“It’s fair to say that if news sites were people, most would be diagnosed as clinically depressed right now.”
(“I stopped reading the news. Is the problem me — or the product?”, Amanda Ripley, Washington Post (July 8, 2022) via Wikiquote)
A comic strip started me thinking about the news, fearmongering, viewpoints, and weird groupings from Google News. I’ll be talking about that: along with rich folks, free speech, and whatever else comes to mind.
- Free Speech, a Slogan, Journalism, and a (Very) Little History
- By the Pricking of my Thumbs, Something Freaky This Way Comes
- Be Afraid — Be Very Afraid! — — — or Not
Free Speech, a Slogan, Journalism, and a (Very) Little History
I’ll give editors of Pulitzer’s The World credit for some restraint.
They put a question mark at the end of their February 17, 1898 headline: “Maine Explosion Caused by Bomb or Torpedo?”
That left readers left to ponder whether the question was whether (A) the explosion was caused by either a bomb or a torpedo — or (B) the Maine’s captain and “other experts” might be wrong.
Time passed. Experts who weren’t anonymous analyzed evidence from the Maine’s wreckage. Journalists working for Pulitzer and Hearst moved on to other juicy stories.
And some of the American public began thinking about “appeals to passion” and “sensationalism” illustrated in that “Yellow Journalism” cartoon by Louis M. Glackens.
Somewhere along the line, journalists and editors started being ‘objective’ and ‘unbiased’. Which is why today’s purported articles covering alleged atrocities carefully avoid emulating yesteryear’s gimmicks.
Leading the way, The New York Times adopted “All the News That’s Fit to Print” as their slogan in 1897.1 And, since The New York Times is one of America’s newspapers of record, that slogan must be true. According to The New York Times.
I’ll admit to a bias.
I strongly suspect that many, maybe most, folks see the world through their own eyes: myself included. But I also think that reality is real, no matter how I feel about it.
“The Yellow Press”, Mayor Gaynor’s Letter, and Viewpoints: Including Mine
I think that it’s much easier to see deviations from unbiasedness when it’s ‘one of those people over there’: and not ‘that good person who is one of us’.
I’ve been blessed with a life in which I often lived and worked among folks who didn’t see the world the way I did. That’s partly because of the way my brain is wired — and that’s another topic.
The point is that thanks partly to my eclectic interests and a checkered — kaleidoscopic — assortment of jobs, I’ve learned that folks whose views don’t square with mine aren’t “scoundrels”, or “without souls”. The latter is impossible — and yet another topic.
That said, I do sympathize with Mayor William Jay Gaynor. Partly because he’s Irish-American, mostly because I strongly suspect that he earned his reputation as a reformer.2
“The time is at hand when these journalistic scoundrels have got to stop or get out, and I am ready now to do my share to that end. They are absolutely without souls. If decent people would refuse to look at such newspapers the whole thing would right itself at once. The journalism of New York City has been dragged to the lowest depths of degradation. The grossest railleries and libels, instead of honest statements and fair discussion, have gone unchecked.” — From Mayor Gaynor’s letter published in the New York Evening Post.”
(Quoted in Louis M. Glackens’ “The Yellow Press” cartoon. Punch. (October 12, 1910))
Freedom of Speech, Lèse-Majesté, and “The Apotheosis of Washington”
There is a balance, somewhere, between Brumidi’s “The Apotheosis of Washington” and Richard Newton’s “Treason!!!” cartoon.
About “Apotheosis”, I’m pretty sure that 19th century Americans didn’t really believe that their beloved former president had taken his rightful place among the gods.
But the implicit beliefs of rabidly-religious and patriotic radio preachers of my youth weren’t far from it.
The central figure in that cartoon, the one exercising free — speech? — is “Mr Bull”, AKA John Bull, personification of the United Kingdom, the common man, liberty, or something else: depending on which era you’re looking at. The target of John Bull’s disrespect was George III.
