I wonder how nice life pre internet and TV/Radio networks would have been like, all your news comes from either word of mouth, postal letters or local print newspaper, and by the nature of the speed of these communications, most of the news will be just local stuff that has relevance to you. Who cares if there’s a massive war or famine or plague or genocide happening on the other side of the planet, all you need to be concerned about is stuff happening around you. I don’t think our mind is built for the fire hose of worldwide news info that the internet shoves in our face nowadays.
Also, in America at least, we still had the fairness doctrine. When it was repealed during the Reagan administration, we got “news personalities” like Rush Limbaugh and low-quality infotainment like the view and fox news.
The fairness doctrine of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, was a policy that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that fairly reflected differing viewpoints.
Oh yes, the stations that run assholes like Limbaugh, Jones, Carlson are certainly the absolute opposite of that.
Something similar is still in place in EU countries. It has a big downside: every now and then you’d need to invite loud crackpots representing <1% of whatever area they’re loudly crackpotting in, as a “differing viewpoint” to the >99% consensus.
I would conclude that it hasn’t completely prevented the rise of populism but certainly made it harder for fear- and hatemongers to simply buy the game.
Something would happen, and you’d hear rumors all day at work or school and nothing would be confirmed until the next day’s newspaper came out. It wasn’t great.
I wonder how nice life pre internet and TV/Radio networks would have been like, all your news comes from either word of mouth, postal letters or local print newspaper, and by the nature of the speed of these communications, most of the news will be just local stuff that has relevance to you. Who cares if there’s a massive war or famine or plague or genocide happening on the other side of the planet, all you need to be concerned about is stuff happening around you. I don’t think our mind is built for the fire hose of worldwide news info that the internet shoves in our face nowadays.
Also, in America at least, we still had the fairness doctrine. When it was repealed during the Reagan administration, we got “news personalities” like Rush Limbaugh and low-quality infotainment like the view and fox news.
Oh yes, the stations that run assholes like Limbaugh, Jones, Carlson are certainly the absolute opposite of that.
Something similar is still in place in EU countries. It has a big downside: every now and then you’d need to invite loud crackpots representing <1% of whatever area they’re loudly crackpotting in, as a “differing viewpoint” to the >99% consensus.
I would conclude that it hasn’t completely prevented the rise of populism but certainly made it harder for fear- and hatemongers to simply buy the game.
Something would happen, and you’d hear rumors all day at work or school and nothing would be confirmed until the next day’s newspaper came out. It wasn’t great.
No. It was wonderful.
There was enough tragedy amongst locals to suffice.