Don’t watch TV coverage of Covid-19!
— by Richard Stallman
Don't watch TV coverage of Covid-19! (Or "social media"; the details
are different.) Watching repetitive coverage of something frightening
can interfere with clear thinking, even traumatize people.
TV news coverage of a crisis struggles to fill 24 hours a day with
"information", notwithstanding the fact that the actual flow of new
information about the crisis is nowhere near sufficient to fill that
time. What do they do? They repeat. They present tangential and minor
details. They make the same points in different ways. They belabor the
obvious. They repeat.
If your goal is to be informed, you don't need to dwell on the crisis
for hours every day. Not even one hour a day. Getting your news in this
inefficient matter will waste a lot of time — and worse.
In addition, it will make you more and more anxious. Someone I knew in
2001, who lived in California. spent all day on Sep 11 and following
days watching the TV coverage. Afterward perse was afraid to go
outside, watching for terrorist airplanes. TV made it possible for per
to be traumatized by events 3000 miles away.
That was an unusually strong case. Most people did not get so
traumatized as that. That does not imply it did not affect them. I
suspect that the TV coverage may have shifted millions of people's
perceptions, so that they overestimated the danger of terrorism while
downplaying the danger of laws that take away freedom. This would have
smoothed the path for careless passage of the [1]dangerous USA PAT RIOT
Act and its massive surveillance.
In any a good, general textual news site, you can read the things you
really want to know about Covid-19 in 10 or 20 minutes a day. Then you
won't fall behind on your work, and you won't be brainwashed into
panic.
Keep calm and carry on!
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Copyright © 2020 Richard Stallman Verbatim copying and redistribution
of this entire page are permitted provided this notice is preserved.
References
1.
https://stallman.org/images/brave-and-free.jpg
