Of course it’s not an explicit expectation, but the news cycle is dominated by a mix of 24/7 news and daily summaries. It’s rare that I see weekly, bi-weekly, monthly summaries. I’m thinking, is there really that much that can happen in a day and that warrants our attention? Most news are clickbait focused on the negative, making us feel depressed and feeds our negative emotions. I wouldn’t be surprised if the news actively contributes to the mental health crisis.

At the same time I think it can be of importance to have some understanding on what’s going on in one’s local area, one’s country and in the world. For me I think a weekly summary would be good balance, but those are weirdly hard to find. What are your thoughts?

  • aesthelete@lemmy.world
    3·
    2 days ago

    For the entire time I’ve been alive, we have been a supply-side economics country. Which means that rather than companies creating products based upon the needs of the people and selling them, much or perhaps most of the economy is oriented toward making you want (largely) unnecessary things that companies have created.

    The news media serves this economic structure in a few different ways:

    • It notifies you of new products – essentially acting as the marketing arm of the companies – to keep the economy humming along and people consuming things.
    • It wants you to consume its main, likely unnecessary product (i.e. 24/7, up-to-the-second news) in order to both assist the above goal of having you consume that marketing, and because it itself is a supply-side economic product.
    • It relays at every possible opportunity the message that not keeping up with the news will result in you missing out on important things, or might result in potential disaster.

    It is often the news organizations themselves – and the people who act as boosters for them either unintentionally or intentionally – that pretend that you have some personal responsibility to consume every bit of news about every flatulent (be it government, celebrity, or corporate) that opened their mouth today.