King George had been, no question, nutty as walnut pie. What his problem was: that’s been, and still is, debated and debatable.
Now, about Mr. Bull’s apparent rejection of the king’s authority.
Since I’m a Catholic, categorically dissing someone in authority the way Mr Bull did isn’t an option. But mooning a king isn’t the problem. Not specifically at any rate.
Societies need folks with authority, legitimate authority. I’m obliged to show respect for the folks in charge. Those authorities should, in turn, show respect for the basic rights of the human person. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1897-1904, 1907, 1929-1933, and more)
So much for how things should work.
Lèse-majesté, criminalizing lack of respect for a country’s leadership, goes back millennia. The phrase, and our version of the idea, started in the Roman Republic.
Like pretty much everything else involving people, it’s complicated.
America’s had versions of lèse-majesté, starting with the 1789 Sedition Act. So far, they haven’t lasted more than a decade or so each. They all looked good on paper, but grated on my country’s notion that freedom of speech matters.3
By the Pricking of my Thumbs, Something Freaky This Way Comes
I check my Google News feed a few times each day.
Toward the end of May, parts of the “My Topics” section got — intermittently weird.
I’m pretty sure I was seeing Google’s nifty new AI at work, but I can’t be sure.
Most of the articles I found focused more on Google’s embarrassingly wacky search AI.
- “Google makes fixes to AI-generated search summaries after outlandish answers went viral”
Matt O’Brien, AP News (May 31, 2024) - “Google admits its AI Overviews can generate ‘some odd, inaccurate’ results”
Megan Cerullo, edited by Anne Marie Lee; CBS News (May 31, 2024) - “Google Search is rolling out its AI-generated answers — whether you want them or not”
Kristina Terech, TechRadar (March 26, 2024)
I’ve been noticing the new-and-improved Google AI-generated answers in my Google search results — which occasionally give me useful words and phrases.
On the other hand, I now have to do a little more scrolling before getting to less ‘curated’ results. So it isn’t either gain or loss for me: just another change in routines.
Folks my age are, I gather, supposed to be averse to change. There’s something to that stereotype. I do like my routines.
But — I was born during the Truman administration, and have been paying attention.
Technologies, social standards, and political slogans have shifted. This is not the world I grew up in.
So for me, change has lost much of its shock value.
Google News and ‘Physics’
Whatever was — and is — behind the weirdness in Google News and Google Search, it’s not blocking me from information I want.
And I like to think that most folks are savvy enough to realize that the following aren’t physics topics —
- Biden’s Memorial Day remarks
- Yet another professional athlete getting sued for sexual assault
- The current Trump trial
- Two showbiz stories about The Boys
- Something creepy about Nicolas Cage
But — there’s that lawyer who didn’t notice, when ChatGPT gave him alternatively-accurate information.
As I keep saying, we humans have big brains. But we also have free will, so using our brains is not automatic.
As for AI : I think the new technology will affect all of us, one way or another.
But I don’t think we’re doomed.
Some of us will either learn new skills or find new jobs. Or do both.
I sure don’t think we’ll be facing a Forbin Project scenario.
Even assuming that an AI ‘woke up’ and decided to take over the world —
I can see it now: Our Hero, defiant to the last, comes face to keyboard with the maniacally malevolent mechanical mastermind. And the Dread Digital Despot says:
“Puny human! Bow and cringe before the awesome might of my FILE NOT FOUND!”
Sound familiar? I’ve used that gag before.4
Be Afraid — Be Very Afraid! — — — or Not
In my youth, very few folks were at or near the top of the socioeconomic ladder.
That’s still true. Obviously.
Complaints that the top one percent have too much wealth may be justified. Or not.
Someone on a late-night talk show, decades back, said that “enough” wealth was 20 percent more than you have at the moment. Whether or not that’s backed up by verifiable research: it sounds about right.
