Why the News Makes Us Dumb

The product of the news business is change, not wisdom. Wisdom has to do with seeing things in their largest context, whereas news is structured in a way that destroys the larger context. You have to do certain things to information if you want to sell it on a daily basis. You have to make each day’s report seem important. And you do that by reducing the importance of its context.

This focus on change has a deleterious effect on all forms of conservatism—whether cultural, political, or religious. Once we believed an essential part of our mission as conservatives was, as William F. Buckley claimed, to “stand athwart history yelling ‘Stop.’” Change was something to be undertaken slowly and with reflection. After all, the important institutions—family, religion, government—shouldn’t change on a whim. But the focus on dailiness has led conservatives to adopt attitudes that were once the province of hyper-progressivism. We don’t just ask what government has done for us lately, we ask what it has done for us today. We don’t just ask for change when it is needed, we ask for it to change—for the better presumably—on a daily basis. We are addicted to the process of change.
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Still dubious about all this? Consider the proposition: If it is no longer worth your while to go back and read the News of, oh, September 22, 1976, then it was never worthwhile doing so. And why should today be any different?

Read more of this article, on the inconsequential nature of news, here`.