Transcripts For CSPAN2 A Users Manual 20140323 : vimarsana.c

As so many books do, but from an audiences point of view. If you like a piece of literary criticism of the news. I was challenged to write this because of an awareness of how little we are systematically educated into this business of looking at the news. I mean, when were at school, someone will have a shut at telling us what pictures a shot at telling us what pictures do to us, someone will tell us a little about theater, literature, drama, poetry, but, of course, no one really educates us to the day like this. We get no guidance. And when we come to this, were lost. What is this really doing . Its a new age. Were still one of the early generations to be coping with this stuff, right . And there is not systematic attention to what its doing to our insides. You know, the promise, in the 8th century 18th century the promise of news was enormous. The idea was if you have free information about the workings of government, about the people, about other peoples, about other countries, if you have a free flow of information, you will lead to an informed citizenry, there will be pressure on legislatures, and you will have a flour you shoulding country. Flourishing country. Enormous promise of what news was meant to be. Im not sure its necessarily worked out that way. It seems nowadays that if you want to try and keep a population confused, supine, unsure of how to grasp ask change the status and change the status quo, youve got two options. The first option is what you might call the north korean option. You throttle news. You stop anyone getting any information. Thats one way to keep the population confused. But the other way, of course, is far slier, far cleverer, much better if you want to keep things as they are. You flood people with news. So much news that no one can work out what on earth was happening last week. Does anyone here remember what was on the news last week . Of course you dont, no one does. Because, very cleverly, its not that were kept in ignorance, its that we are flood with information, so much information that we cannot hold on to the things that matter and, therefore, political agendas run into the fan constantly because there is no steady constituency for the very important challenges we face. The german philosopher hagel said that nations become modern when they replace this with the news, when people stop going to church, when they stop seeing religion as the touchstone of authority, the place that will tell us about right and wrong, the place that will create our sense of what matters, that will deliver our a feeling of what we should be aiming for if life. That is no longer, for many of us, the church. It is, of course, the thing that relaces it. In hagels eyes, the news. The news repluses religion. Its replaces religion. Its a very key moment in history. Were way past it now, i think, in the United States and u. K. And much of europe. And just as in the area of religion, there are firm believers, there are agnostics, and there are atheists. So, too, when it comes to the news. And so, too, if you start to ask questions. Well, boy, youll run into some accusations of heresy, as ive already done. Very care canful what questions very careful of what questions you raise from the media. You will gatt orer from my tone that im more on the skeptical side of things. Definitely a little skeptical. Nevertheless, the news has an unparalleled power over us. You get a sense of this whenever anyone wants to start a revolution. You want to start a revolution . Where do you drive the tanks . Active question now and at all times really. Where do you go . You dont drive the tanks to the homes of the novelists, the poets, the social sign cysts scientists. Theyre very important, but no one really cowers about them. You drive your tank to the news hq. You always have done, youll keep doing that because that is where a sense of reality is formed. Thats what you need to control. The person who controls the news controls the minds of the population. Its been true for a while, it continues to be true. Now, what i want to do tonight is take you through a number of areas where i feel the news presents us with challenges and feel with you towards a slightly better resolution. Im an optimistic sort of guy. I think the news is not perfect as it is, i want to try and make it better. I want to think with you about how we might do that. Okay, look, one of the things that anyone working in the news will immediately tell you is theres some very important issues out there in the world, and if you put them too prominently on the front page, your audience will chi die of boredom. The architecture of news is broken down. It used to be the case that the most important issues came first, and they would attract the biggest audience, and there might be some fluffy stuff at the bottom. That wouldnt necessarily take up too much of anyones time. The froth has come to the fore be, and nowadays if you really want a big audience, you put someone like this on. I mean, taylor always gets huge hits, particularly when shes wearing shorts. This drives serious people crazy. Crazy. Were neglecting this for this. What is going on . Have we become degenerates . Well, its a challenge. Its definitely a challenge. And if youre feeling gloomy and highminded, you may take to the hills, and you may decide that we have entered an era of unparalleled decadence. I dont despair because i know, and i think back to the history of the renaissance. In the renaissance the Catholic Church had some really serious and important things to tell people. How to live according to the gospels of jesus christ, quite an arduous message, and they thought very hard about how to get that message across. And when they came to painting their very large advertising posters also known as altar pieces, they did some interesting things. They realized that its no good if youve got some important truths to say to put them in the hands of this fellow here. This perioded man, st bearded man, st. Jerome, carrying a heavy book is just not that appealing a figure. I dont mean to single out anyone here, but guys with beards, heavy truths, are not an appealing sight really. [laughter] if you want to get your message across, youve got to go to the taylor swifts of the day. To put it crudely, we can put it crudely, sex sells. Now, intelligent people when they hear that, they think, oh, its just awful. Sex is used to sell everything; flights to florida, chocolate, household goods. What kind of a civilization do we live in . Look, well always be prone to feeling the assure of attractive people. Its not necessarily so bad that sex is used to sell things, but it is used to sell the wrong things, and this is the problem. Now, the Catholic Church had one solution to this, and arguably, they got sex to be selling the right things. But im bringing this up because a challenge that anyone involved in the news nowadays has to face is the collapse of architecture and the blurring of the important and the popular. These two with categories which for a generation really held steady, you know, what was important was popular. That is no longer the case. That architecture has broken down, and we need to face a up to that. And in a way, one of the most popular, so one of the