Thread by @klerner

I bought my mom a Ruth Bader Ginsburg magnet for Christmas. This was not her primary gift—I just happened to see it when we stopped in the Clinton Library gift shop in Little Rock on our way to mom’s house. Her bun is the actual magnet. It’s cute. Anyway, that’s not the point:

When I stuck it on my mom’s fridge, a relative of mine—a smart relative, with two graduate degrees—said “Who’s that?” I said, “Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” She said, “Who’s that?"

I thought about this tonight because there is so much news today. Iran. More Iran. Puerto Rico. Australia. Impeachment. Bolton. Primaries. Weinstein. Ongoing stories in Hong Kong and Taiwan. CES. Financial markets…

I literally can’t keep track, and it’s my literal job to study and teach journalism, and I sit at a computer all day with Tweetdeck open.

And I think my relative—my very smart relative with two graduate degrees—is much more representative of the American public than I am. She worries about her kids and her work and gives the rest of her brain to her friends and sports and her TV shows.

And I don’t know what to make of this except that it means that we can’t really be optimists when it comes to engagement and participation in news and public affairs. I used to be a very Deweyan optimist about that. I don’t know that I can be anymore.

We’re deluged with information but without understanding. I honestly don’t understand what’s going on in Iran. I have a pretty good idea, I think. But I don’t know how anyone—ANYONE—could act or even speak about the situation with certainty.

And yet lots of people do! I mean pundits and politicians, but that certainty filters down to the people who hear what these people say. And no one likes to be uncertain!

I can’t remember which podcast I was listening to today that quoted Voltaire: "Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one.”

So people profess certainty. They say they know what they think, but I’m pretty sure I know enough about these news stories that I don’t know what to think. And not enough to come back to certainty.

Part of this is just the speed of the news cycle now, right? My Twitter feed moves too quickly for me to click on the links sometimes. And we’re getting the new new new! I talked to @jackshafer about the @MitchStephensNY “news instinct."

@jackshafer @MitchStephensNY And while the Twitter feed (or your cable news IV drip, if that’s your drug—it’s definitely not mine) satisfies that urge, it distracts from any real understanding.

@jackshafer @MitchStephensNY Everyone jokes about letting New Yorkers stack up, and I always did, but now that stack is like four years old. And it shouldn’t be! Those longer stories are giving the context we need. That deeper understanding. But social media has dulled my synapses.

@jackshafer @MitchStephensNY I mean @NewYorker magazines, if that’s not clear. Just realized, since I too, am a New Yorker. We don’t stack well, and we’re not as easily ignored as great magazines.

@jackshafer @MitchStephensNY @NewYorker Anyway, Twitter people: journalists, especially. We’re not like most people. Sometimes we think we are. I often wish I was! We’re not better or worse. We just care about different things and see things through a different lens.

I do think that these things we Twitter people pay attention to are important. And I do think that my relative SHOULD know who RBG is. Whether she likes her or not.

But journalists and educators aren’t doing a good enough job of explaining the world to people who need to figure out how to live in it. It’s essential that we figure out how to explain it and to make people care.

The only blameless people are librarians. Those people are saints.

I don’t agree with the call for radical news abstinence here but the sentiment about backing away from a constant influx of fact is positive. And I like the idea of being aware of the conflation of “new” and “relevant” in news:

thecorrespondent.com/210/given-up-s…