Welcome to our brave new future: the only broadcast news we’ll get is from people with big egos, who are their own semi-celebrity brand and who tell us news with their personal slant, and the only journalist news we’ll get is from partisan news sites that are promoting their views of the world.
This view of the future emerged from a panel discussion recently at a Ketchum Global Media Network conference. Well-known journalists were interacting with Ketchum’s media experts about the future of media. It’s pretty clear this is how things are headed generally, although the trend varies in different countries around the world. For sure, it is the current trend at present in North America.
This concerns me as a learning expert since it means the death of learning. True education is an integrative process that knits together disparate data with what you already know, yielding deeper insights into the world around us. It requires confrontation of your assumptions and your already formed ways of thinking. Real education is not comfortable – it is disturbing in the literal sense of the word.
If we all stay with our partisan news sites, hearing things we already agree with, we will in fact grow apart, not together. It’s as if we are building separate planets. The others seem more and more strange over time. Is this where we are headed? I hope not. I continue to believe that for most people, the common ground of connection is more rewarding and interesting than the already plowed ground of “been there done that.” And some of the journalists on the panel agreed with me. But I’m beginning to wonder. . .
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