most important goals nowadays is popularization. You know, what is popular sawtion . Popularization is the capacity to take a complex and important idea and render it palatable to a wide audience. There is almost no more important skill in the newsroom now than that. But this is not a skill that is normally taught. Its assumed that thats what journalists know how to do. They dont necessarily always, which is why we get some of these tensions between the arctic melt and taylors legs. Now, i was saying to you that there was too much information, too many stories. The good news is that there are actually not that many stories out there. Theres lots and lots of incidents, but if youve actually boiled down what those incidents really mean, what their emotional core is, what their message is, its very often the same story. In my book i say there are really 32 stories in the news, they just keep going browned and round and round round and round and round. Of course, the news will never tell us this, everything is always new in the news. It wont tell us that somethings already come round. So when theres a crisis in the ukraine, this is totally new. Its never happened before. Of course, it did in 1789 and then again a few decades later. It keeps happening. But the news does not want to alert us because everythings always got to be new. So what weve got to do as the audience is get better at spotting archetypes because they reduce the number of phenomena and lead you to certain truths that hold together a wide variety of incidents and pick them clearer. And pick them clearer. Let me show you something that looks like three stories but is really only one story. This is one part of the stoirt, and this is another part of the story. It looks like lots of stories, but its one story. And ill tell you what its about. Its really a story about someone very important doing a quite ordinary thing, and the sight of that ordinary activity in the hands of someone extraordinary produces an emotional charge in the audience which is very satisfying. So its really the same structure of stories. There we are, theres a british member of the royal family, and hes playing with the car seat. And its amazing because, my god, hes using a car seat, and yet hes going to be the king. Thats very special, isnt it . And then this is taylor swift again, and shes buying letters. Amazing. And this is a very important person who was born in a stable, and he could have been born in a palace, but, no, hes chose to its the same story. So what weve got to do as consumers of news is become experts at archetypes. Because that way well have a lot less news to read, and well think theres a lot less out there. There is, actually, much less out there than we think. The sense that were dehuged with theres so much, so much, this is simply the lazy thinking that the news industry wants to promote. It doesnt want to sharpen our sense of the eternal stories of which or the cyclical stories. Okay. Look, moving on, what are the promises of news . When news got downing in the mid, late 19th century, the promise of news was well find out about life far away, you know, over the hill, in another country. And that information will increase our feelings of empathy, sympathy, it will make a kind of brotherhood of man, and it will reduce warfare and peace will reign across the earth. That was the original, beautiful promise of what we now call foreign news or world news. But theres really bad news because last week 200 people died in the democratic repluck of congo republic of congo, and none of you care. You dont care at all. You didnt even know about this probably. And the reason is not that you are monstrous, but its the way in which the news has presented in this information to you. How could you possibly care about the existence of 200 people, or rather the death of 200 people whose existence you hadnt even suspected . You had to know someone was alive before their death can come to seem striking. We are all very empathetic, sympathetic creatures. We can see a performance of king leer, and we can be king lear and we can be crying over a guy who didnt even live. He died and didnt even live, and yet were crying. And yet we can then here about the death hear about the death in the democratic republic of congo, and 20 minutes later were fast asleep. Whats going on . Its all to do with the way in which the information is presented to us. Now, the news industry has basically, is basically working all the time with the data or, if you like, informationbased model of how our minds work. In other words, they believe if you collect important data that is accurate and you lay it before an audience, if its important, it will sink into the hearts and minds of the audience. And thats why, you know, we can tell people that 200 people died here, a typhoon happened there, a landslide over here, and this Important Information will find an audience. The problem is it didnt. It repeatedly does not find an audience. We dont care. And the reason we dont care is that in order for something to start mattering to us, it has to enter our imaginations. And that requires the discipline that we might as well call art. Art is the name of the discipline that we could, that is, has as its intention to try and get important ideas and truths into our minds in a way that it stays there. Now, the art form that the news is most closely connected with is photojournalism. Photojournalism, young, im a philosopher by training, and theres a lot of gloomy philosophers out there complaining about all sorts of things, but the gloomiest constituency by far are photojournalists. I dont know if theres any here, but they are a very, very sad and depressed bunch. [laughter] the reason is everybodys forgotten about them and their contributions to humanity. And the reason is no ones paying for any of this. Yes, there are photos everywhere in the news, dont get me wrong, but not good photos. Whats a good photo when it comes to photojournalism . One could spend a year on this, but let me boil it down to a simple thing. Its got nothing to do for me with a color balance. What its really got to do with is a photo that somehow advances your knowledge, right . It is not merely confirming something that you already knew perhaps through words. It is itself a bearer of new and original information. That, for me, is a good photograph. It is advancing knowledge in itself. Not merely a tool of cooperation. I was thinking of this when i saw a photo essay by a Pulitzer Prize winner called stephanie st. Claire who went to the yemen and did a photorep taj on Child Marriage in yemen. Now, we think we might know quite a lot about Child Marriages, but through these photographs you learn so much. I learned so much. For example, i learned that its not actually child children who are getting married. These girl cans who are getting married are not children. If you look at their eyes, these are little old ladies. The trauma they go through ages them almost 40 years. Extraordinary. Similarly, the men. Theyre not really men either. Theyre little boys, theyre lost. Its much more point whereabout, pathetic poignant, pathetic, confusing than we move thought. So this is a picture that is advancing your knowledge. And theres so many others like it. Its not just in the developing world. Take