Stop Reading the News - A Review

There are thousands of companies and people that have you on their mind right now.

Maybe not you in particular, but they are thinking about a category of people that you belong to. They want your attention. They want to have you read their article see the advertisements on their pages and get hooked on their product.

Sometimes we act as if manufacturing drama for the news is a recent phenomenon. Jeffrey Bilbro helps debunk that in his book, Reading the Times. He goes back to Henry David Thoreau’s concern that newspapers of that day were exaggerating claims, inflaming situations for the sake of sales, and disrupting people’s ability to see the integrity of the world. The issue, though, goes back before that to pamphleteering after the invention of moveable type for the printing press, which drastically lowered the entry cost for authors and publishers. It’s a long-term problem, but it remains a real one.

Rolf Dobelli recognizes the way most people take in media as a significant problem and recommends that, as the title of his little book suggests, we Stop Reading the News. This book is, as the subtitle claims, “A Manifesto for a Happier, Calmer and Wiser Life.”

Dobelli is a popular author of airport books, like The Art of Thinking Clearly. His aim is not to draw people into some mysterious appreciation for only high-brow literature and a contemplative way of life. Rather, he is someone who has likely benefited significantly from attention in various forms of media (especially for the sales of his books), but understands that the way we process the news is bad for our minds.

The ironic setup for this volume is significant to its message and humorous. Dobelli opens the book describing his taking the opportunity to speak to a room full of journalists at the Guardian in 2013 about another book. However, he had also just written a blog post about avoiding consuming the news. In the room filled with people whose livelihood depended on people consuming the news, he was asked to further explain his position. He did. The newspaper employees found something worthwhile in his explanation, subsequently publishing some of his comments. This, in turn, led to the book, Stop Reading the News.

Summary

According to Dobelli, he has nearly entirely avoided consuming the news since 2010. One of the most significant exceptions was when he briefly got infatuated with American presidential politics around 2016. However, he quickly realized that it was a trap and returned to his more careful media consumption habits.

Despite what the media publishers may tell you, it is entirely possible to go through life without reading or watching their content. Dobelli estimates that the average person likely encounters about 20,000 items of “news” per year. He encourages a thought experiment: How many of those news articles have led to meaningful decision in your life that you would not have otherwise have made?

Looking back over the past year, I have to argue that Dobelli is largely correct. The news has not changed my mind, caused me to do something radically different, or really improved my life in any significant way. I may have encountered a few books that I otherwise would not have, but there has been little of significance. For Dobelli, the most significant difference the news could have made is when he would have known his flight was cancelled due to the Icelandic volcano eruption had he read the news. That would have saved a few hours of his life.

The news is largely irrelevant. Not just irrelevant to our daily lives, but actually totally insignificant. Dobelli points out the none of the daily newspapers in the world covered the invention of the first internet browser, which is arguably one of the most significant inventions since the plane. There were other stories of human and political interest on that day, but none of those items were really as significant in a historical sense as the web browser.

The news also encourages us to worry beyond our sphere of influence. It is tragic that there is genocide going on in a distant place, but our understanding every detail of the ongoing drama does not benefit me or the victims of unrest. In fact, when all is said and done, it is highly likely that much of the information distributed as “news” will be determined to be incorrect. Additionally, the news lacks the ability to accurately explain why things are happening, which is, in large part, what people who follow the news faithfully are not experts on issues they have not studied through longer articles and books (despite their confidence on social media). The net result of following the news closely is a false confidence in one’s own expertise and a more unsettled mind.

Another significant point that Dobelli makes is that the average person spends about 90 minutes a day reading this news. This means that about 1 month of the year is invested in reading or watching material that really won’t matter. Avoiding the news opens up worlds of possibility for deeper engagement through books, better conversations, and simply being a better observer of the world around. Imagine adding a month back into every year for rest or more productive purposes.

