@jik@federate.social @jayrosen_nyu@mastodon.social
With you 100%.
I have often wondered how different public dialog would have been if we called it "The Priorities" rather than "The News".
Even interpersonally, we would benefit a lot from asking our friends "What's most important to you?" rather than "What's new?"
Important things linger and are repetitive. If we cannot speak of the matter after the first time, it distorts our understanding of what matters in the world, in our priorities.
The risk that climate will cause human extinction and the risk that democracy might fall to autocracy are not in fact news, but they are both priorities. We should be covering them with the relentless repetition of a war, counting off the days that we have allowed them to linger.
Every time a news story comes up on some frivolous topic and its placement is higher than these wars for survival that we dayly fight, we send the subconscious signal to media consumers that the priority is low. No one believes the words in the story. They imagine that to be rherotic. They look to placement.
When a gaffe-of-the-day is making the news, no one looks at the stakes. They assume news professionals have sorted these things, have put the most important stuff at the top, would tell them if there's a big risk. And they haven't. It's a horrible breach of professional responsibility.
News people assume people are reading to their stories, or listening to them, and fully understanding them. But the people they're writing for are NOT professionals. Again, a breach of professional responsibility by journalists.
#news #priorities #priority #journalism #media #climate #democracy #society #linguistics
screwlisp
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