:: St. Stephen's Musings ::

:: Wednesday, April 28, 2004 ::

All the News Fit to Print

The wisdom one can pull together from diverse places that illumines the same basic truth is sometimes eerie...

The following are excerpts from books I've either finished or am currently reading:

St. Siloan the Athonite (p 443):
"Newspapers don't write about people but about events, and then not the truth. They confuse the mind and, whatever you do, you won't get at the truth by reading them..."

CS Lewis in "An Experiment in Criticism" (p 28) on the subject of the unliterary soul:
"They never, uncompelled, read anything that is not narrative...the most unliterary reads 'the news'. He reads daily with unwearied relish how in some place he has never seen, under circumstances that never become quite clear, someone he doesn't know has married, rescued, robbed, raped, or been murdered by someone else he doesn't know."

Neil Postman (one of my favorite philosophers) in "The News"--an essay from his book "Conscientious Objections":
"The whole problem with news on television comes down to this: all the words uttered in an hour of news coverage could be printed on one page of newspaper. And the world cannot be understood in one page."

Brilliant. All reasons why I don't watch television news...and at this point, hardly any non-sports network tv. These quotes remind me of that Don Henley classic "Dirty Laundry"

:: Karl :: 7:35:00 AM [Link] ::