Conclusion

Stop Reading the News is a short book, about 146 pages long in a gift-sized format. It is about the right size to read on a medium length flight. It is filled with arguments for avoiding the news and ways to get by without reading the news. Dobelli’s point is not that we should be oblivious to the world, but that other media are a better way to really understand what is happening. He also notes that most stories of real import will be brought to your attention in daily conversation, even if you avoid the rapid-fire approach to the news.

This is not a must-read book, but Dobelli’s approach is compelling and the book is an easy read. This is the sort of volume that would be useful in a high school or college course on media literacy as a companion to the course. It is the sort of book that might be worth conveniently leaving at the home of a relative who is consumed by the news and has been transformed by the tone of the news. Personal application of the avoidance of news (and likely social media) might be a beneficial practice that would be worth experimenting with for many of us.

Stop Reading the News: A Manifesto for a Happier, Calmer and Wiser Life

By Dobelli, Rolf

Buy on Amazon

Reading the Times - A Review

Most local newspapers are dying. The little paper in my city has been reduced to high school sports, complaints about the nearby nuclear plant, classified ads, and the occasional social gossip. More and more newspapers are shifting to a model of reprinting what comes through on some subscription service. This has had the effect of trivializing the news, so that local stories about small-scale, but important deeds like a teen giving her father CPR or a child finding the foundation of an old historical building while exploring the back woods disappear. In their place we get news about a smaller and smaller set of less and less real people who happen to have a large following on social media, their own TV show, and might have moderate talent in some other area of life. We end up knowing more about a rich, beautiful, spoiled person whom we will never meet than we do about our neighbor down the block.

The media by which we take in the news of the day affects the trivialization of the world, though it does not mandate it. Many people get their news from social media, which means that it tends to be ideologically slanted toward opinions shared with one’s friends. Since one of the basic presuppositions of our society is that if you associate with someone you agree with them, a bubble of reality begins to form. And, since the art of disagreeing temperately on social media is difficult to learn, opposing ideas are often avoiding or ignored rather than engaged and questioned. Comments are either strongly affirming or attacking the opinion under consideration, because to say “yes, but” or “maybe this, yet not that” is a needle that few can thread from a keyboard.

But it is our behaviors that trivialize the news. We share articles with misleading headlines, sometimes without having read the body. We look for opinions that excoriate our outgroup. The algorithm feeds our human behavior and continues to provide the material for which we have developed a taste. And we must be clear that our taste has been developed through our own actions, or, at least, through our own failures to resist the tendency of the news medium to trivialize our view of the world.

What can we do about it?

Jeffrey Bilbro’s book, Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News, provides both an apt diagnosis of the problem and some particularly helpful steps toward alleviating it. The result is a succinct, clearly-written book that is accessible to the layperson.

Bilbro’s diagnosis is not particularly innovative. He is channeling the energy of Wendell Berry, Jacques Ellul, Neil Postman, and Thoreau in arguing that the way news is presented is not good for the human condition. In application, Bilbro’s solutions are much more reliant on Berry and Thoreau (whom Bilbro has written about previously) than the other two thinkers. In any case, innovation is not what is needed, but intelligibility and digestibility.

The core of the problem, as Bilbro presents it, is not necessarily the technology or the content of the news, but rather that too much of what we get that passes as news has very little to do with our lives, even though it is designed to rattle our cage. What we get angry or excited about often has little to do with what God is concerned about:

“Perhaps we need to conduct an emotional audit and consider which issues or news items cause us to become angry, outraged, or excited: Are we grieving over what grieves God and rejoicing over what brings him joy? Or have we become emotionally invested in trivia while growing apathetic about matters of real import?”

Bilbro recognizes that a big part of the problem is the way we read the news. As a result, the fix is to change ourselves and what we value. This is a book that is timely and well suited for those looking for an off-ramp from the highway of partisan politics, misanthropy, and emotional turmoil that often goes with the news.

