How much do we actually need 'the news' ?

My parents would no doubt be surprised to know (because getting information out of me has traditionally been like getting blood out of a stone !) that my principal 'obsession' is that of communication.

When in 6th form, first freed from the shackles of institutionalised uniformity, I made a name for myself - & eventually effected a change to the school dress rules - by wearing t shirts conveying 'messages'. I went on to college & learned to the degree, again not without some challenge to the rules, of Master of Arts the techniques of communication via music; upon leaving college I undertook training both as a journalist & as a photographer - learning the techniques of communication via word & via picture. In my current job, I provide the clients of the company I work for the means of communicating their ideas, their products, & their services to the whole world. I can make a small one-person business appear to be the same as a multi-national megacorp; in return I can, from the usa, buy an album by a british band recorded in britain & published by a british record company for half the price I would have to pay for it from a british shop.

As a good <cough> quaker of course I don't believe in shrines, but if I did, my home might be described as a Shrine To Communication. I don't have any furniture (not even a bed - far to bourgeois) to speak of, rather I have half of an entire long wall filled with computer, video, & hi fi equipment. & the other walls ? They're filled with videos, records, & cds. At one point a few years ago the setting up of a pirate radio station with a couple of friends was seriously discussed !

I, perhaps some might say to an obsessive level, receive the news most of the time. Merely having a television in another corner of the room is not good enough for me - the 24hour news feed comes direct in a window to one of the monitors of my computer (whilst I might be communicating with some people on the internet in another window). So important is it to me that we know as much as possible about what is going on in the world around us that I have put my very freedom at risk by publishing on my website the secret text of the rambouillet agreement - the real reason why our country is at war with another country.

But how necessary actually is 'the news', & to what extent is it 'mere' entertainment ? For an editor, compiling the news is no less an art than it is for the potter assembling a piece of clay in just the right manner. Editors are never short of raw material with which to fill a paper or a programme - even on a ‘slow news day’. If you’ve ever sat in front of a press association or a reuters ticker, you’ll know that the news is happening all the time & never recycles as it does on our 24 hour news channels ! So often, the decisions as to what will be in ‘the news’ are governed less by what is important or essential for us to know, & more by how interesting the viewers will find the item, or by how many copies of the newspaper it is likely to sell. Except, of course, where the government makes the decision for the editor as to which piece of propaganda should be set before us, the braying mob, to attempt to justify whatever it happens to be doing at the moment..

& then the next step, after choosing which articles will appear, is the trimming of those articles so as to better present the opinion of the organisation publishing. A friend I have who is unhealthily & rabidly anti-catholic recently sent me an article published by the ‘protestant truth society’, in support of an argument that the pope was allegedly calling on the people of mexico to persecute the evangelical christians there. To the casual or uncritical reader, this was irrefutable proof of the evils of a satanic-inspired heresy. However, to the more careful reader it became clear that not only was the power of selective editing & wilful misquoting being used to its utmost, but it was being used to such an extent that the editor of that publication was seriously laying themself open to a libel action. & a famous television advert for a newspaper a few years ago depicted the same scene shot from two very different camera angles - the first angle showed a young black man apparently mugging a respectable-looking business man on a street corner, whereas the second scene showed the true picture of the young man rushing into the business man in order to save him from the large heavy falling object that would otherwise have seriously injured him.

But am I really personally any better off for knowing all the evils in the world that the news tells me about ? Is the world a better place for my knowledge of the good that goes on ? Is my friend who is only just barely aware that our country happens to be at war really ‘disadvantaged’ for not knowing the things that I do ? To what extent is my desire to see ‘the news’ a necessary part of living In The World, & being able to respond to those events should I feel so, & to what extent am I merely replacing an interest in being ‘entertained’ by eastenders with being ‘entertained’ by the news ? To what extent do we all, whether we care to admit to it or not, actually see ‘the news’ as not much more than our voyeuristic view into the lives of others (& maybe tut-tut to ourselves about how terrible the world is without actually taking the next step of doing something to improve it), as just another piece in our jigsaw of daily entertainment ?