Category: Information

12 Reasons Why I’ve Stopped Watching the NBC Nightly News

by James Wallace Harris, 7/29/25

I developed the habit of watching the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite when JFK was assassinated in 1963. I had just turned thirteen. Cronkite had been the first to switch to a half-hour evening news format that September. I only had a vague sense of what the news was before that. I stuck with CBS until the 1980s, into the Dan Rather years. For some reason, my wife and I then switched to ABC for a couple of decades before finally switching to NBC. When Lester Holt retired, I decided to stop getting my news from television.

Since then, I’ve been thinking about what it means to follow the news. Does it require a daily habit of studying current affairs? Should we consider the news to be any reporting of significant events that have recently happened? How much information can be crammed into twenty-two minutes of television? Who decides what is worth knowing? Recently, NBC chose to make the deaths of two celebrities the lead story two nights running. Were the careers of Ozzy Osbourne and Hulk Hogan the most important information I needed to know on those two days? Think about it. Of all these events happening around the world on those two days, were their deaths the most essential for me to learn about?

Reason 1

I’m not picking on NBC. All the broadcast networks and the cable news networks decided what their audiences want to watch based on ratings. It’s not that Ozzy and Hulk’s deaths are more newsworthy than famine in Gaza, but NBC knows its audience is tired of hearing about starving Palestinians, and more people would watch their show if it opened with Osbourne and Hogan.

Decision 1: I need to decide what’s newsworthy.

Reason 2

Is twenty-two minutes enough time to learn about the critical world events that happened in the last twenty-four hours? Just how much time should I devote to being well-informed? If it is as little as twenty-two minutes, then television is the wrong medium. Reading just the headings of all the news stories from a quality newspaper app on my phone serves me far better.

Television news spends most of its time on visual news. Often, NBC repeats exciting film clips several times. That’s not an efficient use of time. Airplane crashes and flooding rivers grab our attention, but is it really news we need?

Decision 2: I need to decide how much time I want to spend on the news. Additionally, I need to decide on the best medium that maximizes that time.

Reason 3

Too much of television news is taken up by reporters and anchors. Often, reporters take more time asking a question than the time given to the eyewitness’s reply. I’m not interested in reporters or anchors.

Decision 3: I need to look for news sources where the journalist is in the background. That excludes television and most podcasts. Generally, good print reporting only includes the reporter’s byline.

Reason 4

Television news offers low-quality information. A major article in The Atlantic might have taken months to research and write. Such articles are information-dense. TV news is written and edited quickly. There’s not much time for fact gathering or checking. It’s often based on eye-witnesses who mainly add emotional impact rather than inform. Television news relies on soundbites, which are mostly opinions. Experts interviewed on TV news are often selected by convenience rather than their authority.

There have been over 22,500 days since I started watching nightly news programs on TV. There is an incredible sameness to the kind of content TV news presents. I should have abandoned it long ago, but it gave the illusion I was being informed, and it was convenient.

Decision 4: Pick another medium for consuming news.

Reason 5

Television news is narrow in scope. It focuses on catastrophes, tragedies, and political conflict. Over a lifetime of seeing thousands of news reports on wildfires, they all look and feel the same. That’s also true for wars, airplane crashes, riots, elections, famines, hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes. Television news mainly focuses on the types of stories we’ve seen repeated throughout our lives.

Television makes it seem like there is nothing new under the sun. I’ve learned from reading quality magazine articles and newspaper journalism that that old bit of wisdom is completely untrue. Magazine and newspaper articles constantly amaze me with news that surprises me because it’s about people, places, concepts, ideas, and events I’ve never heard of before.

Decision 5: Find more news sources that teach me about reality, inspire my curiosity, and better inform.

Reason 6

TV news is seldom memorable. If John F. Kennedy’s assassination was only reported once on the CBS Evening News on November 22, 1963, I doubt I would even remember the event. I remember it because of constant coverage over several days, including all the documentaries, movies, and books that have been produced since that day. I remember Project Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions because of the around-the-clock television coverage, as well as the documentaries, movies, and books that have been produced since those events. That’s why I don’t remember all the space missions since. They didn’t get such coverage.