After a brief introduction, in which Bilbro explains that his purpose is to help us understand how to use the news to love our neighbor better, the book is divided into three parts with three chapters each. Part One deals with attention, Part Two with time, and Part Three with community. The pattern of each part is to present the modern problem in the first chapter, put out a somewhat abstract better condition in the second chapter, and then provide some realistic practices that can help transition between the two. This pattern of problem, better vision, and help to get there makes this book a novel contribution.

Bilbro does not abstain from social media, nor does he recommend that for his readers, but he provides a means to put social media use in its place. He doesn’t recommend disconnecting from news media, but being more thoughtful of who we read, when, and how. The book presents a realistic vision of living in a world that demands our participation, but threatens us through our participation at the same time.

Much of Bilbro’s writing has had a localist bent. Like his hero, Wendell Berry, he has invested a great deal of thought in how to live in this place, right now. Modernity tends to flatten the world (a la Friedman) and create a tyranny of the eternal immediate present. Bilbro points to living better with an eternal viewpoint and a local scope, which is just the opposite of the way the news pushes us to have a global scope with an immediate viewpoint. This book won’t solve all of everyone’s problems, but it is another piece in a puzzle of dealing with the malaise of modernity.

In addition to being helpful and well-written, for those engaged in the study of modernity, this book ties a lot of pieces together. The footnotes are a roadmap to a wide range of resources for deeper study and consideration. They are also a trap for an individual’s book budget. I had to read the book again (a pleasure) before writing this review because I got sidetracked for several weeks following the leads that Bilbro laid out in his notes. Several mysterious packages showed up on the porch in the interim, which I had to explain to my wife, which was local news enough around here.

Buy the book because it is good and useful. Beware that it is going to make you stop, think, and probably even change the way you look at a few things.

Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News

By Bilbro, Jeffrey

Buy on Amazon

NOTE: I received an advanced reader copy from the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.

Becoming a Smarter Digital Citizen

Technology is amazing. In my life, I’ve seen the advancement of personal communications at a pace and to a degree that I would never have guessed was possible within my own life. I scoffed at the people who told me when I was a teen that television would be replaced by videos streamed on the computer. That was incomprehensible to me, since the internet was so limited as a resource then. I still remember having someone from the city (Buffalo) come out to do a demonstration of the internet at my rural school. They showed us ERIC and we were supposed to be amazed. Given that I was young, I didn’t recognize the potential of a database that would index academic articles, and the platform was extremely limited in comparison to contemporary tools.

Fast forward a few decades and now we are surrounded by a sea of digital influences. I read most of my news online and the news that I do read often depends on the people I follow on social media. I too rarely actually go to the landing page of any website, including those sites whose content I regularly consume.

However, since I get the majority of my content through social media, that makes me vulnerable to manipulations in the algorithms. This is because, in order to keep us addicted to their content, social media platforms distort the way information is displayed on their pages. There are complex calculations running in the background to ensure that you see your cousin’s pregnancy announcement when it pops up, but only get one link to that article that everyone is reading. Also, if they think you will be offended by that popular article, they might just not show it to you.

There is no question that the social media platforms are manipulating the content that gets displayed. That, at some level, might be considered tolerable (since they own the platform) and some might believe it is relatively benign (I do not). But there is a deeper problem: the manipulation of algorithms by people that want to do us harm.

In a multipart series, Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day has researched the manipulation of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube by bots and bad guys. I’m linking here to the series, with a brief synopsis of each video, because I believe that this is content worth sharing and considering as we learn how to live within our present digital culture.

The Art of Digital War

Because of his former day job, which involved working alongside the military on weapons systems, Sandlin was afforded a unique opportunity to engage some experts on the future of war and how cyber warfare will play into the way that wars will be fought or avoided in the coming decades. This video is a key part of understanding why the manipulation of social media feeds is worth the money and time invested in it.

Manipulating the Big Three Platforms

Some of these videos are a little long, but I found them very engaging. What is most helpful is that Sandlin was given access to experts from YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook who are trying to combat the rise of bots and overtly hostile actions. I have my own concerns about how our digital overlords are using their self-granted, self-regulated powers, but it is worth seeing how the algorithms are being manipulated to better understand the world in which we live.

