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I disagree. In my experience, the people who actively don't follow any news at all are fully aware of their blindside. They just don't care (or have judged, qu

I disagree. In my experience, the people who actively don't follow any news at all are fully aware of their blindside. They just don't care (or have judged, quite reasonably, that they have more immediate personal concerns) The worst people are those who are glued to the TV or net, closely watching things as if the future of the world depended on whether they knew politician X was fired right now or five minutes from now. They attach far too much drama and emotional involvement in matters which they have no control over. In addition, they're just as much in a bubble as the ones not engaged at all. The tragedy is that they don't realize it. If you're in a discussion with somebody who doesn't follow the news, as long as they are reasonable, you can cover common ground fairly quickly, then get to whatever your point/question is. If you're in a discussion with somebody who is glued to the news, you can spend hours teasing out their bias and failing to reach any kind of common ground at all. That's because news promotes rhetoric instead of the dialectic. People are being taught to argue like lawyers over whatever beliefs they have because they spend hours invested in a medium that shows them lawyers arguing about events. They teach themselves how to have a closed mind. Nope. I'll take a non-news consumer with an open mind over a msm news consumer any day of the week. Life is too short to program yourself to be so hard-headed and impervious to change.

masondixon 10y ago
I agree. But I think someone's opinion on this will differ depending on where they fit on the political spectrum. Right-wing thinks MSM has liberal bias - would rather people avoid it. Left-wing wants people to consume more MSM - vice-versa.
- thenomad 10y ago
  Most of the people I know who intensely dislike the Mainstream Media (MSM, for anyone confused by the acronym) are either left-leaning or liberal-leaning. (The two are not remotely the same.) As a side note, I know precisely zero people who I would describe as "moderate" on the left-right spectrum who are at all enthusiastic about the state of 2016's news media. Of all political groups, I'd say that they're the most likely to be critical of the mainstream media.

masondixon 10y ago

I agree. But I think someone's opinion on this will differ depending on where they fit on the political spectrum. Right-wing thinks MSM has liberal bias - would rather people avoid it. Left-wing wants people to consume more MSM - vice-versa.

thenomad 10y ago
Most of the people I know who intensely dislike the Mainstream Media (MSM, for anyone confused by the acronym) are either left-leaning or liberal-leaning. (The two are not remotely the same.) As a side note, I know precisely zero people who I would describe as "moderate" on the left-right spectrum who are at all enthusiastic about the state of 2016's news media. Of all political groups, I'd say that they're the most likely to be critical of the mainstream media.