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

Well, it all just makes me want to move to the Shire and read nothing but the Bible, Wendell Berry novels, and huge history tomes (to the extent that that's not what I'm already doing). It's amazing that this book came out before 9/11 and before the advent of social media; how much more true are the author's arguments now, after the passing of only a few years? And where will we go from here? It has been fascinating to read this book during the week of the Obergefell decision and to contemplate how much the mindset Sommerville describes in this book played into the possibility of such a sweeping change, one that would have seemed impossible even just a generation ago, taking place.

Commonplace entries:
"I don't mean to blame daily publication for all the failings of this most disappointing of centuries. What I am saying is that the news industry has encouraged the assumption that ceaseless, churning change is the normal state of society and that it is the government's job to encourage it" (58).

"Daily news is liberal by its very nature because the emphasis is on 'liberty' and therefore on change and on testing authority. The conservative emphasis is on 'conserving,' on order and stability, and on honoring authority.

Liberalism creates movement, and therefore it is the subject of periodical news. Conservatism retards movement, and that is not appreciated by the news" (61).

"The news is not going to admit that a large number of us do not intend to 'move with the times.' Yet without the news's prodding, people might simply remain divided on questions like family patterns. In short, you can choose whether you want to join in the trends that news promotes. But if you don't join in, you may not find your world represented in news discourse" (103).

"Culture is a necessity of life or at least of society. Yet most of those who are in charge of our society's affairs think that news is the most important thing to know, if one can judge by their reading habits. They seem to think of it as a substitute for culture. They imagine that it is a sort of substitute for books, a shortcut to wisdom. It is not. News is the opposite of books; it is an inoculation against culture and reflection" (132).

"What if we plunged into our own lives instead? What if we neglected the celebrity gossip, political rehash, distant natural disasters and plane crashes and started cultivating our own neighborhoods? We would no longer have the feeling of omniscience that comes from surveying the whole world from a satellite transmission. We might lose the feeling of superiority we get from seeing caricatures of the unprogressive elements in our population. And we would miss vicariously rubbing shoulders with the beautiful people. But we could make our own neighborhoods more beautiful. We could become much better informed about the views of people around us who would never get to finish their sound bites in local news. And we might make common cause with people the media have made us suspicious of" (144-145).