[lapcat]

> Privilege isn't just about wealth.

Which poor people exactly do you consider privileged, and why?

> The point is that although anyone can ignore the news, the news won't necessarily ignore them!

What can they do about the news, though? I specifically said, "they may feel powerless to change anything".

[XorNot]

We live in democracies. The price of entry is a citizenry informed enough to choose how they want many issues of state handled.

The alternative is worse, and the result of an uninformed citizenry can be disasterous and a regression towards non-democracy.

[phantasmish]

99.9% of people would be better voters if they put five hours a week toward reading about and better understanding shit from an undergrad liberal arts program (history, political philosophy, statistics, media studies, basic physical science, economics) and five hours a year into catching up on the news, than vice versa.

[its_ethan]

The price of entry is actually just being born in the country (or at least that's all that's required in most democracies).

You personally might have the expectation that when you vote, you should be informed about what you're voting on/for - but that is entirely optional.

edit: I'd love to hear about some of your proposed solutions to solving this problem ;)

[XorNot]

Increase education funding, mandate a couple of levels of free choice liberal arts/philosophy type courses to ensure people have to expand their thinking a little, focus on critical thinking and media analysis skills in primary and secondary education - not as the main focus but certainly as important, civic building classes.

News media gets harsh anti-monopoly rules: no more billionaires owning every station in every jurisdiction, in fact no more conglomerates whatsoever. More independent funding for local news: I'm content for a bunch of these to go bankrupt on a regular basis but we'll sponsor more people putting out independent journalism.

At an international scale spin off an entity like the Federal Reserve which would be the Federal International Reporting Bureau with some iron clad rules about funding changes and the sole mission to baseline the availability of boots-on-the-ground international journalism, with a mission charter the citizenry must have accurate reporting to understand how they will choose leaders to guide international politics. This one would be tricky to get right, I suspect you'd probably end up tying resource allocation to government funding alotments and the like via some automatic mechanisms.

The first and last are probably pie in the sky: really let's start by shredding a couple of media empires into 50 different fiefdoms and let them battle it out for views, but there'll be no more mergers or cross-media ownership that's for sure.

[elcritch]

Personally I'm all for breaking up the media conglomerates. Especially the news. There is a tremendous amount of group-think from professional elites who all goto the same universities and then go work in the same newsrooms. When combined with endless M&A it creates insular monoculture with low tolerance for opposing views in most of these news outlets.

> At an international scale spin off an entity like the Federal Reserve which would be the Federal International Reporting Bureau with some iron clad rules about funding changes and the sole mission to baseline the availability of boots-on-the-ground international journalism

That sounds great in theory, but given the recent scandals at the BBC and uncovering of systematic bias there we can see how fragile such institutions can be. Even without M&A driving it the BBC has become a primarily leftist monoculture.

> Increase education funding, mandate a couple of levels of free choice liberal arts/philosophy type courses to ensure people have to expand their thinking a little

Sounds great, but also prone to systemic bias. Universities in general have become echo chambers in liberal arts departments.

Perhaps combine that with options for doing national service of some sort that would balance out education. Afterall, classroom learning only gives one aspect of life and experience. Often just exposing people to new places and environments broadens their outlooks.

[resize2996]

> Which poor people exactly do you consider privileged, and why?

those with insulation from genocide and displacement despite poverty.

their point is that, say, a german peasant in 17th century couldn't avoid the Thirty Years War.

[josephg]

German peasants in the 17th century seemed to manage just fine without 24/7 news coverage.

Almost all news that's actually important - that might actually affect your life - will find you one way or another. Most news isn't important (eg sports drama). Or it isn't urgent (eg tariff news). Or both, like celebrity gossip.

Only a vanishingly small percentage of news is both urgent and important. And there's plenty of people in my life who would tell me if - for example - we needed to evacuate the city due to a fire.

Really. You can switch off. It'll be ok. Try it, and you'll see.

[ffuxlpff]

He referred to the Thirty Years War where instead of doomscrolling the peasant especially living in southwestern Germany would get his war news by getting killed or starved and his home burned down.