a look, this is a bad photograph of your president. Its bad because its a dead photo. Its not teaching you anything that you didnt know. Its not advancing your knowledge. This is a good photo. The reason its a good photo is that were learning stuff. [laughter] now, we know that your esteemed president lies. All president s have to lie in order to get elected. Thats not news. Did we know he could lie in order to please the son of a white house staffer by pretending to be shot by spiderman . Thats new information. Pete souza who posts his photos on the white house blog every week full of insights. Thats what we need more of. But the argument has tended to be lost. If you go in the newsrooms, most newsrooms the argument about good photography is really on a knife edge. There are fewer and fewer people who understand that and who, therefore, want to pay for good photography. But anyway, im a great fan of the medium, and it pains me how little good photographys now, arguments for it are being made. Look, Something Else i want to talk about. When we, when were consumers of the news, something that happens to us, you guys seem very nice. I seem quite nice. On a good day im not you guys are nice, and people out there are nice so generally as we go through the world, well assume people are generally quite friendly until we go to a News Organization and say put it in the trade below the line. And you start reading the comments pages that are on [laughter] and ten you suddenly realize then you suddenly realize something frightening which is your fellow human beings are crazy. [laughter] theyre passionately angry about everything, absolutely everything. [laughter] i took a, looked at an average article, this is a fellow who runs the National Finances in britain, the chancellor of the excheck kerr, george osborne, a hated figure among the left, and theres a typical article about him in the guardian. There were 400 comments, most of them wanted to kill the man, put a pull low over his face, kick him. Are we crazy . No. I think this is a version of keeping a journal. You know when you keep a journal, right . Things are not going well, youve had a bad day. You go up to your room, you pull out the journal, and you write down how it feels at that moment. So you say ive had enough, im going to kill myself. I hate everybody, right . You write, the tears are mixing with the uncle. Im being a little autobiographical here. [laughter] you put the journal away, and its very, very important that you do not tell anyone about this incident and that no one reads your journal because if they did, their view of you would be permanently lop lopsided. So its very, very important. The problem is these comments are, basically, journal entries. But theyre public, and this is a real problem because we have to trust one another. We have to love one another, we have to go out and do business one another, and thats hard when you think youre surrounded by psychopaths. So we need to take care. We have learned something that is really quite disturbing, and were one of the first generations to face it, the first generation to face it. Its happening every day below the line. We need to take cower as we would with journals take care as we would with journals. Look, Something Else. This is a man who worked in the queens cavalry for many years. A distinguished military career in the u. K. And this is his son whos 5, and hes got, he had a older daughter a couple of years older. And shortly after this photo was taken, he took his son and daughter and he put them in his car, and he stabbed them, and then he stabbed himself. And the car was found a few days later in a layby by a passing bird dog. The reason i pick out this picture is that it was the story that was most visited of any story two to years ago in the two years ago, the english languages most popular web site which is called the mail online can which none of you know about. And it received the maximum number of hits. What is it about the news that seems to mesmerize us with appalling stories . It can seem as though were rubber neckers, were really the lowest of the low to take such interest in these things. Im more optimistic about human nature. Partly because with i think way back, and im thinking of aristotle. Now, aristotle in his poetics analyzes the way in which stories of horror this which people murder each other, in which theres incest and fatal jealousy, rivalry, etc. , how the grimmest possibilities of human kind are not necessarily degrading to watch and witness. Indeed, if presented in the right way, they can themselves be an agent of civilization. So horror has a role to play in civilizing a people. That was the argument that you find in the poetics. And the reason why aristotle argues this is that he argues it in the plays of people like soft cleese or euripides. You find two emotions that are being arouseed in the spectator; fear and pity. Pity based on an awareness of how close you might be to undergoing some of the traumas and torment of the tragic hero, how every life is prone to catastrophe. That if we are pushed hard enough on our weakest spots, we, too, will collapse. If we havent done anything catastrophic, well be victims of the furies of fate, yet it may come tomorrowment so these very, very cautionary messages are coded in tragedy and so we feel fear, and then we feel so we feel pity, and then we feel fear for ourselves based on an awareness of how close we are to the tragedy that we have witnessed, the kind of tragedy that we have witnessed. This is immensely sophisticated, and it is absolutely the material with which the new york post, the mail online, any number of outlets every day are presenting us with this stuff. Its not low at all. As so often is the case and i argue this consistently in my book the news takes us to the only of something edge of something deeply interesting. But it abandons us. There is no resolution of the emotions which the news has set in train which explains the background anxiety which the news constantly creates, because it doesnt tie things up, it doesnt resolve things. It presents the ingredients but doesnt do anything with them. Look, another kind of news which is immensely popular is disaster news, right . So that was tragedy. Before it was tragedy, this is disaster. In other words, things where nature or mechanical failure creates sudden disasters and car crash, brilliantly popular. If youre in the newsrooms and theres a car crash, you know this is going to bring in the advertisers and shoot up the ratings. People love it, especially when theres fog involved. But the thing that really is successful is air crashes. Nothing beats a good plane crash. The widebodied airliners and its an american airliner, many dead, brilliant. Whats going on, are we sick . No. Were looking for the meaning of life. In the middle ages, a standard piece of interior decoration was a skull. You would put a skull on your table or paint a skull and put it on the wall. What were you doing with that skull . You were trying to remind yourself of what was important in life. The thought of death has a very vital role to play in shaking us from our habits, from our assumptions, from the waste of time that we constantly engage with normally. The thought of death has a role the play in clearing up what