A thirty-second spot on the nightly news, or even a big event stretched to four minutes of reporting, just isn’t remembered. I don’t need to waste time on ephemeral news stories. I’ve discovered it’s far better to spend thirty minutes on one topic than two minutes on fifteen topics.

Decision 6: Focus on one news topic for most of my daily time spent on the news. Then quickly go over the headlines.

Reason 7

Television news isn’t educational because it focuses on the same topics. Shouldn’t news enlighten us about reality? Shouldn’t we always expand our awareness of what’s going on in the world?

How can short videos and soundbites be truly informative? I want news that adds to my personal growth. News that adds wisdom, not ephemeral data.

Decision 7: Make lists of what I want to learn about and then find news reports that bring me up to date on those topics.

Reason 8

Television news is biased. Knowing the truth is impossible. Content produced for money-making ratings or to promote a political agenda will always be questionable. I even suspect the kind of long-form journalism that goes out of its way to appear unbiased. I expect all writing to have some bias. It’s my job to spot it.

Decision 8: Start analyzing prose for bias. Think about word choices in each sentence. Always wonder if information is left out.

Reason 9

Real knowledge is statistical. Science is our only cognitive tool that consistently explains reality. News is too close to word-of-mouth. We need news to be closer to peer-reviewed science journals. That’s probably impossible, but we need to think about it. Ground News attempts to apply statistics to the news by comparing political bias and the amount of coverage a story receives. Can’t we find other statistical methods to measure the news?

Decision: Don’t trust any news unless it comes from multiple sources.

Reason 10

Replying on a single network for news is dangerous.

Decision 10: Seek out different gatekeepers. Every group or organization has an agenda. Learn what that agenda is before interpreting what they are saying.

I’ve discovered that reading/listening to one well-reported article a day is much more informative and educational than a package of video clips and soundbites. I’ve been achieving this with Apple News+, which offers content from over 400 magazines and newspapers. Each morning, I listen to a single long-form article from magazines such as The Atlantic, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, and New Scientist, while I do my physical therapy and morning walk.

Reason 11

Television news can be misleading. It’s not as dangerous as AI-generated fake news on YouTube, but television news is easily corrupted by money, marketing, and politics.

Decision 11: Always consider the source of the news. I need to decide which news sources I will trust.

Reason 12

Most television news gives the United States’ perspective of world events.

Decision 12: Find news sources from around the world.

Conclusion

This is just the beginning of changing a lifelong habit of watching the nightly news on television. I should have made these changes long ago. We all get into ruts that are hard to escape. I believe getting old is making me regret not trying other approaches to understanding reality. However, all the political turmoil since 2016 is making me question everything I know. Human-created and computer-created fake news is disturbing. In recent years, I’ve decided that all of us suffer from multiple delusions.

You shouldn’t ask yourself if you’re delusional, but how delusional. Anyone who feels they know the truth is crazy. We can only guess what might be true by using statistics. Television has always depended on the false assumption that seeing is believing. I have doubts about believing anything.

Television, politics, artificial intelligence, and the Internet have corrupted our perception of reality. I want to rethink everything. I’m starting with my old habit of watching the nightly news.

JWH

The Price of High-Quality Information

by James Wallace Harris, 6/30/25

We all know the internet is full of crappy information. The creators of the Internet intended it to be an information utopia. They wanted information to be free and instantly available. It turns out free information is only worth what you paid for it.

The Internet destroyed the local paper and investigative journalism. Quality magazine journalism is circling the drain. Television news is more abundant than ever, but it’s so predigested and targeted to specific audiences that it’s worthless.

Most of the high-quality sources of information are behind paywalls. Every morning, I get up and listen to Apple News+ narrators reading articles from quality magazines as I do my physical therapy exercises. Usually, that’s one thirty-minute article. Unlike podcasts, magazine journalism features a greater percentage of useful information per minute. I truly despise the kind of podcasts that spend more time on the host’s personality than the topic promised in the thumbnail.

