money. We must never forget that the news business is a business of selling ads and attention. It is easy for us to get outraged at how Facebook, Google and Twitter manipulate us into ever smaller and more targetable slices, the better to profit on a per eyeball or per impression basis. The big news TV channels (Fox, CNN, MSNBC, even NPR) target more coarsely, but should at least in theory be able to do so with a lower cost of sales. I'd have to validate that. NYTimes probably microtargets.
In the end, I find the best way to consume the news is after the fact in The Economist, which almost uniformly performs more thoughtful analysis. I was very happy to learn that my neighbor Russ had arrived at an identical conclusion.
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