This week, as the United States slid deep into a pandemic debacle, I realized that a huge chunk of the American public could probably use a lesson in how to watch the news.
Forty years ago, I would have thought this ridiculous. Every fifth grader should be able to sort out what counts, what's likely garbage, and who does or does not know what they're talking about. But in 2020, as Tom Nichols pointed out in his fine book, The Death of Expertise, American citizens seem to have lost any clear-minded ability to prioritize some sources over others or to put information together. Thus, I am going to halfheartedly list some serious recommendations. I say halfheartedly because my ego has been boosted quite a bit recently as I came to grips with how many Americans lack basic critical thinking skills. I hate to help people catch up, and I hate teaching remedial reasoning. The situation, however, is dire, so at the risk of enabling a reader or two to escape being dumb as rocks, I volunteer the following painfully obvious suggestions.
1) Evaluate the news shows' guests credentials regarding the topic at hand. Rank them. This should be as plain as the nose on a pachyderm, but evidently it's not. Look, if a half dozen epidemiologists agree on one aspect of the pandemic, great. If the President of the United States says something else, put him at the bottom of the list. The man traffics in casinos that failed and New York real estate. He has no medical expertise. Unless he assembles a stellar cast of comparably credentialed (as in degrees and job experience) epidemiologists to publicly back him up, the president has no standing. You may as well ask your chimney sweep.
2) If a network relies on "experts" who have clearly inferior credentials or job experience compared to other network rosters, but who happen to simply have some marginal expertise -- such as celebrity doctors or non specialist medical professionals -- ask yourself why the network could not get nationally recognized specialists. Also, ask if maybe they could have gotten nationally recognized specialists but chose to not do so. What does that tell you about the motives of the network?
3) If no international guests ever appear who are asked to critique the United States, what does that tell you about the guest selection process? The pandemic has been completely and utterly an international event. If you're not getting an international perspective, you're missing most of the story. Don't be so parochial.
4) To make maximally efficient use of your time, skip the anecdotal stuff and profiles. It's fine to get quick samplings from a mayor here or a governor there, but that should be just to get a quick sense of what's happening. The mayors and governors are going to spend a lot of time on self-serving jibber jabber. Skip most of the anecdote and profile junk. Instead, find summary and town hall shows where most of the guests are experts and what's being discussed are numbers. Anecdotal stories aren't really evidence of anything. Profiles may be emotionally engaging but serve little practical purpose if you are reasonably well informed.
5) Don't fall for a spotlight on small subsets of numbers. Just as a news show can attempt to impose a perception via interviews and profiles, it can also spin reality by ignoring nine of 10 relevant statistics and continually pivoting to the one that supports an agenda. If you're getting just a number or two and not an overview, ask yourself why. If a show has to feature some short-term subset to make a case for something, you're being bamboozled.
6) Most important, read more than you watch. Watching television to get information, as opposed to reading, is inefficient. Don't believe me? Find a transcript of a television interview. Read it and see how long it takes you. Then watch the interview. At minimum, you can read two interviews in the same time you can watch one. The average American speaks 100-120 words per minute, and interviews are usually slower than this. The average American reads 250-300 words per minute. Back when I endured the fifth grade speed reading machine, I was somewhere over 450. And yes, while it's true that you can glean some non-verbal info from watching, this is a fast-evolving pandemic. You want to process maximum information in minimum time. A heavy emphasis on reading is how to get that done. Plus there are no commercials.
Bob Dietz
June 11, 2020