Apple News+ gives me access to over 400 magazines and newspapers. This is the bargain of the century for $12.99 a month. However, it’s doubtful these magazines earn enough money from this service to keep them going. The real way to support them is to subscribe to each periodical. Apple News+ is like Spotify, good for the consumer, bad for the creator. The ethical way to use Spotify is to locate albums you want to buy. And the ethical way to use Apple News+ is to find the journals you should subscribe to.

I know these periodicals have become expensive. The Atlantic is $79.99 for a digital subscription. The New Yorker is $130 for a digital subscription. Why pay those prices when I already get the content in Apple News+? Especially when I will consume the content via Apple News+.

The answer is support. Think of quality journalism as an important charity. However, there is another reason. When I read a great article, I want to share it with my friends. Apple News+ is so locked down that it’s not possible. You can only share with other Apple News+ subscribers. You can’t even cut and paste from the screen.

Many periodicals that publish on the web can be copied to an email or printed as a PDF and shared. However, even those methods of getting around the paywall might disappear.

I often read articles that I know friends would also want to read. Some paywalled publications do allow for limited sharing. It should be a standard feature.

We need to move away from the shitty free content. Sharing is prevalent on the Internet, but consider the type of content people share. It’s mostly mindless entertainment or opinions. We need to learn to distinguish between well-researched articles and endless unfounded opinions.

The easiest way for me to share content is if my friends subscribe to Apple News+. And if more people subscribed, the publications would get more money.

We live in an age where authority is suspect. Everyone wants their views to dominate, and will rationalize their beliefs with any content that supports those views. We have lost the ability to evaluate what is real.

The trouble is reality can’t be understood with sound bites. Any topic worth considering requires significant study and research. TV and podcasts create content too quickly. Their information is presented too soon after events and produced too fast. Long-form journalism explores ideas in depth, and that takes time.

It also takes time to read such content. We’ve trained our minds to consume content quickly that was created quickly. Start paying attention to the information you consume and think about how it was produced. If you’re listening to a podcast that lasts an hour, note how much actual useful information you gleaned from that hour. If you get your news from television, pay attention to how long each news segment lasts. Think about how that news was gathered and why. And pay particular attention to the personalities presenting the news on TV and podcasts. Is it more about them or the content?

The highest quality content is nonfiction books written by well-educated researchers. However, it’s not possible to read enough nonfiction books to keep up with everything we need to know. I believe the best compromise for consuming high-quality information is long-form journalism.

You will be far better educated if you spend one hour a day on one subject than one hour a day on twenty different five-minute topics. This is where a service like Apple News+ succeeds. And it does have competitors, such as Zinio. My library offers a selection of free digital magazines and newspapers through Libby.

JWH

I Can’t Believe the Most Essential Aspect of Sexual Reproduction and Gender Has Gone Unnoticed Until Now

by James Wallace Harris, 4/29/25

I suppose because humans have always reproduced like bunnies, we’ve always ignored an essential aspect of sexual reproduction and gender. Statistically, we need every female to have more than two children. Because some women can’t have children, and because some girls die before reaching reproductive age, to keep the population steady during current conditions requires 2,100 babies to be born to every 1,000 women. That number varies depending on the state of medicine and the number of catastrophes.

In 2024, 1,626 babies were born to every 1,000 women in the United States. That’s not enough. If we continued at that rate, we’d eventually become extinct. In many other countries, that number is much smaller than 1,626.

Why aren’t these statistics common knowledge? Why didn’t we learn them when our parents (or peers) taught us about sex? It’s a heavy responsibility to know that we should all have children. My wife and I didn’t have children. Most of my friends didn’t have children. Why did we all start doing our own thing and forget this essential aspect of life?

It’s unfair that the burden of maintaining the species falls on women. To maintain the current population, every woman needs to have two children, and one in ten needs to have three. That’s assuming all women can have children. The practical need is for all women to have three children. Few women want that today.