life might be about for us. And thats why its very important. Nowadays we dont put skulls on the desk, but we do this, right . We look at these things. And i think were trying to get back in touch with some of the emotions that the skull is good at eliciting. But again, lets come back to this point, the news doesnt do this for us. It doesnt tie up. It presents us with a goolish event, it doesnt tell us the one thing we could draw from the event. So its very unresolved. Were constantly being shown unresolved things, and our emotions are extremely unresolved and perturbed. Ultimately, the news spends its time making us frightened, frightened offering. The one thing it never tells us is, its okay, you will survive. Were afraid of bird flu, swine flu, ufos, spies, etc. Theres always something new to be terrified about. And, you know, the very basic point is the news picks out the anomalous events, the murders, the disasters, the tragedies, right . And because were looking at the news all the time, an anomalous event becomes the normal, right . It becomes the norm. And that explains why when your car breaks down on a saturday night somewhere in a remote place and youve got to go and seek help from a stranger, you know whats going to happen. Youre going to talk to a stranger, and today will chop you up into small pieces and put you in the trunk. [laughter] and the reason you know this is you are a consumer of the news, and, therefore, everybody is a murderer or a crazy guy. And thats what we know. And, of course, theyre not. And then we come to the stunning realization, they were quite nice. [laughter] of course they were quite nice. Everybodys quite nice. Apart from 1 , but thats the normal, thats the people we hear about all the time. So we have a fundamentally distorted picture of the United States, right . What is the United States . A country of crazies where everybodys killing everybody else. Thats what we know in europe because weve read the papers. [laughter] so in other words, we are getting, i mean, it is in the power of the news to give us that feeling which is so important which is what kind of country do i live in, right . Most of to us, we only have a very narrow circle of friends, acquaintances, work colleagues, right . Who are helping to give us a facetoface sense of what it means to live in the United States now. Most of our information about what it means to live in this country now is fed to us by the news. So we have surrendered a vital thing to the news, the news machine which is [inaudible] and thats a striking surrender. And, of course, the picture that comes back is deeply, deeply worrying. And, well, theres one area of hope, and that concerns the news is, its very pessimistic and dark in many areas apart from the area of medical science. Follow the news. The news is the project incentive of the en progeny of the enlightenment and life science which got going at the same time. The news is constantly bringing us fantastic news from those guys at mit and other research laboratories, johns hopkins, and lots of new developments that if you have an aspirin every night, you wont have a stroke or the you eat walnut, you wont get alzheimers. Or if you wear a special sock, you wont die young. Whatever it is, theres always some new discovery. And the bad news, guys, is that were going to die. Of course were going to die, and were not going to die in some conflagration when an airline crashes, were going to die an ordinary death. Our octogenarian hearts will give out, and thats the way it is for ordinary people. But the news doesnt reconcile this. Its catapulting us from terror and hope for eternal life. And theres always, you know, swinging between hope and despair. This is in politics, of course. This guy is going to save everything and, no, hes a most useless guy. Hope and fury constantly, the constant things that drive the news machine. Its very, very exhausting. At least the guys who the news replaced broke the bad news to us gently. I mean, they said, look, you know, its going to come to an end, its very sad, get ready for it, you know, think about it a lot. You know, they were gentle. I speak to you as a secular jew. But, you know, they were gentle with this stuff. But the news doesnt do us this service. Catapults us between hope and despair constantly. Look, Something Else the news drives us crazy with, and that is celeb throughs celebrities. Just had the oscars. If you talk to intelligent, sensible people whats wrong with the world, theyll say, well, we live in a celebrity culture, dont we . Influencing the young in horrible ways, very easy to despair. Is that really the case . Yeah, theyre everywhere. Their doing this kind of thing. Ask you despair. So serious people think, okay, Celebrity News is terrible. Now, my line of Celebrity News is a bit different. I think that its very, very important for a country to have celebrities, okay . Celebrities are vital in terms of guiding the nation, enforcing morals and manners, guiding people as to how to behave, right . The thing is, every society has had celebrities or role models. A role model is very important. You cannot have a Society Without role models. The problem is, theres a twofold problem. I think the problem starts at the top of society, right . Very serious people dont believe in celebrities because they have an individualistic, selfcreated sense. Me . I would not be guided by a celebrity. I dont have role model, i just do it myself. Thats the kind of standard, elite view. And then, of course, the business of anointing celebrities passes on to the lowest common denominator, and thats where we get our friend here. So its very important not to do away with celebrity, but to get the right sort of celebrity, right . This is what we need. We need a right sort of celebrity. If we get better celebrities, the nation will go better. But because serious people dont believe in the job of celebrity, they dont even see it as a need. Let me show you how things might go a little bit. Recently an actress called Natalie Portman took her child to the park. And thats a very, very useful, indeed, because those of you who have had children, its really boring to go to the park with a child. So boring. [laughter] but you know its good. And, you know, you do it and okay, goes on and on. Very, very good. Its very nice. As youre taking your child to the park to think, well, natalie was there. She was there a couple of weeks ago with her kid. Im kind of doing what a hollywood actress is doing, kind of cool. The light of glamour has momentarily shown on an ordinary moment of everyday life. Thats important because we need glam or. Its not wad thing. We need things to be glamorous. So heres st. Natalie taking her kid to the park. And these guys knew as well, they understood that a well functioning Society Needs role models. Were very confused about this. We need to clear up and get a little more optimistic. It could go better than its going to now. Something else the news because to us, and it tends does to us and it tends to do it on the weekend. On the weekend its time for the slower bits of news, the blogs, etc. And sometimes, you know, well go out and go and buy the sunday paper. Big, fat thing, and well sit down on the sofa, and the birds are chirping outside. In the olden days sometimes on