With election-year hoopla in progress, fear of “centralized wealth” is an almost-inevitable talking point.
There’s some reason for that fear. Wealth, or poverty, doesn’t guarantee virtue. And rich folks have options that others don’t: including deciding what their newspaper, magazine, or studio churns out.
But I don’t think wealth, or poverty, guarantees vice, either. It just affects our options.
I was going someplace with this. Let me think.
Free speech. Viewpoints. Headlines and using our brains. Right.
Wealth, Averages, and Attitudes
Granted that having too much of a society’s wealth controlled by too few folks could be a problem: I haven’t been bothered by knowledge that my boss was wealthier than I was.
Now that I’m retired, it’s a moot point, and that’s yet again another topic.
Back in the day, I wanted the boss to be stinking rich: so that there’d be enough left over to cover my paycheck.
That principle would have applied, even if I had worked for some corporation. Again, having too much wealth controlled by too few people can be a problem.
And sometimes just having wealth is a problem. Or seems to be.
“Lifestyles of the rich and foolish”
J.D. Roth, Get Rich Slowly (April 1, 2019; updated December 5, 2023)“…We hear all the time about the ‘lifestyles of the rich and famous’. Today, on April 1st, let’s look at some lifestyles of the rich and foolish….
“…Over a period of fifteen years, Cage earned more than $150 million. He blew through that money buying things like:
- Fifteen homes, including an $8 million English castle that he never stayed in once.
- A private island.
- Four luxury yachts.
- A fleet of exotic cars, including a Lamborghini that used to belong to the Shah of Iran.
- A dinosaur skull he won after a bidding contest with Leonardo DiCaprio.
- A private jet.
“It’s not fair to characterize Cage as ‘broke’ — he’s still a bankable movie star — but his net worth is reportedly only about $25 million. (That’s like someone with an average income having a net worth of roughly $25,000.) He could be worth ten times as much but his foolish financial habits have caused him woe….”
I don’t know what that article’s “average income” is. Statistically speaking, “average”, “mean”, and “median” — have several meanings.
A quick glance at American personal and household incomes — that’s still more topics — told me that the ‘average’ American who’s working full-time earns around $60,000 a year. And the ‘average’ household pulls in around $70,000 a year.5
That’s something like double what I ever took home. But I’m part of a wonderful family, we have a roof over our heads, and food in the pantry: so I’m a happy camper.
Besides, I’ve had more than my fill of moral panic and election-year antics.
“Moral Panic” and Making Sense
Speaking of which, seems that the phrase “moral panic” popped up in 1830.
Marshall McLuhan discussed today’s idea of “moral panic” in 1964. The phrase got linked with today’s academic definition of the term — a widespread fear of someone or something — a few years later.
As defined, I think moral panic is a legitimate academic topic.
As perceived, I can sympathize with folks who see McCarthyism, old-school witch-hunts, and being religious, as typical symptoms of moral panic. My teens and the Sixties overlap, and the era’s rabid radio preachers impressed me: a lot.
They also helped start me on a path that eventually led to me becoming a Catholic: which was emphatically not what they were preaching.
Wrenching myself back on-topic — spotting (irrational) moral panic in ‘those people over there’, folks who don’t agree with me on matters of musical taste and pantsuits, is easy.
Noticing when someone who’s on the same page as I am — or in the same chapter, at any rate — stops making sense: that can get tricky.
But it’s important. Partly because I’ve got enough problems without adding screwball beliefs to the mix. And partly because I’m a Catholic. So at the very least, I should avoid making my religious beliefs look like a threat to society.
“…The lay calling has different duties, the supreme knight noted, but the duty to evangelize is particularly crucial today. ‘All of us are called to be missionaries in a society that often views religion, at best, as a matter of private opinion — or at worst, as an enemy of the public good,’ he said. ‘This requires that we live out our mission constantly … at all times, in all places, and to all the people we meet.”