Males don’t escape responsibility either. The species could get by with fewer males for making babies, but we need males to support the raising of children. I suppose a feminist utopia could get by with an exceedingly small number of males, or even none if women perfected cloning, but the statistics of maintaining the species are the same even if males weren’t needed.

However, we have evolved into a society/culture that doesn’t want enough children. What does that mean? Should we make people have more babies?

I wrote about this yesterday. However, the impact of these numbers didn’t hit me until 3:11 am last night.

For humanity to survive, we must deal with climate change, environmental sustainability, capitalism, inequality in all forms, artificial intelligence, and reproductive stability.

Theoretically, we could solve all these problems, but I doubt we will. The obvious solution is that civilization will collapse, and we’ll fall back into previous kinds of social organizations. It’s a fascinating challenge to imagine a society that can solve all these problems. However, can you imagine any future where all fertile women must have three children, and all men must become dedicated fathers? I can’t.

The human race needs to act radically differently. Is that possible?

JWH

STONE YARD DEVOTIONAL by Charlotte Wood

by James Wallace Harris, 4/12/25

Stone Yard Devotional is about how reality puts the peddle to the metal when life gets all too real. Stone Yard Devotional reads like a memoir, a diary, but it’s classified as a novel. The book was nominated for several awards.

The entire time I was listening to this book I wondered if Charlotte Wood was the unnamed narrator, however after reading “‘The shock was so deep’: Novelist Charlotte Wood on the experience that changed everything” in the Syndney Herald, I realized the novel was only inspired by her own life. Wood and her two sisters were being treated for breast cancer, while she was contemplating mortality and drafting this book.

I have no memory of how I discovered Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood. The cover and title intrigued me for sure. Maybe it was because it was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. The audiobook was part of my Spotify subscription, so I gave it a try, and I’m glad I did. It’s not the kind of book I normally read, but it’s wonderful to read if you’re getting old.

The story begins with the Covid pandemic. The narrator separates from her husband, ghosts her friends, and hides out in a guest house of a religious order, even though she is nonreligious. She wants to be alone. But after her initial stay, she returns to the order to live with the nuns. I was never sure if she joined the order or not. I have often thought the monastic life has certain appeals.

The story is about the narrator’s observations while living a contemplative life. These include the death of her mother, the remembrance of childhood, studying the nuns, working in the garden and kitchen, and the guilt of living with a woman she and her classmates horribly bullied as a child. The narrative is simple, like meditation.

The setting is Australia, which is exotic to me. As a kid I wanted to live in Australia. Over the course of the novel, there is a plague of mice that invade the convent. The mice are so numerous that they cover the roads in gray fur. At first, I thought Wood added this element to give her tale some excitement, but I researched and found that her part of Australia they did have a mice plague of Biblical proportions in 2021.

That made life in the convent extremely inconvenient. The mice ate electrical insulation, throwing daily living in the convent back to the 19th century. The illustration for the book’s review at The New York Times might have been another reason I read this book.

Much of what the unnamed narrator contemplates throughout the novel is what everyone thinks about as they get older. The fear of declining health and death, the regrets, the desires for wanting to have done things different, the desires to connect with others while also wanting to pull away, the changes we see in ourselves and others, the appeal of nature and living simple. Wood’s story explores all of that and more, triggering the reader to think about their lives.

Charlotte Wood was born in 1965, so she’s fourteen years younger than me. However, her battle with cancer has likely aged her perception on life. At 73, I’ve been thinking about the things in this novel for years. But I don’t know if everyone who collects social security meditates on these issues. Stone Yard Devotional is a great title for this novel. Even though the narrator said she was an atheist at the beginning of this story, getting old and dealing with people who die, pushes you to be spiritual even without a belief in God.

JWH

Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How of Being

by James Wallace Harris, 2/15/25

At 73 I’m starting to feel I’m running out of time. I keep having this nagging thought I should have done something, or should be doing something before time runs out. But what? I am immensely grateful for existing but was I supposed to do something while I am or was here? Would knowing who I was explain what I was? Would knowing when and where I was explain how and why I got here? And would knowing all those answers reveal my existential duties?