the news they say viewers beware, theres some visually, you know, strobe lighting coming up, so beware of strobe lighting. There should be these kinds of warnings over the sunday papers. And what they should be flashing is envy. Envy alert, right . But they dont because the news very frequently does not warn us. What do i mean by envy alert . We live in a very mobile, merit accuratic, on a good day, societies where people are capable of unbelievable transformations from their originnings. Because it doesnt happen very often, but it does happen enough to not enable us to sleep that well at night. And there are stories all the time out there of people who used to be this and have now become that. People who used to be, you know, a boring accountant and they then decided to, i dont know, make a movie, or they were a failing movie star, and they set up some hotels. They had a garage and then they, you know, etc. And these story ises are constantly all around, and they drive us nuts, nuts, because all the time were will on a sunday morning, and were thinking, i am a loser because i have not done anything with my life. And this i goo on the this guy on the screen, his name is elon musk. The real problem is that hes 46. Now, for a long time it doesnt matter how old you know, when youre younger it doesnt matter how old people are because you always think, well, ive got some time. But the problem is im 44 now, and elon musk is 46. And the problem is he started ebay or something, and then he had pais pga, and hes worth 17 billion, and then he had tesla, and now he wants to send men to the moon. No mars. And this is his wife. [laughter] so its going swimmingly for him. Im so happy for him, but no, im not. Im going insane with bitterness and jealousy and craziness. And when my partner says, is everything okay . Yes, of course it is and im going crazy. And at lunch i dont really want to communicate. And its all very fraught. And the truth i cant quite face is im jealous of elon musk. And the article was really nice. It was showing us elon musks new home, and it was showing us how hes recently started to cook pasta himself. [laughter] sweet, nice things. Delightly little detail. Delightful little detail. We need help with envy. [laughter] it is rife. The news and envy are bound together like ivy around a statue. The two are so embedded. We need help. Now, look, im not down on envy, although society tends to be because we still have a judeochristian background that says envy is bad. Envys not bad, its just terribly confused. Envy is a signal, a guide to something that you need to advance your life, okay . But its confused. Its a foggy thing. We need to get better at interpreting our envy. In every envious attack, i think most of us have that four or five times a day, maybe more. We need to keep an envy diary where we write down each attack and study it later. What were its themes . Its a huge opportunity for learning. Every envious attack is an opportunity for learning and sharpening it, because its diffuse. If i start to analyze, okay, im envious of elon musk and analyze that. Do i want to start the next paypal . Actually, not really. Do i want to send men to mars . Am i interested in electric cars . Is this lady so special . No. Actually, thats not the point. But if i really analyze it, i really realize that what i envy this man is his courage because again and again and again he came up with these ideas that sounded crazy, and no one believed him for ten years, and he stuck with it. Everyone telling him youre crazy, youre an idiot, youre wasting your money. He stuck with it, and the bet paid off. So hes a saint, a sudden vision of courage. And thats very interesting. And thats what im after in him. So, look, i went on too long, but really what this is all about is Getting Better at focusing on envy, realizing that the news does this to us constantly, hourly, Getting Better at using it. Now, look, Something Else. Serious News Organizations when theyre looking at unserious News Organizations tend to characterize the unserious News Organizations as biased, right . So whats the most biased news source in the United States . Everybody knows fox news, a bad source of news, and no one in brooklyn looks at fox news. Its horrible. [laughter] very, very bad. So what do we like . What kind of news do we like as sophisticated people in brooklyn . We like npr, and we like, you know, these guys as well. Really chic, and we go across the pond, and we like the bbc. Its so fair and balanced and gentle voices, etc. [laughter] and the bbc is taken very, very seriously. And they are not biased at all. And the reason why theyre not is they fundamentally believe that you, the audience, its your job to make up your mind. Theyre not going to spoon feed you things. Theyre going to present you with the information, lay it before you, and you will decide whats right and wrong. And they dont want to influence you one way or the other, so every argument is balanced. So in the bbc, if youve got a program about genital mutilation, theyll find somebody whos against it and find someone whos for it. A feature onside, someone whos progenocide and antigenocide, just to get both sides of the story. [laughter] they only came down off the fence once in the last 40 year, and that was apartheid. After a lot of soulsearching, they decided apartheid was bad, and they were going to say it was bad. Since then, on the one hand, on the other hand. Sensible. This is disastrous how do you mean . Youve got the really, really, serious, clever News Organizations, and theyre not telling us what to think. Why . Because they think telling people what to think is very wad because its very bad because its not nice. So weve got the really nice organizations having all these qualms we cant tell anyone what to think, its completely crazy. Its also patronizing. Lets face it, most of us are so good, and weve been good since we were 3 or 4 years old at pucking up on a biased source of information. When your parents would tell you youve got to eat that steak because its good for you, that fish, and you go, no, no, im not going to eat that. We are very good at resisting stories we dont like, right . We are experts in battling back bias. The bwc and bbc and npr dont need to worry. What we desperately need help with is what do we think . What do i think about this or that . President obamas weighing up his mind, you know, to approve of a pipeline thats going to run from the tar sands of canada down to the gulf of mexico, but what should i think about this . Is it a good thing, a bad thing . I dont know. We need help, right . But the serious News Organizations afraid of giving us help in case they indoctrinate us. They need to get a little sharper in their questions and a little bit more aggressive in their search for the truth. Because otherwise, right, this is going to come to the fore in Economic News, right . Now, in Economic News the really powerful News Organizations, they are unbelievably limited in the kinds of questions that they dare ask of reality. Interest rates a little high or, a little lower, you know . Unemployment a little bit more, this, that and the other. And meanwhile, the population at large is going insane and crazy, and every now and ten you get an explosion, right . Be people cant take it