I spent a long time with Blur: How to Know What's True in the Age of Information Overload. One thing that was really nice about it was that it assumed that there was such a thing as truth and that the reader might care to know what that was. Previous posts have outlined the authors' strategies for getting at the truth. The authors close by bringing up a related issue. It's good to fact-check the information that comes our way... but it's even more important to make sure we are getting the information we need.
Most of us just kind of let the news flow towards us. Whether it's our Facebook feeds, TV and radio, or even a print source, we expose ourselves to far more than we can really process, but yet are exposed to only what someone else thought was important enough to bring to our attention. So I am hearing a lot about the Ice Bucket Challenge, but nothing about-- well, I don't know, because I'm not hearing anything about it. What's in your feed is determined partly by who else has responded to the items available... you can't respond if it doesn't show up in the first place... so maybe your view of the news is skewed not by deliberate inaccuracy but just by the happenstance of what gets picked up, what gets traction as the flavor of the day.
So what to do? The authors suggest that we make a list of the ten things we are most worried about, interested in, or involved with. We can then seek out the news that pertains to those concerns, and skip what doesn't... although I would have missed a lot of interesting information that way. Maybe an even more interesting question, once I've decided the topic matters, is: what is this piece of reportage telling me? Is there really anything new here, or is it just a rehash? How reliable is the stuff that seems new to me?
Ultimately, if I really want to contribute to the public discourse, just reading The Week or watching the news the same way I read a novel or watch Jeopardy isn't good enough. I have to start asking myself more questions.
No comments:
Post a Comment