Interest in a story tends to be highest when the amount of information is lowest. News outlets happily oblige.
with the prescient title “Information Wars,” Jackson Browne conveyed the “comforting glow” of the living room television set. “You get the world every night as a TV show,” he observed. “The latest spin on the shit we’re in, blow by blow. And the more you watch, the less you know.”
I stumbled upon Browne’s lyrics this week while taking a break from the interminable chatter about former President Donald Trump’s impending arrest. I couldn’t escape the feeling that the more I gorged on the coverage, the less I actually learned. Maybe you’ve felt it too, whether the story was Trump or the pandemic or the economy: The more you scroll, the less you know.Some subsequent Googling surfaced Browne’s phrase, and then Danny Schechter’s 1997 book with the same theme,.
allowing limited photography during the arraignment, “never in the history of the United States has a sitting or past President been indicted. The populace rightly hungers for the most accurate and current information available.”There was very little concrete information ahead of Tuesday’s court appearance, so the void was filled by speculation and spectacle. This is not the fault of individual journalists, many of whom are continuing to do crucial work as the Trump case unfolds.
Outside Trump’s Manhattan home, “on the west side of Fifth Avenue, it is just nonstop reporters, lenses, camera crews,” correspondent Annmarie Hordern said on Bloomberg TV Tuesday morning. “On the right were some Trump supporters. But the reporters far outweighed those supporters.