(“Supreme Knight Addresses John Carroll Society”, Columbia Magazine (May 1, 2024)) [emphasis mine]
Happily, my (reluctant) decision to become a Catholic was based on what I thought about facts I’d learned. Not how I felt.
If I’m going to believe something, it has to make sense. No matter how I’m feeling at the moment.6
It’s like an atheist-turned-Catholic said:
“… If Vulcans had a church, they’d be Catholics.”
(John C. Wright, johncwright.livejournal.com (March 21 2008))
Finally, the comic strip that got me started with this week’s post, and a few points I wanted to make.
“Today in the News….”
I don’t know if fearmongering is becoming more common in America’s news.
I do know that I didn’t watch the evening news for a few months, back in the 1970s. Couldn’t, actually. When I had access to a television again, I noticed how the pacing, images, vocal delivery, and other factors were affecting my emotions.
That’s when I stopped watching the evening news. I’m a very emotional man, and getting those feelings revved up seemed like a bad idea. Particularly since they were interfering with my thinking about whatever truth might be in the dramatic accounts.
And that gets me to truth and beauty.
Truth is important. So is beauty. We’re surrounded by beauty and wonders. Paying attention can lead us to God, if we’re doing it right. (Catechism, 32-33, 283, 341, 2500)
News and communications media in general should serve the common good with “information based on truth, freedom, justice, and solidarity”. (Catechism 2492-2499, particularly 2494)
I emphatically do not want America’s news networks to start implying that Catholics are always right, and that the Catholic Church can do no wrong.
That would not be truthful. We’ve been around for two millennia. During that time, some of us have set a bad example. Including folks who should have known better.
And I sure don’t want a return to the “good old days” when “presidents” were getting their weapons from us, while “dictators” were getting theirs from the Soviet Union.
I would prefer seeing more straightforward reporting, less fearmongering, and even less partisan labeling.
I can’t do anything about news media’s editorial preferences.
But I can keep an eye on my own habits, do what I can to support “truth, freedom, justice, and solidarity”: and remember that my neighbors aren’t just the folks who agree with me.
Good Advice, Actually
I don’t seek wisdom in the comics. But now and then I see something that makes sense. Like that Wizard of Id strip from the second to the last Monday in May.
I won’t try pretending that all’s right with the world. It’s not.
But I won’t do myself, or others, any good by fretting or fuming.
So breathing in, breathing out, and just sitting still for a second, might be a good idea: now and then, at least.
In any case, I don’t particularly enjoy feeling afraid, or angry, or distressed.
And I’ve found that thinking about those problems I can actually do something about is easier when I’m not overwrought.
In case you still haven’t had your fill of my writing, here’s more:
- “Free to Agree With Me: Cancel Culture and Freedom of Expression”
(November 18, 2023) - “Storytelling, Imaginary Worlds and Being Human”
(July 15, 2023) - “Independence Day: Freedom, Citizenship and Looking Ahead”
(July 4, 2023) - “A Gallimaufry: Politics and Prayer, A Dragon and Turkeys”
(January 21, 2021) - “Art, Truth, and Reflecting”
(July 17, 2016)
1 American journalism — Mickey Dugan, AKA The Yellow Kid — and more stuff you may or may not find interesting:
- Wikipedia
- The American Newspaper (Will Irwin’s study, published in Collier’s (1911))
- History of The New York Times (1896-1945)
- The Kingdom and the Power (Gaetano “Gay” Talese’s book (1969))
- Newspaper of record
- The New York Times
- Pulitzer Prize
- Richard F. Outcault
- USS Maine (1889)
- Yellow journalism
- The Yellow Kid (Mickey Dugan, comic strip character)
- DUBH
BEGINNERS’ BLAS / SLOINNTE SURNAMES – BBC (archived) - Dugan
Meaning of the First Name, Ancestry.com - Last name: O’Duggan
Surname DB / The Internet Surname Databse - O Dubhagain
D, Surname Dictionary, Irish Ancestry - “U.S. Diplomacy and Yellow Journalism, 1895-1898”
Milestones: 1866–1898 (“NOTE TO READERS / ‘Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations’ has been retired and is no longer maintained. For more information, please see the full notice.”) - Yellow Journalism
Crucible of Empire, PBS - Yellow Journalism
Online Etymology Dictionary - “The Spanish American War and the Yellow Press”
Malea Walker; Headlines & Heroes, Newspapers, Comics & More Fine Print; Library of Congress Blogs (February 6, 2024)
- Wikipedia
- Tammany Hall (American political organization (1786-1967))
- William Jay Gaynor (American politician, reformer (1849-1913))
- William M. Tweed (American politician, villain in several Thomas Nast cartoons (1823-1878))
- The yellow press / L.M. Glackens.
