> Finally (but not lastly), news makes you informed when it comes time to vote at the municipal, state, and federal level. If you don't follow the developments in your community, your vote is at best useless, at worst it's harming the democratic process.
Election time is when candidates (or some of them) pump out propaganda against their opponents. Negative ads about what some candidate said 15 years ago. Who wins in that race? Often the one who has the most marketing money.
Not just ads though; the propaganda could be part of The News as well if there is a coalition in the media that thinks of the candidate as a threat.
(And it was either CNN or MSNBC (the news as the article in question defines it) that said that they covered Trump so much (free press in his case because he fed off the notoriety) because he was good for ratings.)
I’ve seen perfectly reasonable candidates lose in part because their more corporate-friendly opponents were better funded by private interests.
I’ve begun to think that an intentionally random vote might be better for the venerable “democratic process”.
It may be a good idea for you to follow up on your elected officials outside of the election period in that case. See what bills are being proposed, and signed. Who they choose to put in their cabinet, what leaders they meet with and public statements they make.
If your idea of political news is opinionated partisan coverage during elections, then you're doing it wrong.
> If your idea of political news is opinionated partisan coverage during elections, then you're doing it wrong.
But that’s the news. That’s what “following the news” means. The American media covers each federal election for, what, two years? Who except people who follow politics as a hobby will remember whatever “the news” was before that? (Sure, in more local elections things are bound to be better than that.)
And you already have to be savvy in order to distinguish the partisan coverage from things that are more substantial—you don’t know what you don’t know.
Whatever you are talking about is not on the topic of The News.
Election time is when candidates (or some of them) pump out propaganda against their opponents. Negative ads about what some candidate said 15 years ago. Who wins in that race? Often the one who has the most marketing money.
Not just ads though; the propaganda could be part of The News as well if there is a coalition in the media that thinks of the candidate as a threat.
(And it was either CNN or MSNBC (the news as the article in question defines it) that said that they covered Trump so much (free press in his case because he fed off the notoriety) because he was good for ratings.)
I’ve seen perfectly reasonable candidates lose in part because their more corporate-friendly opponents were better funded by private interests.
I’ve begun to think that an intentionally random vote might be better for the venerable “democratic process”.