This is a short book written with a punchy and pacey style. A compelling read.
Rolf Dobelli’s essential argument is that most newspapers and media ‘news’ is little more than entertainment produced in order to attract advertising revenue and that we waste a lot of time saturating ourselves with such stuff. He likens ‘news’ to sugar: addictive but of little value. He urges us to follow his example and to avoid reading/listening to the news and to spend our time more profitably. Information that is really important will reach us by word of mouth so we won’t miss out on what matters. He has tried it and says it works. It frees him from worrying about things that he can’t affect and it saves him time. It also saves his mind from being cluttered by distractions and it preserves his judgment from what he claims to be the warping effect of saturation with ‘news’.
The author qualifies his blanket ban on news reading/listening by suggesting that each of us has a ‘circle of competence’ and that we should confine ourselves to news relevant to that area. Thus the heart surgeon, the lawyer, the financial investor etc must stick to developing knowledge that will enhance his/her specialist role.
”Let’s say you’re a heart surgeon. Pertinent scientific journals will be an area of focus for you. Perhaps also leadership magazines and books, if you lead a team. Everything else you can safely ignore. You don’t need to know whether one president shook another one’s hand. You don’t need to know whether two trains crashed somewhere in the world. Your brain is already full. The more you cram it with junk, the less room there is for the information you genuinely need to know.” (p41)
The author is right: much of what is reported as ‘news’ is superficial, of no lasting value and occasionally is little more than gossip. This, however, does not mean that it has little or no value. It won’t help the heart surgeon treat his/her patients but it might help him/her realise that there is more to life than heart surgery. I don’t buy the idea that a ‘brain is already full’. The brain does not work like that. There’s always room for more information: it’s a question of judgment how much attention one attributes to the information flowing through the mind.
I used to specialise in maritime and commercial law. I was very fortunate: this was a wide, varied and interesting field with more specialist magazines, law reports and text books than I would be able to absorb no matter how long I lived. Mr Dorelli might think that this supports his argument that I should devote my life to reading such materials and not waste time on material outside my ‘circle of competence’ but I think he missing something vital. Life does not consist of becoming ever more expert in one’s specialist area at the expense of other areas. Going down that route cuts one off from others who do not share the specialism. Once one has achieved competence in one’s area of expertise then narrowing one’s focus to one’s ‘circle of competence’ is only worthwhile if all that matters is one’s performance within that circle. But woe betide us if we allow our worlds to shrink to the size of our particular interests. We need an understanding, however imperfect, of what life is like beyond the boundaries of our small areas of competence. One way of keeping in touch via the news.
As CLR James once asked in his book “Beyond A Boundary”
“What do they know of cricket that only cricket know?”
Mr Dobelli recommends that we should read specialist magazines and specialist long reports rather than the ‘soap bubbles bursting on the surface of a complex world[1]’ but this again misses the big picture. Life is too short to read long articles that give us true and balanced opinions on complex matters outside our specialist spheres but that does not mean that we should deliberately remain ignorant of everything outside our expertise.
There’s a lot wrong with our news media and one can spend too much time immersing oneself in it but the author overstates the case and his suggested remedy of avoiding all news media is overkill. He implies that every minute of every part of life can be given a score according to its utility. To him, the enjoyment that one may derive from news media rates a negative score because the media reports the wrong things in the wrong way. What if one is aware of the shortcomings of the media but still enjoys it? Does this enjoyment not count for something? What if one reads/listens/watches selectively and finds that this has many benefits even if the benefits are not related to utility of the report in building up one’s existing area of expertise? This remains the case even if the news coverage is superficial and even if the facts are not always reported accurately.
The author is right to draw attention to the damage to one’s mental and physical health that can be caused by obsessionally following the news but this does not justify his conclusion than ‘consuming news reduces your quality of life[2]’. Exposure to news media gives us all something in common with each other and provides a basis for building community. Of course some media may subvert the news and become a haven of misinformation that fuels a non rational interest group (such as anti-vaxxers or QAnon) but were we all to follow the author’s advice we would be unaware of the misinformation that fuels these and other groups. Such ignorance may be bliss but it is dangerous. Better by far to be aware of what is going on around one.
This book has caused me to review the time I spend listening to the news, watching news channels or reading newspapers. I shall be spending less time on it and choosing what I read and listen to more carefully. Thanks to the author, I am now aware of some of the unhelpful effects of being bombarded by news presented in a way calculated to entertain rather than inform, and selected for its click bait potential rather than on any other basis. This short book is worth reading for these benefits but I remain glad that we live in a society that allows us ready access to the news and I shall not pursue total avoidance of all news as this remedy seems worse than the disease it is said to cure.
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