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> The author's argument is one in favor of selfishness: being a well-informed citizen of your state or country does not benefit you personally, so why bother?

• TulliusCicero 6y ago
  Hard disagree. Look at his own reasoning: > But to what end? > Aside from feeling bad for the victims –and worrying the same thing might happen to you – you’re powerless to make a positive impact. Hearing the news is merely a distraction. > “But,” you might argue, “everything on the news doesn’t revolve around tragedies. I need to know what’s going on in the world!” > Do you really? > When was the last time you watched the news and thought, “thank God I saw that. Let me go take action.”? > I’ll answer for you: probably never. > If that’s the case, what’re you actually getting from the news? Aggravated? Wound up? Certainly not informed about anything important. > Most of the time, watching the news is as useful as watching The Jersey Shore. You’re watching it to turn off your brain and mainline outrage. He's not arguing about something that's not "real news"; an enormous tragedy occurring somewhere, like a tsunami killing many people, obviously qualifies as real news. He's arguing that it leading to "just outrage", just sentiment, is not productive. But that's only true if you look at it in an individual sense, of being productive in your own life. If you look at it being productive in aggregate, in society as a whole, the reasoning doesn't work anymore. Now, you could make the argument that the author is unaware of the many thousands of times that outrage in its various forms -- like protests, or riots, or revolutions -- has led to significant changes; perhaps he is simply astoundingly ignorant of essentially all history, and thus doesn't know that outrage can do things like, say, get America to leave the Vietnam war, or get a President to resign from office, to use two well-known examples. But I'm not sure that's a more charitable or plausible take.
  • brmgb 6y ago
    > But that's only true if you look at it in an individual sense, of being productive in your own life. If you look at it being productive in aggregate, in society as a whole, the reasoning doesn't work anymore. That's where we disagree and I think I see the root of our disagreement. Reading your last paragraph, you seem to link news consumption and actual actions like protests, riots and revolution. I don't think this link exists. Most of those are actually started by activists and stem from local engagement (unionism, political organizations). It is very removed from news consumption which is not the only way of being informed.