anymore. And they start waiving play cards around, and the terrible problem with this is that this is the result of news, right . Was this is the because this is the result of people who have been driven crazy with the indignity of the current economic situation. Theyre furious with. They want to do something, and they have no idea other than simply say lets sort it out. And thats, unfortunately, a really bad place to be in because the police show up a i few weeks later with water cannons, and off it goes, and it dies. You need in order to change the world not just passion, but good ideas. And this Economic News has a huge role to play in not providing us with the ideas that are going to get these guys to have a fair chance at changing something. So weve got a fatal weakness partly because of a curious institutional silence or a kind of pedagogical inhibition at the very top in the most serious News Organizations. And this is, you know, as i say, pretty fatal. I mean, its amazing. When were in the city, you know, the New York Times lovely, you know, wonderful institution, all the news thats fit to print. Really . All the news . Youve really checked it out, have you . All the news, youve watched all the news thats fit to print and youve printedded it . Thats marvelous. Its 2006, anything going on in the banks . Anything at all . Anything strange about their capital reserves and no, its fine. Okay, fine, really. All the news thats fit to print. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Nonsense. Its one of the most asinine lines ever. It is dangerous not just for the New York Times, but for humanity because, because if you have a world in which people expect that esteemed organizations like the bbc or the New York Times will have worked out real estate, youre in danger out reality, youre in danger. You cop instantly have to operate with the view that these guys dont know very much. But, oh, my god, they make such a big deal that we know, and we the mix, we think, well, they must know. Its fine, they must know. They dont know. Theyve repeatedly shown us they dont know. They know some thing, but they dont know everything. At the end of the day its not the news, its some news masquerading as the news. We cant expect anyone else to get out there and harvest all the important be sources of information and sum my dump it in our simply dump it in our lap. We condition. We have to think for ourselves. We have to keep our wits about us. Oddly and strangely, the news plays a role in rendering our minds sop riffic. And repeatedly had if a recent American History catastrophic results. People say, oh, yeah, but nowadays, you know, everybody can start a twitter account, so surely i news just filters through. Oh, yeah, really . With a audience with a twitter account has come up with a problem. There is still is such a thing as mass media, and i think the mass media very cleverly uses things like the existence of twitter and facebook to say, well, come on, a democrat, and everyone can do it, and its not really us, and dont blame us. You can be a journalist too, etc. Well, no, there is still such a thing as a news agenda. That hasnt gone away. And there is still a monothism around a lot of issues. And this leads to catastrophic errors. One of the real causes for error is that the news keeps expecting that when there are bad things in the world, they are the result of some bad guys, right . And those bad guys can be pursued and locked up, and then the bad has gone away. If you open the up the hearts of most journalists, you will see inscribed the word watergate. Journalists still nowadays are in love with the watergate paradigm k. What is it . The watergate paradigm is theres some bad stuff out there that is a secret, no one knows about it. Its behind a safe, its in a computer, and the journalist whos kind of like james bond will go out there and get the secret, and through the secret will reveal it to the world and bring down the nasty, powerful people. Okay . Unfortunately, most of the things that are wrong with our world do not follow the watergate paradigm in any shape or form. For a 125r9, most things that are wrong with the world are public. We know them already. You dont need to go and break a code or get Edward Snowden to go inside a commuter, its out there, but were not looking at it. In other words, the problems are systemic, theyre not to do with rotten apples. Of course, theres the odd rotten apple, but thats not really the dominant thing. The news so frequently doesnt have the right filter. Look, moving on just a very, very quick, obvious point. The news is based on the idea that what is new is important. Right . And the newer it is, the more important it might be which is why we need to keep checking the news. So there might be something new thats happened that is very important, and it might have happened since the last bulletin. So we need to keep checking the news to keep finding the important things that are going on in humanity. Its also very apparent, i hardly need to mention it, the very many things that have happened in humanity happened a long, long time ago. They have nothing to do with the last fife be minutes since the last bulletin. Theres a lot of important stuff that is old, but the news cant see it because the news is committed to the idea that what is important is new. So if we keep following the narrative of the news, we will miss an awful lot out. You know, one of the most important books out there at the moment was written by plato, and its called the republic, okay . It doesnt feature only bestsellers, its been around for a long time. If you put it on the nightly news and said greek guy writes a fascinating book, it cant be news for most people. Right . It would be news, but it wouldnt be new. It would be news in the sense that it was important, but it would not be new, so the news cant see it, it cant feel it. So we need to be so aware of this because its so easy to accept the narratives which were fed. Look, its also very, very important that wifi is never installed on airplanes because airplanes represent one of the few times i nowadays where we can be left alone to think for ourselves, to take in the news from ourselves. We are unbelievable generators of important news. Right . Which we dont listen, because we use the news from the ukraine to stifle the news from within. And the thing about news from within is its quite wrapped up with anxieties and ambivalence and doubt, but its the richest sources of information. And those who get the news out from themselves are giving humanity real lessons. But there have been few people in humanity who have properly picked up on the news from themselves. Part of the reason has to do with prestige. If you say to somebody, somebody says, you know, what are you doing at the moment . Im reading the news. Ah, fine. Thats very serious, carry on. Read the news. Someone says, what are you doing . Well, im kind of thinking about when i was about 12 and remember looking at the sky and wondering about how come on, go do the washing up. [laughter] because thats not serious, right . So the news is, unfortunately, prestigious. And it often doesnt deserve that prestige because it misses so much. It misses guys like this. Theres lots of things going on out there that the news cant pick up. Its not on its frequency. So keep looking out for this and others. If i had to sum up my book, thats kind of what its about. [laughter] but, look, lets me finish with one last thing. Im a philosopher by training, and philosophers are selfimportant people who believe theyve got the truth in their hands. The problem is that no ones listening ever to philosophers. The average work of act dem you can philosophy, a present of friend of mine told me the other day, sells 30copys. Meanwhile, the mail online every day gets 40 Million People who go look at it. 40 Million People checking out the mail online. 