Words to the Wise

The Week describes its "Daily News Digest" as follows: "Distilled from dozens of the world’s most trusted news sources, each update delivers the clarity and perspective you need to make up your own mind."

Arguments that the news media is in the business of "telling people what to think" generally don't hold water for me because, as I've mentioned before, I'm of the opinion that people chose their news sources based on what they think, rather than the other way around. And I also understand that many media outlets, including The Week, are as much, if not more, in the business of advocacy as they are information. Again, because this is what their readership expects of them. Along with, it seems, a certain amount of flattery.

One reason that news outlets tell their audiences that the final decision is in their hands is that it implies that there is some other group of people who simply blindly believe what they're told to, and lack the faculties to do otherwise. Fox News, with their "We report, you decide" slogan, was engaging in this, casting aspersions on both the "mainstream media" and the "mainstream" audience. This does everyone a disservice. But it stands to reason. Just about all of the news one encounters on a daily basis is effectively a diversion from other things. Not in the sense that it's a "distraction" from the "more important" things that people "should" be paying attention to, but in the sense that it isn't actionable. There was an audio story from The Atlantic in my podcast feed on the Darién Gap, the "Tapón del Darién," where Panama and Columbia meet. Given that it links South and Central America, a lot of migrant traffic goes through the area, and most of the piece was made of up of the human-interest stories of said migrants. Interesting, to a point, but not really useful in terms of taking any action one way or another. The push factors that drove people to leave their home countries and the pull factors that resulted in their destination being the United States were simply out-of-scope for the article as written. It had a viewpoint, and advocated for it, because, again, the readership of The Atlantic expects that, and I suspect it feels good for people to have their viewpoints reflected in the media they interact with. But they aren't being spoon-fed "what to think" any more than anyone else is. They're engaging with outlets that they trust. And maybe also flatter them to some degree.