Twitter

YouTube

Facebook

The Problem with Your Newsfeed

Although this video was released before the three-part series on the manipulation of particular platforms, but it provides a very helpful guide to being a better digital citizen. Sandlin talks to someone who works through a process of validating information before sharing it, and tries to teach us to do the same. If we all followed this sort of process, instead of simply sharing something that made us feel the right way, then false information would not be disseminated so regularly.

Sandlin also recaps why carefully parsing any links that you might share is so vitally important, because so much of the contemporary divisiveness and viral disruption of communities depends on false, or at least biased, information getting out into the main stream very quickly.

Conclusion

I’m writing on a website that has no paper counterpart, so obviously I’m not ready to step out of the digital world. A lot of the views for this website come through social media sharing and from search engines, so it isn’t in my interests to jump ship just yet.

However, we really do need to think about how the new information economy is shaping how we learn, see, and understand the world around us. We need to recognize that even more than the biased, but more benign forms of censorship and self-promotion inherent in commercial media, the rise of the portability of digital tools makes it easy for a relatively small, hostile actor to significantly influence the course of societal debate.

Being a good citizen in a digital world is part of being a good neighbor. Part of being a good neighbor is learning how the bad guys work (and the not-so-bad guys that are just as manipulative) so that we can resist unhelpful misinformation and reinterpretation in a rapidly changing environment.

An Announcement from the Spencer Family

For those of you who haven’t already found out by one means or another, I recently accepted a position as Director of Assessment and Institutional Research at Oklahoma Baptist University. I have resigned my position as Coordinator for Institutional Research and Faculty Support at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and we are moving to Shawnee, Oklahoma in the near future.

I am very grateful for the opportunity I have had to serve at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. It boasts the best campus of the six SBC seminaries and has the most thoroughly embedded fervor for carrying out the Great Commission. Even little things, like hangers on our lamp posts are a reminder that we should be people on the move, taking the gospel to all corners of the earth.

Additionally, there are a number of friends we will leave behind. Of course, since this is a community of transients, many of our friends have already left us behind or were leaving in the near future. That is one of the struggles in living and working in a community like this: we are all on the go.

Of course, leaving First Baptist Church of Durham is heartbreaking. If you ever make it to Durham, NC on a Sunday, you should visit. The preaching is phenomenal, the discipleship model strong, and the concern for reaching the nations is topnotch. We’ve only been there for two years, but I know at least one sermon podcast I’ll be listening to every week in Oklahoma.

This was a difficult decision to make. The opportunity at OBU is great, but we’ve invested the past seven years of our lives in Wake Forest. I will have to finish my dissertation remotely, without the comfort of the Duke, UNC, and NC State libraries nearby for emergency access to resources in environmental ethics. I enjoy working with the faculty and many of my friends at SEBTS. It would have been great to stay on.

However, positions at high quality institutions like OBU open rarely. This was an opportunity that we needed to take. There is a chance for me to use many of my administrative skills to assist OBU through their accreditation reaffirmation. When that is done, I should have the opportunity to teach some. So, off we go.

Because of this rapid transition, I hope that you’ll bear with the Spencer family as we pack up our accumulated possessions and trek off to a new city. Communication may be slow, but we haven’t forgotten.

We will appreciate prayer for endurance as we get through the marathon of moving. Also, for the house to sell quickly and for a good price. In addition, the kids are watching a whirlwind of packing, sorting, throwing out, and home repairs. It’s turbulent enough to move as a child, but we’re doing it in short order, which doesn’t make it any easier. We also want to find a church in Shawnee quickly where we can get involved in ministry, make new friends, and get into a groove as seamlessly as possible. Prayer for wisdom and opportunity there would also be appreciated.

Regarding the blog. Well, it will be intermittent. Something has to give, and the simplest thing to give up right now is blogging and posting links. I hope to pick it up once I get settled.

Thanks for reading and for your prayer.