Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

To the Editor:

At a time when Americans could benefit from deeper political news coverage in the United States, the media are sliding toward thinner coverage and ever-shorter “news nuggets” of information. Journalists like me used to bemoan TV’s 20-second sound bites; today, we’re lucky to have even skimpier news morsels in social media to complain about.

Despite the proliferation of so-called “news” channels on TV, audiences for them are declining and people are turning more frequently to skeletal updates they consume quickly on the small screens of their phones and tablets. During many hours of the day, even the news channels are devoting prime-time hours to opinion shows and infotainment about travel, food and sports.

Americans are constantly being polled about complex political subjects like the Iran nuclear deal, or relations with Russia or the financial machinations among our closest allies in Europe. None of these subjects are simple. Yet American presidential candidates are responding to them with quips, tweets and photos, and potential voters are learning about them through the news equivalents of those 100-calorie bags of chips and cookies.

It’s a terrible diet if the goal is beefing up understanding. And even if we concede that most Americans care more about food, fashion, fame and football than about anything political or international, the result is candidates who get away with simplistic answers and find themselves in office with shallow public support. Democracy depends on an informed electorate choosing capable leaders.

News organizations are trimming operations and devoting more time and space to pop culture because it attracts consumers. Very few are investing in more, deeper and better journalism, because readers and viewers don’t choose it.

Maybe it’s time to abandon the founders’ unfulfilled vision of a press completely separate from government, and devote a portion of our tax dollars, as the British do, to underwriting thorough, investigative, nonpartisan watchdog journalism.

RALPH BEGLEITER

Newark, Del.

The writer, a former world affairs correspondent for CNN, founded the University of Delaware’s Center for Political Communication.

Note from KBJ: State -controlled media? We already have that! It gave us Barack Obama, the Incompetent One.

Better Late Than Never (2015). Two of my heroes, together, at last. Better late than never!

Read this and then this. When nothing is allowed to falsify your theory, you don't have a theory; you have a religion.

See here.

Eminent philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt has a new book on inequality. Here is his op-ed column in the Los Angeles Times. Key paragraph:

Many people believe that economic equality has, in itself, considerable moral value. They urge that efforts to approach the egalitarian ideal should therefore be accorded a significant priority. In my opinion, this is a mistake. Economic equality is not, as such, of any particular moral importance, and economic inequality is not, in itself, morally objectionable.

Frankfurt will be vilified by progressives, who put solidarity above truth.

These two men, dressed as British soldiers, fired their muzzle-loaders in Fort Michilimackinac. Click to enlarge.

What are the most relevant features of a Russellian world? The following strike me as especially important: (1) Such phenomena as minds, mental activities, consciousness, and so forth are the products of entities and causes that give no indication of being mental themselves. In Russell's words, the causes are "accidental collocations of atoms" with "no prevision of the end they were achieving." Though not stated explicitly by Russell, we might add the doctrine, a commonplace in modern science, that mental phenomena—and indeed life itself—are comparative latecomers in the long history of the earth. (2) Human life is bounded by physical death and each individual comes to a permanent end at his physical death. We might add to this the observation that the span of human life is comparatively short, enough so that in some cases we can, with fair confidence, predict the major consequences of certain actions insofar as they will affect a given individual throughout his whole remaining life. (3) Not only each individual but also the human race as a species is doomed to extinction "beneath the debris of a universe in ruins."

(George I. Mavrodes, "Religion and the Queerness of Mortality [sic]," chap. 8 in Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral Commitment: New Essays in the Philosophy of Religion, ed. Robert Audi and William J. Wainwright [Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1986], 213-26, at 215-6)

Eyes of Wonder (1993).

Here.

Here.