Photo, Print, Drawing; Library of Congress
3 A caricaturist, a king, hot-button topics, and a nutty pie:
- Wikipedia
4 Of these, The Robot from “The Phantom Creeps” seems the most plausible:
- Wikipedia
- Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970)
- The Phantom Creeps (1939)
- Robot Monster (1953)
- Target Earth (film) (1954)
- The Terminator (1984)
- The Phantom Creeps (1939)
IMDB (Internet Movie DataBase) - My non-dismal view of life, robots, and all that
- “ChatGPT, Attorney at Law — or — Trust, but Verify” (June 3, 2023)
- “Materialism, Robots and Attitudes” (April 15, 2018)
- “Robots and Being Catholic” (January 28, 2018)
- Beware the Robot Menace
- We’re NOT Doomed?
- The End of Civilization as We Know It (“…If I thought post-1967 America was a golden age, I’d probably be angsty about current events. I’d be more apprehensive if I thought it really was the best humanity can do….” )
- Wikipedia
- Faith and hope as acts of will
That talk about worries about AI reminds me of some antagonists in NieR:Automata that are hilariously simple to deal with once you fight them face-to-face. That, and a Christian friend telling me about horseshoe theory again as I told him about my dislike for pushing me to learn about AI because it’s the latest most profitable thing and for pushing me to go all fearmonger while expressing what I don’t like about AI. As for freedom of speech, I think expressing the truth isn’t just about expressing what your honesty has but also about allowing our different senses of honesty to hone us into having the honesty that God wants us to have. In other words, freedom to be honest means freedom to be corrected too, because we want to be right and are bound to be right, but we just don’t know how to be right.
“Horseshoe theory” was a new term to me. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory ) I’m not surprised that it apparently hasn’t gotten much traction in academic circles.
“Oversimplification” and “generalization” may be valid criticisms, but I suspect that part of the problem is that the assertion is uncomfortably close to accurately describing the current status quo. From that Wikipedia page:
“…reformist Muslim Maajid Nawaz invoked the horseshoe theory while lamenting what he perceived to be a common tendency on both extremes toward blacklisting, such as the McCarthyist compiling and publishing of ‘lists of our political foes’. He wrote:
“‘As the political horseshoe theory attributed to Jean-Pierre Faye highlights, if we travel far-left enough, we find the very same sneering, nasty and reckless bully-boy tactics used by the far-right….’…”
Slogans and ideological trimmings aside, I do see many similarities between folks defending their America from people like me, back in the day, and their counterparts today. I’d have described it more as an emotional state – and that’s almost another topic.
I’d be a great deal more upset about what’s going on now, if I didn’t see today’s Establishment showing the same enthusiasm for shredding what’s left of its credibility. Enough of that.
About NieR:Automata – 😀 something else that was new to me. And – there’s probably a lesson or two there, in contrasts between the feared virtual foe and what it’s like when actually faced.
Can’t say that I’ve encountered the phrase “freedom to be corrected” before. In context, it seems an apt description of a rational approach to “honest” living.