300 people checking out the truth. Thats kind of depressing or perplexing. What do we do about that . Well, this struck me one insomniac night a few months ago. I thought, yeah, what about this . And i thought, okay, what happens if youve got a bunch of philosophers, and you got them to rewrite the mail online, okay . So you took exactly the same stories about miley cyrus and taylor swift and, you know, this divorce and murder, etc. , and you kept all the same stories, kept all the same pictures, but you simply got this philosopher to we write rewrite it with complexity, truth, justice, poetry, all these things. What would that be like . Anyway, we came up with the philosophers mail, the only news outlet run entirely by philosophers. We have quite a lot of fun doing it. You can look at it, its on the web, philosophersmail. Com, im not joking, it really exists. Check it out. Its a Practical Application of many of the ideas that ive been talking to you about today. Im always a guy who likes to write books and do other things as well, because ultimately what im interested in doing is trying to get the world to grow a bit better. Were up against a challenge with this thing we call news. It really is a big beast, and i think that we can get it better. I think future generations were still learning how to handle this stuff, and im optimistic. Weve just got to keep our wits about us. Look, im going to stop it there, weve got some time for questions, so please come back at me with thoughts and ideas, and thank you so much for listening. [applause] thank you. Just stuck up your hand if youve got a thought. Yeah. [inaudible] the news get better if its for profit . [inaudible] yeah. [inaudible] yeah. Look, im not an expert in this. I was at google today and had an interesting conversation. Look, i think that idea that people dont want to pay for news is wrong. They do want to pay for news. Theyd be quite happy to pay for news, they just dont want to get their credit card out and subscribe for a year. I mean, it sounds banal, but that is the crisis of journalism. There is demand for the stuff that journalists produce, and people would be willing to pay for it, they just dont want the hassle of paying it. So the fate of journalism as a paidfor institution really depends on micropayments. Once we crack micropayments, and its slightly baffling, even baffling to the guys at google why micropayments have taken so long to crack. Once you have to pay a cent to read an article, youll pay a credibility, because who cares . That will completely change how News Organizations can make money. At the moment people tell you anyone can start a News Organization. Yeah, but very few make money from it. A lot of people once people can make enough to keep going, thatll fundamentally change our democracy. I think weve too often been concerned just with the platform, and all the arguments are about, well, weve got the platform now, anyone can make this. You need to build and monetize it, and it is coming because the audience is not fundamentally resistant to it. Others. Are we do have mics in the aisles coming, and in a mike doesnt get there, if you could remeet the question, that would be repeat the question, that would be great. [inaudible] [laughter] how is it possible i guess, look, im, this is something that philosophers sometimes work with. Im utopian. What i mean by that is im always trying to think, okay, what is the ideal of this version of this thing that is currently only half of what it might be or a quarter . Im always thinking what is, as it were, the ultimate version, the platonic version of this thing called the newspaper, of this thing called the museum, of this thing called, you know, the school, etc. Im thats what gets me going. And so in a way im optimistic because there is, there are very often no theoretical reasons why things couldnt get apartment. The problems are to do with inertia, to do with the right people meeting people. I mean, i dont know ive met a number of people at the top of organizations that kind of, the big guys. And then the few times ive met these big guys, ive been struck by something. They are, actually, quite evil and doing evil things, but not out of some entrenched view. Theyre doing so partly out of, you know, they hadnt thought there might be other ways, theyre lacking inspiration. Think of the way the very wealthy, what they co do with their money. Oh, my god, im going to Say Something shocking. They accumulate all the money and at the end of the life, they give it to the opera or to the museum. Now, my i immediate view is, guys, could you try and have a good life rather than try and make money morally rather than accumulate money any which way and then give it to the arts, right . Because the arts is all about morality and ethics and truth. And lets not, you know, make that all shiny at the end of your life by butting a by putting a pile of money at its foot. Try and lift the values that art is only suggesting. So, look, i am an optimist. I think, yeah, look, theres youve got to be an of the optimist. I mean, the bleakness is all too obvious. I mean, theres so many good reasons to just despair and kill yourself. So i think to keep going [laughter] to keep going is just, a challenge. Its interesting. Yeah, its a bet against the facts really probably. [laughter] okay, thoughts. Other thoughts. Yeah. Go for it. Oh, hi. I was wondering in your discussion about News Organizations being remiss to sort of tell us how to think or showing two sides of things but really stopping short of getting us to the point where we need to be, what was your opinion of people like jon stewart and Stephen Colbert in that equation . Well, see, its really interesting because they are, of course, humorists. Theyre using humor. And humor is an art form. Humor is another layer superimposed upon raw information. It may not look like it because you might think, oh, its just a joke. Theres a huge amount of distillation and interpretation goes into making a joke, right . So in a sense youre saying in order for information to become powerful, it needs to become subject to the processes of art. Well, any News Organization that is using humor like that has, is precisely subject to the processes of art. You could do it through tragedy. You could have a soft clean version of the new york post. But, you know, the colbert version is the humorous take. But the reason why it often people say, you know, its so striking, you know . I saw jon stewart, and he kind of says truths that you dont hear on cnn, and people are a little bit surprised. Its a joke, and yet its kind of more true than the truth. And you want to go, no, no, guys, youve got it wrong here. Its not that, you know, the