The news will find you
Should you care?
Hi there,
What third-year media literacy class does to a mtfkr.
Five things to share:
“How are things in America?” my mother who lives in Canada asks me, just like she does every time we talk over the phone. By things she means COVID numbers. I tell her, like I always do, I don’t know, I don’t watch the news. She laughs and tells me my aunt, who lives in Ethiopia, has been telling her about the millions of COVID cases being reported in America. “The news finds you even from Ethiopia,” she laughs again. I quit the news back in 2016; the news still finds me.
Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent revisited— Very important message at the end.
A quote I want to share with you this week:
“Wise men refrain.”
— Sir Thomas More
Be wise. Refrain from the media often.
Noam Chomsky - Top 10 Media Manipulation Strategies
The job of media, as producers of reality within the collective psyche, is not to inform, but to misinform: Divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by the political and economic elites, by the technique of flood or continuous flood of distractions and insignificant information.
A question for you this week: Should you care about all the news you come across? If so, how much should you care?
That’s all for this week!
Thank you for reading, and please share with anyone you think may benefit.
time spent offline is now a monthly analog publication you can get delivered straight to your mailbox with 20 ideas every month.
Until next time,
Mehret