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http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews
Anyone has contrasting views on this subject? It follows my own thinkin too much and I would like to consider the alternative.
I don't agree with the part where Aaron said "It seems like the whole thing would work just as well even if nobody ever read the Times or watched the cable chat shows. It’s a closed system." I don't think news coverage is a closed system at all. In fact, the influence they have over politicians comes from their ability to create short bursts of outrage. Vargas Llosa explained in an interview how he lost Peru's presidential elections due to media campaigns directed at polluting his public image.
I do agree with all the rest though: news is, to me, pure noise. Not only that, they are also decreasing the ability of people to read long-form writing that requires critical thinking to understand, by pushing hundreds of mediocre articles per day that give readers easy to digest ideas that they can later repeat as their own.