The media June 2018
Hungry like the wolf
On comedic and journalistic laziness.
Maybe it’s because I’m feeling rather lazy myself as I prepare to shuffle over the conventional threshold into old age, but I have been thinking a lot lately about the paradoxical power of laziness and inertia over what we do and, especially, what we think. What I am inclined to think—perhaps out of sheer laziness—is that laziness is ultimately the reason why the media report half the things they do, especially when they are “too good to check.” That’s if, by “too good,” we understand “too conveniently in line with the ‘narrative’ we are promoting at the moment”; and if, by “check,” we mean (among other things) “looking skeptically at the stories told to us by people who have something—especially media celebrity—to gain by the publicity they are seeking on behalf of allegations against former bosses, husbands,...
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