The News: A User’s Manual

An interesting book which explores how humans react to the news on an emotional/psychological level.

It discusses the different types of news: political, economic, disaster, cultural, etc. and how we perceive and relate to them. Some interesting points I gathered:

• The true measure of news is if it gets us to care about what has happened.

• News articles are tiny vignettes of larger narratives that don’t fit within the space of the article. It’s a tiny slice without context.

• The news introduces us to a far wider array of things we could ever find ourselves

• The news controls our perception of what “other people” are like.

• News tends to concentrate on the immediate; it doesn’t consider other, perhaps more complex issues “off stage”

• Pictures are corroborate the story, or advance it. Boring pictures simple agree with the words, while engaging pictures advance – they show us something beyond the words