In my last post I wrote that I didn’t like newspapers, which is quite the grandiose statement to make without revealing any reasoning, so I owe you an explanation. In truth, when I’m in school I read at least three newspapers every day, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I like or trust them.
Most newspapers are produced under the laughable pretense that they are unbiased. I’ll skip past the obvious issues of ownership influencing editorial and head straight to the root of the problem, individual bias. A writer’s ability to be unbiased is limited by perception. History is rife with people writing what their limited perception believed to be the unbiased truth. Arrogantly assuming that your perception is unlimited seems absurd, and claiming to be unbiased seems just as ignorant. As Brian Storm recently said at the Columbia School of Journalism, “If you’re a journalist and you don’t have an agenda, you don’t have a pulse.”
Additionally, the writing in newspapers, regardless of bias, is mostly ugly and cold. I touched on this subject previously, but I will say this: Writing is life filtered through a creative mind, and news writing is the dirt of life sanitized with a formula. If it were my job to chronicle everything that happens in the world, without a pulse, in a pseudo-unbiased manner, I would probably hate my, “over consuming, under contributing, environmental burden of an existence.”
Bringing me to depression. Newspapers keep me on top of what humanity is up to, but that is almost always depressing, and the long-term forecast is not sunny. Yes, newspapers are essential to perpetuating our “democracy” and way of life, but I am opposed our system of government and living, so on a basic level I’m opposed to newspapers on general principle.
Not to mention the deforestation and large-scale pollution the newspaper industry inflicts on the Earth daily. But don’t we all…
