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Do not get irked with me.. Robert Stacy McCain said it
It’s exasperating to watch this, which probably has a lot to do with why CNN is permanently stuck in third place in the cable news ratings. There may be people for whom CNN is “must-see TV” — State Department bureaucrats, perhaps? — but certainly it’s not a mass-market product.
Part of what’s gone wrong with the news business is that, over the course of recent decades, the decline in our education system has produced a generation — most people under 40 — who can best be described as post-literate. Whether or not they have the ability to read, they simply do not read. They are not consumers of the written word, in the way that educated adults used to be. They do not read articles. They may click headlines, but as far as actually reading anything, they can’t be bothered. Give them a TikTok video or maybe an Instagram meme, but the written word has no appeal to them. Generally, such people lack curiosity. They don’t have the kind of “need to know” that would inspire them to consult multiple sources in search of the story that they’re not getting from mainstream media. This is how people become susceptible to paranoid conspiracy theories and weird cults — if you do not have a sufficient storehouse of facts committed to memory, you are apt to believe whatever you’re told, if the person telling the story is charismatic and possessed of a gift for narrative, and telling you something that flatters your sensibilities. One of the things about the written word is that it has a permanence that the spoken word lacks; you can learn more by reading than by listening, and having the written text available allows you to double-check your memory of what you’ve learned.
Go read it all!!!!!
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