I just finished reading Orbital by Samatha Harvey which recently won the 2024 Booker Prize. Orbital is the kind of novel that inspires the questions above.

The story is set a few years hence on the International Space Station just as we’re sending astronauts to the Moon again. The book doesn’t have a plot but is a beautiful description of working in space. Harvey’s novel concludes by conveying a tremendous sense of wonder inspired by Carl Sagan’s Cosmic Calendar (large version). The Cosmic Calendar compares the timeline of the universe to one year. Everything since the Scientific Revolution would have happened in the last second of the Cosmic Calendar.

The Cosmic Calendar is a beautiful metaphor to contemplate ontology. How did we get here? There are two main theories. God implies a top-down creation. Evolution suggests a bottom-up development. Each has its paradox. Who created God? Or, how did something come from nothing? Studying cosmology makes it hard to believe in God. How could a single being create all that vastness? What if the universe is God? That’s pantheism. It makes God equal to Evolution but leaves us still with the problem of how things started.

The Cosmic Calendar answers for When.

But do we really need to know how things got started? Shouldn’t we just ask: What is our place in the universe? Scientists are now theorizing that we might exist in a multiverse. In other words, no matter how large we look into the cosmos, there’s always more. On the other hand, no matter how small we look into the subatomic, there’s always something smaller. This is beautifully illustrated by the famous Charles and Ray Eames video of The Powers of Ten from 1977.

The Powers of Ten answers for Where. More importantly, it reveals there are many domains. We might observe the cosmos or even the domain of the atom or quantum, but do they matter to who we are and what we should be doing? Shouldn’t our domain be a hundred meters?

Carl Sagan wrote a book The Pale Blue Dot based on a photograph of Earth taken by Voyager 1 while it passed Saturn. If you look closely, you will see a blue dot. That’s Earth. It’s hard to think we’re significant to the universe. Then think about the Milky Way as seen from the edge of the universe. It wouldn’t be visible at all. It’s beyond conceivable to imagine how small we are compared to all of existence. How can we be significant? How can we have a purpose?

It’s important to think of ourselves relative to the domain in which we live. Many people are depressed by watching the news but isn’t the domain of the Earth too big for one person? Isn’t it ego and delusion to think our purpose could be to organize a nation, city, or even something as small as a neighborhood? I have trouble keeping my house and yard in order.

Lately, I’ve been working in the yard. After fifteen years of neglect, the backyard is overrun with tangled wild growth. Every day I spend a little time trying to conquer my tiny plot of wilderness. At 73, that effort pushes the limits of my physical abilities. I use most of the energy I have left keeping the house somewhat neat. It’s not really clean. I also must spend precious vitality on personal finances, shopping, and general living and maintenance.

Yet, I keep thinking I should be doing something more. I’m not sure what. Maybe it’s having a purpose or making my mark in a small way. This would answer the question of who. And maybe why.

I’ve been using Ancestry.com and learning about genealogy. What did my parents expect of me? What did my grandparents expect of their grandchildren? I have thirty-two ancestors if I go back five generations. Did they expect anything? At most, they expected me to keep the gene line going. Well, that’s where I’ve failed.

I recently read Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. The story is about the United States suffering an economic apocalypse. The main character felt the need to have a purpose in life, even when everything bad was happening. She decided God was change and our purpose was to affect God/change. That’s a kind of pantheism. What if existence is just trying to become everything that could possibly exist?

Under Butler’s theory, my purpose is to shape myself. To constantly change. Well, I’ve certainly been doing that my whole life.

Right now I’m working on changing myself, my relationships, my house, and my yard. Mother nature was changing the way it wanted the yard. It might seem pointless, but wrestling control from Mother Nature and changing the yard into what I want does give me existential purpose. It’s essentially meaningless in the long run. But maybe our purposes should be limited to a time and place. To a domain. Think small.

I can change myself somewhat. I can change my house and yard. Somewhat. But I can’t change other people. Or anything larger in life.

Maybe that explains how and why.

JWH