2 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / MARCH 2020
John R. MacArthur, President and Publisher
Editor
Christopher Beha
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Katherine Ryder
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Christopher Carroll, Rachel Poser,
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Editor Emeritus
Lewis H. Lapham
Wa sh ing t o n Ed it o r
Andrew Cockburn
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800-444-Breaking the News
It was gratifying to see Greg Jack-
son revive the ideas of Neil Postman
in his meditation on the media [“Vi-
cious Cycles,” Essay, January], for
Postman highlighted the degree to
which broadcast journalism is driven
more by profit than by civic responsi-
bility. Because of decades of market
incentives, news is beholden to the
strictures of entertainment. This is
not a value judgment but a descrip-
tion of the industry’s business mo del.
Absent systemic change, it cannot
be otherwise.
Still, we may be dealing here with
something even more powerful and
resistant to change than markets. As
Jackson suggests, when we seek news
sources that reinforce our own world-
views, we are looking for validation of
who we are and why we are here.
“When we turn away from the news,
we will confront a startling loneli-
ness,” he writes. “It is the loneliness
of life. The loneliness of thinking, ofhaving no one to think for us, and
of uncertainty.”
Aware of our own inevitable death
and irrelevance, we hunger for a story
that might give us meaning and an-
chor us in an unknowable universe.
Ideology can provide that story. We
cling to our narratives with white-
knuckled determination because our
psychic survival depends on it.Harry Hamilton
Columbia, Md.Jackson’s essay helps account for the
strangeness I feel while watching the
news with my parents, who watch two
or three cable newscasts per night. Not
a regular viewer myself, I’m left won-
dering who exactly decided what these
shows should cover, and what they
were thinking. In a country of almost
330 million people, why is it that this
specific high-speed chase or political
gaffe merited airtime?
“The formal message of the news,”
Jackson writes, “is simultaneously the
vital importance and utter triviality of
everything that is happening.” The
format encourages a conflation of arbi-
trary content with objective reality. As
a consequence, we abandon the idea
that the news might have some realLETTERS
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