Читать книгу Trusting the News in a Digital Age - Jeffrey Dvorkin - Страница 9

It's worth exploring these two simple, yet complicated and interconnected notions.

“Surprise” in the news indicates a range of complexities: it includes reading, hearing, viewing, or downloading something that is relatively unknown to you as a news consumer. It can be benign (as in “it may rain later today”) or be more significant or ominous (as in “a tornado is approaching”). It can be a slight delay in your morning commute or a massive 10‐car pile‐up on the freeway.

“Surprise” can also have more immediate consequences. It can be the election of a new political leader. It can be the sudden removal of a highly controversial or famous person from a high‐profile position. The implications of that kind of “surprise” can be life‐changing, and people may need this information so they know how best to respond.

“Surprise” can elicit a simple “I didn't know that” response.

It can also evoke a more powerful “I'm outraged by what I just heard” response.

Should we flee for our lives? Should we stay calm and wait for more clarity? Should we go out and demonstrate in the streets, or should we hide in the basement? The “surprise” response carries with it a greater range of possibilities and excitement, even dangers.

“Delight” is the other side of that informational coin. It connects the news consumer with barely‐known ideas and remote communities that can become recognized and understood thanks to the ability of the news to show how and why there is some degree of resonance. It can be as simple as a community gathering for a street fair to celebrate a local holiday in the neighborhood. It can be a wedding feast in a far‐off village. If reporters do their jobs properly, the foreign can become familiar. And what may have once seemed beyond our reach now enters into our world of understanding. We can share ideas as we see fit. We can take more control of our world, because the unknown has become more familiar. That is what the news is capable of doing at its best and most civic‐minded.