> Honestly, I chafe a little bit at expecting the news to be "actionable" by a regular person, because I think there's some general value to being informed about your environment (especially in a democracy).
What democracy? The News is kind of like so-called democracy: something that every serious person needs to do but that has very little impact on anything. The most exaggerated example is the US presidential election which in fact has a very, very long media coverage (News) up until the election itself. And what does a person who can vote get back from that? They only have two parties that they can vote for if they don’t want to “waste” their vote, and the nomination is filled with a mix of serious candidates and people who want to boost their careers (Buttigieg) and then eventually the party itself circle the wagons and boosts one anointed candidate (that was the case for the Dems but I’m not sure about the Reps since I didn’t pay much attention).
One counter-example though to the News not being actionable was Covid. I felt that a lot of the news about Covid was actionable. And it was useful to know what people/experts thought about the current threat-level day-to-day.
What democracy? The News is kind of like so-called democracy: something that every serious person needs to do but that has very little impact on anything. The most exaggerated example is the US presidential election which in fact has a very, very long media coverage (News) up until the election itself. And what does a person who can vote get back from that? They only have two parties that they can vote for if they don’t want to “waste” their vote, and the nomination is filled with a mix of serious candidates and people who want to boost their careers (Buttigieg) and then eventually the party itself circle the wagons and boosts one anointed candidate (that was the case for the Dems but I’m not sure about the Reps since I didn’t pay much attention).
One counter-example though to the News not being actionable was Covid. I felt that a lot of the news about Covid was actionable. And it was useful to know what people/experts thought about the current threat-level day-to-day.