I haven't gotten very far in Postman's book but even so I decided to go back and retrace my steps a little. I spent quite a bit of time contemplating the first chapter in which the concept of the "news of the day" is brought up.
I kind of like the idea of a world with a lack of the "news of the day". Postman mentions how the Native Americans would use smoke signals to spread news. Smoke signals were used to send important messages, kind of like Morse code I guess but with puffs of smoke. News in those days would be informative, such as war messages, pleas for help, or peace treaties. They didn't have the time to smoke out messages such as "You would not believe what just happened! Pocahontas cheated on John Smith!"( I am just using examples by the way).
Now that we have much faster media, the news involves the love affairs of people we don't even know, fights between people that we also don't know, the lives of people that we again don't know, and even about their pets for goodness' sakes! It's kind of saddening that some people live for these kinds of things. In the times when media was slower, people only sent messages of utmost importance and got on with their lives. Now some people have their lives AND they worry about the lives of their favorite actors/actress/artist/band/etc...
Why? Everyone else has their own business to worry about. Why do you care so much that Britney shaved her head? If she wanted to, that's her business.
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We like things to arrive fast. We want information to live up to that expectation.
The news of the day? More like the news of the hour. With the internet, news is updated frequently. My internet RSS feed goes crazy all the time (granted, I subscribe to many scientific magazines and journals online. And in the world of science, where new discoveries are always being made and old ones may be debunked or added upon, swiftness is of the essence).
For some reason, we just like to hear about other people's problems. I'd like to say that it’s because we're so bored with our own lives, or we feel crummy and take joy in seeing other people struggle (especially if they're famous). But those explanations are vague and don’t fully satisfy the question. Perhaps we think it's entertaining. Oh, and of course, because we can...
exctly. People always complain about all the "drama" in their lives, so why not deal with it? They're always reading some Teen whatever magazine or watching E! or TMZ instead of actually caring about their own lives. Who cares about Real World Miami, you know? Like really? you want to have a conversation with me about somebody else on T.V. that I don't know?
Back then, people cared about more important things. Now, people's priorities are going all over the place, most of which arent where they are supposed to be.
If people are busy thinking about Spears shaving her head or Federline getting custody of their kids, then it's a relatively easy thing to slip in a little piece about bad loans leading to massive home foreclosures -- then people just say, "tsk tsk. the world is going crazy," and that's it! Defrauding people of their money, their credit and their homes is presented as equivalent to the problems of a pop princess, and we take it all in as the same. This is one of Postman's most important points...
I totally understand what you mean. Of course the "news of the day" can be entertaining, but in reality, more than half of that news isn't really relavent to our lives in any way, so why should we care? I'm sure other countries report things similar to ours, but our "news of the day" seems a bit out of hand, mostly revolving around celebs and their latest divorce or hook-up or some other crazy nonsense. "News of the day" should be more about real problems in society that affect all of us rather than Brangelina's new twins.
As you've pointed out people worry way to much about other people's lives who we have no connection with. I always find my mom and sisters watching something on E! that has no importance what so ever. Why must the public know everything that goes on in a celebrity's life. Sometimes i see ridiculous articles in the magazine that say something like "Vanessa Hudgens out walking her dog." Who cares! Shouldn't our attention be focused somewhere a little more important?
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