How the News Makes Us Dumb: The Death of Wisdom in an Information Society

Rating:
Summary: Insightful, informative, eye-opening reading!
Review: ...How The News Makes Us Dumb is a brilliant diagnoses of the modern news industry, the sound-bitten wasteland of the daily and nightly news, and how we have allowed this utter nonsense to dominate and numb our lives. Filled with deep insights and plain common sense, the book not only carves up this sacred cow, but explains how our personal lives, and our neighborhoods, could be revitalized if we substantially reduced the amount of time we spend reading and watching the news.

The onslaught of news has not made everyone happy. More than 150 years ago, Henry David Thoreau advised: "Read not the Times, Read the Eternities." More recent information critics include Neil Postman (Amusing Ourselves To Death, 1986), James Fallow (Breaking The News, 1996) and Barry Sanders (The Private Death Of Public Discourse, 1998). And of course the unforgettable 1976 film Network, where a television anchorman played by Peter Finch (who died of a heart attack during the promotional campaign of the film) inspires thousands of people to throw open their windows and shout: "I can't stand it anymore!"

Other writers have blasted the news from many angles: it is biased; it frightens us into passiveness; it is controlled by corporations with the one sublime goal of selling us things we don't need. Sommerville's critique is thoroughly unique. He argues that the news -- from newspapers and televisions -- the news makes us dumb because it comes to us daily. News has become a product, a commodity. To keep us reading, to feed our addiction, the newspapers and television stations need to fill their spaces every day and make this filler seem as if it's crucially important. Because there is rarely a story of true urgency, in a balanced culture, the news would not be daily. Sommerville writes: "The only reason for making news daily is to create an information industry."

When we watch tv news, Sommerville argues, we get sound bites that average 20-seconds in length or less. We watch the news and we mistakenly believe we are informed. But to truly understand things we need not news but wisdom, which is the ability to see events in a larger context. Sommerville says that the news as it is served to us, by its very nature, destroys these larger contexts. His acid test for value is the question: Is this worth reading again? And he says that, one month later, to re-read a newspaper will reveal it to be worthless, but to re-read a classic book gives us a much deeper understanding of things.

The book contains dozens of contradictory headlines taken from major newspapers, such as this headline from the New York Times (June 8, 1995): "Greenspan Sees Chance of Recession," and this headline, on the same day, from the Washington Post: "Recession Is Unlikely, Greenspan Concludes." And Sommerville provides other amusing tidbits: he tells us about the Bedouin Shepherds in Palestine who, when they need some cash, simply find ancient documents, tear them into little pieces, then sell them to archaeologists.

For many years in America, it was insurance companies -- not doctors and patients -- who dictated how long a patient could remain in the hospital. Likewise, the news has assumed a too-important role in American society. Sommerville writes:

"News never asked to replace culture. Its proper function is to raise questions about dominant ideas, not to become the dominant discourse, silencing or undermining all others."

The news drives and unduly influences our government; it turns science into superstition; and it flatters our vanity by deceiving us into believing that opinions are the same as thoughts. With all the news we read and hear, and all the events we give our opinions about, shouldn't our society be intelligent and well-informed? Yet -- as a recent article by Michael Schudson (Wilson Quarterly, Spring 2000) points out -- Americans are vastly ignorant about even the most basic facts of political life.

Obviously, this book will upset many readers, and be ignored by many newspaper book reviewers, simply because it is an honest book. Despite the bad news about the news industry -- and our own folly for buying into it --Sommerville concludes with a vision of hope. The last chapter of the book is titled "Virtual Society or Real Community?" Sommerville does not believe that the news product can be improved. He wants us to give it up. We should cut down our news infusion, he advises. Instead of daily, read the news weekly, or better yet, only once a month. The result might be that instead of paying lip service to issues far from us, we will learn something deeper about the issues that really matter to us. And then, ultimately, we will take action to improve the community around us. "Think locally and act locally," might be the motto here.

Thomas Jefferson, as quoted by Sommerville, was not a fan of newspapers. Jefferson wrote: "Nothing can be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. ...I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing the world of their time. ... The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors."

Jefferson here, is echoing the famous idea of Socrates and the Zen masters, that to know you know nothing is better than to falsely believe that you know. Sommerville shrewdly elucidates this Jeffersonian notion. In this wise book he thoroughly explores a newsworthy problem and offers a workable solution, a solution that is in our power to enact. We have become an ignorant and passive society, while the new Millennium -- more than any other time in history -- calls for informed and active women and men. We can change the world by individual action: by thinking more, by talking more, by improving our own neighborhoods, by reading more significant books. One of these significant books is How The News Makes Us Dumb, and reading it will help to make us smart.

Michael Pastore Reviewer

Rating:
Summary: Don't Be a News Junky - Kick the Habit Now
Review: How can you know for sure that they are not telling you the truth? That is the question answered by this little gem of a book. We have all known that if you watch TV you are wasting your time for TV is junk food for the mind - mental material of no intellectual or lasting value. In fact, studies have shown that while watching TV all the great powers of the human mind are quiescent. The sadder part about this is that TV prevents us from using that time for better purposes such as sleeping or reading or, should I even mention it in this hyped up era, for thinking. Lost opportunities to learn and think eventually take their toll and make us dumb. The same holds true for reading the newspapers. The paucity of wit and wisdom in the news is no accident, as Professor Sommerville so well knows. It is by design. And the design is to sell more newspapers and their glitz bag counterparts, magazines. The design is to make us information junkies and overdose us on trivia. Fortunately, the solution to this gigantic problem might be close at hand. Read his book and discover for yourself what that solution is.

Rating:
Summary: very insightful
Review: This book isn't comprehensive on the topic, but it's a well-thought-out essay on one particular aspect of modern day society.

My guess is that the folks that disagree or are insulted by this book are somewhat confused because they don't identify with the mindset the author is talking about. It's definitely worth reading the book and then listening to those countless hundreds of people you walk by every day. Get out more and listen to what other people talk about day to day. More often than not, it's disturbing.