I would like to ask how many people watch the news in TV because they want to be informed, or because it is a habit, or even just they like to have a familiar noise while eating dinner at the kitchen table. How many people still watch the news in TV although they think that the best way to be informed is another one, as the news are incomplete or biased.
I would like to ask how many people still remember the time in which the silence reigned souverain in the house when the news titles began. The parents had to listen to what was happening in the world, and no excuse for noise was tolerated. It was a time in which there were very few television channels, maybe even still in black and white, and watching television was an event.
I would like to ask how many people now have no time anymore to watch the news. It is actually possible to watch them anytime, recorded or online, and still they lost so much of their charm. They are no more a fixed appointment in front of a screen. Also their style and format has changed so much, often with multiple screens visible on our one, multiple text lines flowing on the bottom part, the title or the location appearing on the upper part - it could be even called a complex visive experience, where a lot of attention is required to the viewer, to really be able to understand every given input. But the news somehow remain squeezed in few minutes where barely can be explained what it is about, without any possibility to develop a deeper analysis. Also because, an analysis can be more easily biased than the pure facts, which should be the subject of the news.
But this again means that, if you are really keen in staying informed, you probably prefer some talk show where your favorite journalist summarizes the most significant news for you and comments on them with some nobel laueres or world-famous experts; or, you just like to scroll the website of your favorite newspaper to have immediately the overview of what is happening in the exact moment.
So, if you really want to know what is happening around you, you do not hear the news anymore, but read or listen about facts in some other ways you select, as you like them.
Considered on the long-term, this could be dangerous. It could mean that you have only one point of view as a source of your information, where facts are preselected with some more or less fair and proper filter, following some criteria which you are not necessarily aware of. The news, at least, were supposed to select the news believed to be important for the whole nation, person and family independently on personal views. They were believed to only report about facts, and everyone could then build an own opinion.
I don't know whether this succeeded at that time. Now, it seems that the reported news are selected by their owners or political supporters; and the only way to understand what happens without filters is to watch one fact reported by at least two or three different news channels. It is probably just the only way it could be in the era of postmodernism: not one reality exists, even the existence of the concept of reality is put under question. Consequently, the "news" as pure facts can not exist, must be filtered somehow, and the filters are all the perspectives which can be thought of.
I am not sure whether this also implies that we know about all these points of view, that we discuss about them and we become more open-minded. It seems that we just choose in which channel our current has to flow and try to avoid confluence with other ones, convinced of our versions of the "facts".
I would like to ask how many people still remember the time in which the silence reigned souverain in the house when the news titles began. The parents had to listen to what was happening in the world, and no excuse for noise was tolerated. It was a time in which there were very few television channels, maybe even still in black and white, and watching television was an event.
I would like to ask how many people now have no time anymore to watch the news. It is actually possible to watch them anytime, recorded or online, and still they lost so much of their charm. They are no more a fixed appointment in front of a screen. Also their style and format has changed so much, often with multiple screens visible on our one, multiple text lines flowing on the bottom part, the title or the location appearing on the upper part - it could be even called a complex visive experience, where a lot of attention is required to the viewer, to really be able to understand every given input. But the news somehow remain squeezed in few minutes where barely can be explained what it is about, without any possibility to develop a deeper analysis. Also because, an analysis can be more easily biased than the pure facts, which should be the subject of the news.
But this again means that, if you are really keen in staying informed, you probably prefer some talk show where your favorite journalist summarizes the most significant news for you and comments on them with some nobel laueres or world-famous experts; or, you just like to scroll the website of your favorite newspaper to have immediately the overview of what is happening in the exact moment.
So, if you really want to know what is happening around you, you do not hear the news anymore, but read or listen about facts in some other ways you select, as you like them.
Considered on the long-term, this could be dangerous. It could mean that you have only one point of view as a source of your information, where facts are preselected with some more or less fair and proper filter, following some criteria which you are not necessarily aware of. The news, at least, were supposed to select the news believed to be important for the whole nation, person and family independently on personal views. They were believed to only report about facts, and everyone could then build an own opinion.
I don't know whether this succeeded at that time. Now, it seems that the reported news are selected by their owners or political supporters; and the only way to understand what happens without filters is to watch one fact reported by at least two or three different news channels. It is probably just the only way it could be in the era of postmodernism: not one reality exists, even the existence of the concept of reality is put under question. Consequently, the "news" as pure facts can not exist, must be filtered somehow, and the filters are all the perspectives which can be thought of.
I am not sure whether this also implies that we know about all these points of view, that we discuss about them and we become more open-minded. It seems that we just choose in which channel our current has to flow and try to avoid confluence with other ones, convinced of our versions of the "facts".
No comments:
Post a Comment