Infonaut's Journal: Summer: The perfect time to ditch American TV "news"

Here's a summer experiment. Instead of spending an hour a day watching TV "news", do the following:

• Stay up on headlines with an RSS feed to whatever news source you prefer. Check once in the morning for ten minutes, and once in the evening for ten minutes.
• Read the weekly print version of The Economist. It is perfect breakfast reading.
• Every Sunday pick up a copy of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, or the Chicago Tribune.

After a month, and probably well before that point, your fear will disappear. The bleach-blonde news delivery vector will no longer seem necessary. You'll feel much better informed. You'll realize that there is no real point in watching a talking head interpreting the news for you in front of the White House, or in a flashy TV studio. You'll also realize that video footage often distorts larger truths and serves only to titilate. It is the crack that keeps you coming back.

Once you kick the habit, you may never go back.

The Economist

[Captain Splendid]

Read the weekly print version of The Economist. It is perfect breakfast reading.

Would have been with you on that point up until a few years ago, but it gets a little repetitive (not to mention wrong) to keep reading about how capitalism could just fix everything if it weren't for those meddlesome humans. If you really want to read it, just catch a Tom Friedman article once in a while. You'll save a ton of time and cash, and the net effect is the same.

Re:

[Infonaut]

Would have been with you on that point up until a few years ago, but it gets a little repetitive (not to mention wrong) to keep reading about how capitalism could just fix everything if it weren't for those meddlesome humans.

I don't buy the argument that the Economist is as one-dimensional as you believe it to be. But even if that were the case, it provides far more information about what is going on in the world than any American newsweekly.

I don't have to agree with the Economist's editorial view on

Re:

[Captain Splendid]

I don't buy the argument that the Economist is as one-dimensional as you believe it to be. But even if that were the case, it provides far more information about what is going on in the world than any American newsweekly.

I don't have to agree with the Economist's editorial view on all matters (and I frequently don't - they've been stupendously wrong on Iraq, for example) in order to appreciate the journalism.

Meh. I just see it as cheerleading for a system that I think is detrimental to human beings