Dean Minnich: Let’s try to keep it real in 2024 | COMMENTARY
OK 2024, bring it on. You bring the chaos, I’ll bring the questions and heaven knows who has the answers.
For starters, don’t you think the big issue in front of us is that we have to deal with too much information? It’s chaotic, in no small part because in addition to the sheer volume and uninterrupted flow of words and images, there’s no way of knowing what’s fact and what’s BS, which stands for Big Story.
Or is the biggest problem we face indifference? Apathy. The “I don’t read newspapers” set? Not my problem, no one cares and nobody can fix what’s wrong anyway, so why think about it?
That’s ignorance by choice, which is probably the most cherished American right.
Newspapers and TV news programming get blamed for a lot of the turmoil in the nation today, but that’s an excuse to avoid responsibility for thinking. People seem to prefer the distractions of sports and entertainment over in-depth news and information.
It’s too easy to be against something you don’t fully understand, and too hard to be for something that will make you unpopular.
That’s why political operatives, entertainers and public affairs consultants are experts at helping the rest of us to hear what we want to hear and believe what we are told when we like the message.
I believe there are more ignorant or confused people than evil ones, but evil intent feeds on ignorance and confusion. And stupidity is an invitation to a smorgasbord.
The difference between stupidity and ignorance is that the stupid ones were given the chance to learn something, know better or make better decisions, but refused or failed to choose door number one and found themselves deep in number two.
Then they blame someone else for their situation.
Our unique form of government, this version of democracy that has been around longer than any other and serves as an example emulated or envied by people around the world, is at risk because there is so much competition for our attention that we don’t have time to pay attention to everything.
Top “news and cultural events of 2023” were offered up with flashing lights and music by loud, excited announcers who listed names and events in what was an invitation to take a deep dive into a shallow puddle. Most of the attention was on popular music and flashy personalities who don’t like to wear much. Not much about the best books, scientific advances or intellectual breakthroughs, unless you went looking for that.
Over the holidays we had a lot of news and a lot of shows, and it becomes hard to know the difference between the news and a show, which is why I wince whenever I hear anchor Hardy Handsome or Petula Prettyface welcome some expert on world events “to our show.”
It’s not a show. It’s an interview, which might be better served when it appears later in a newspaper or magazine. We print journalists didn’t help the cause when we adapted the term “story” for a news article. A story can be fiction, but news should never be.
This is more than mere semantics. This is about precision and intent. Fiction is for entertainment, or to serve as an allegory conferring an ideal. News is a report of facts, intended to confer a record of truth. Life is neater when we know the difference between the two.
I enjoy entertainment, but I need news — timely, factual and thorough — to get my bearings each day. The winds of change and whims of would-be kings would take us off course if we didn’t keep up with where we are and where we want to be.
My goal is to learn something worth knowing each day, ignore cluttering my mind with inconsequential worries, and to remember that you can push something only so far before you get pulled into unwanted consequences.
Dean Minnich writes from Westminster.