What is news? Martin Gurri asked and answered in May of 2020:
There is an implicit ideology of the news. It rests on three claims: one, that consumption of news produces the omnicompetent citizen supposedly required by democracy; two, that news is a special form of information, complete in scope and objective in tone; and three, that the mission of news is to act as the voice of the people against the predations of power and wealth. As with most ideologies, these propositions are not internally coherent—but note that they enable news practitioners to feel morally superior both to the public (which must be educated) and the political class (which must be exposed).
All three claims are false. As a record of human affairs, the news is a vast ocean of silence, sprinkled with arbitrary islets of content. Three million people died in the Congo out of range of the news, at a time when CNN was pursuing, relentlessly, the adventures of a runaway bride. The world is full of such forgotten humanitarian crises, ignored by Western journalists. It is taken for granted that presidents and politics rule the news—while science, technology, poetry, the visual arts, philosophy, and religion receive scarcely a whisper.
News is not truth. In the time of the tweet, news isn’t even first in delivering “news or information,” as journalism professor Jeff Jarvis recently noted. News is bait for ads sold by a hard-nosed business: rather than inform citizens or protect the underdog, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, Fox News, Vox, and Politico are trying desperately to make money. That fact explains many of the strange distortions of news content. The failure to cover the civil war in the Congo was a business decision. So is the obsession with Trump. The primacy of politics, on the other hand, allows journalists and media owners to feel like players in the great game—with an added moralistic buzz. Jeff Bezos’ purchase of the Washington Post converted an unpopular billionaire into the hero who would save democracy from dying in darkness.
This accurately describes our world, probably as it ever was.
The Spanish choir is going to passive aggressively celebrate Cinco de Mayo today by "practicing" some popular Mexican songs after Mass. We paid for the church building, and we can sing in it if we want to.
If the clergy don't like it, they can fire us and have no music for 700-900 people next week. I dare ya!
Placido Domingo, everyone. More rain.