joke is the lie, the joke is a properly interpreted, workedthrough, edited version of the to truth. And the truth that cnn serves up is merely a kind of, you know, edited, undie jested, factually, neutrally, you know, freefloating bit of information that we dismiss because our souls cant use it, to be pretentious. So, yeah, so keep going. Those guys on those shows are doing a fantastic job, yeah. Okay. Other thoughts . Yeah. [inaudible] about optimism. I read somewhere the other data were actually in a point where were probably better off than we have been as a society than for hundreds of years and that its just in the nature of who we are that were constantly saying that societys about to fall, and its all going to the dogs, and, you know, weve got all these bad role models. But its really just thats what theyve been saying for the last 300 years. And it just plays into the whole, you know, its the end of the world is coming, kind of thing. Yeah. You know, its interesting because some people do say the news is always bad. Theres so much bad news. Why are we hearing all this bad news . Why not have good news . In fact, recently in the u. K. Occasionally people want to start you up a new news outlet t will give you the good news. There was, i dont know, a horse racing festival, or theres a new kind of school bus produced by pedal power. A lot of nice, good stories, stories to feel cheerful about. I dont know about you, but often when you read those things youre kind of left thinking because you feel envious. Look, i think, you know, what decides what is a news item . The kind of knee jerk, i mean, its surprising, if you go to the top of newsrooms, the answers to this question are still so vague, you know . I was, i was with a british newspaper and, my goodness, they hadnt really worked it through. The dominant interpretation was were here to hold the powerful to account. Thats our job, we hold the powerful to account. Okay, anything else youre doing . No, powerful to account. [laughter] sounds very serious. Sounds, you know, great. But thats not good enough. Look, my view of what the news should do, this is my i say it in the book at great length, but my view of what the news should do is it should gather information that is required by the individual and the state to flourish. Not happy, happy, flourish. To properly develop. That may sometimes involve some really, really dark news. And it may sometimes involve hearing about, you know, that school bus. But it just depends on your ultimate sense of wheres it leading the individual in the nation. That should decide. So i think to try and distinguish between good news and bad news, some bad news is very good, and some good news drives us crazy. So, you know, its i wouldnt necessarily say because its not very cheerful, its got no use. I think some very dark truths are very important. So im not sure if ive answered your question, but anyway. Sorry. [laughter] yeah. I was going to ask in our [inaudible] look, i mean, yeah, so why does the news keep bashing people . I think because its got an idea. You know, the watergate paradigm run completely amok. So that everyone in power because the news hahas got this idea that its holding the powerful to account, right . It used to be the president. Ive got to try and check what the president s doing. Now its like the schoolteacher. Anyone whos in any position of authority may have to be inspected and found wanting. And i think this is a kind of tuck, a neurosis of fundamental misunderstanding of what it means for good to occur in the nation. I mean, we need authority, and we need at points to respect authority. And this sounds really weird. Oh, how do you mean respect sounds like fascism. No. In order to have a functioning system, you cant have everybody telling you who are you to tell he that . Police officer, who are you to tell me that . Doctor, that may be your view, but ive googled in the. [laughter] here comes another view. So this is a mass psychosis. Partly brought on by this watergate paradigm run wild. So we need to rediscover that holding the powerful to account weve got to get a little bit more nuanced. Look, its like meanness, right . I mean, no papers are as mean as british papers, but some papers you guys are catching up actually. [laughter] you guys have got some news outlets now that really would give our guise a run for their money. And our guys a run for their money. And the idea is youve got to be mean about people because you want to get to the truth, and the truth is only discover bl by being mean, so the nastier you are, closer you are to the truth. Thats not true. There are so many intellectual errors, the things that you have to take and we need to kind of work through this. I work at the New York Times. Brilliant. Thank you very much. Thank you. I have traveled to many places in the world and the way that you present this is very much with many countries that are working and living in the dictatorship style process with this information. And the second one, which is a little bit lighter is about the news consumer and some people dont read. There information can be limited. And we tell this news. I dont think theres anything wrong with news with stories. Part of the problem is because we are so impatient with the latest development in many stories are part of this it is fantastic. And he knew how to tell a story is a story and narrative fiction to narrative nonfiction. And it is tremendously valuable because it is so deep area and there have been very few people very few people who are even interested in that example and its still a real minority. So that is what i would say. So as for foreign lands, we have a friend of mine lived under communism and the problem living here is the kind of dont know that some of it is true and some of it is not. It does wonderful things everyday and it leaves out a lot of things. And in a way it is and when you trust someone a little too much you are in danger. So theres lots to be grateful for there. Dont get me wrong. Absolutely. Humans have worked very hard to achieve this. And we can do better especially when we are getting the news that we really dizzy deserve thanks so much. We are getting the news that we really deserve. Thank you. [applause] there are books for sale in the lobby and i encourage you to pick up a copy. I will see you downstairs. [inaudible conversations] youre watching booktv, nonfiction authors and books every weekend on cspan2. Now from the 2014 conservative Political Action conference, americans and democracy, and the author argues that democracy is not what we think it is cracked up to be and we should get rid of it. The people have spoken, and this newest book. The case against democracy. Where the people wrong about . They are wrong about everything at some point. So that is a problem. Which is okay, we are all wrong about a lot of things, but more importantly when we are wrong we coerce others to have to act a certain way or upset social norms. What we do, democracy becomes a problem. In what way . We are undermining peoples freedom because of coercion and democracy is essentially the tyranny of the majority. So the larger government grows, the more it intrudes on our everyday lives and our decisions and the more democracy matters and the more that we need to stop i