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We have a vague notion about it, but probably don’t realise how bad the situation has become. The fact is that you really don’t get to know about important events that happen around you, even in the city where you live, stuff that actually may concern and be of importance to you. The fact is that we all live in our bubbles of our creation. And these bubbles often become echo chambers, bouncing around the same thing again and again.
What makes for headlines nowadays is a strange combination of human bias + inclination, at best judgement, machine algorithms, what’s popular on FB, WhatsApp, Google.
Lets take this morning as an example. TOI, HT, Indian Express (otherwise a paper that takes the effort to have a nuanced opinion on many issues), Google news, NDTV: all carried on about the famous hug, the no-confidence drama and assorted biased narratives from both sides of the political divide; about Wriddhi’s mysterious shoulder injury; updates on various crimes across the land against women & minorities; about how the monsoon is wrecking Mumbai (twenty years ago the monsoons brought flood havoc to UP & Bihar, nowadays it seems to be all about Hindmata, Parel & high tide woes in Maximum City).
On June 11 Mumbai went on a high security alert, after a satellite phone signal was found to be gallivanting across parts of South Mumbai. Read more here:https://tinyurl.com/yc8oba5d. It reads like a sequence from 24! With a sequel to follow: the phone remains at large, it seems.
Now, the question I ask – and hopefully many of you who aren’t entirely satisfied by what you receive in your WhatsApp & FB feed, will also – is, what can we do about it? Here are my notes to self:
a. Go beyond Google news: don’t depend on a machine to feed you news.
b. Stop watching news channels – English, Hindi, languages, the whole lot. All of them are peddling rehashed, opinionated rubbish. They aren’t chasing the news, they are chasing stickiness of eyeballs that will lead to higher TRP’s.
c. Stop reading TOI & its suited sibling, ET, beyond a glance at the headlines. They are ok for width, don’t count on them for depth.
d. Delete anything that comes your way on WhatsApp. Look carefully at what you click on your FB feed.
And what should you be doing? Seek & read better quality newspapers, online & offline. Ones that are committed to investing behind a news desk, talented and committed journalists. Start paying for your news. Don’t be shy to pay a premium to hear the unbiased, unvarnished version of what is happening around you. It will keep the membrane of your bubble a little thin and porous.
It is really worth it. It will keep you sane.
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A 3-Sided View of things 