Thought for Today ~


"So what is my point?  Quite simply that increasingly in the media today, truth is being sacrificed to art (or at least artfulness);  reporting to literature.  No, this is not a matter of dumbing down; rather its opposite, dumbing up.  Newspapers are far more sophisticated, for cleverer, far better written than they ever were before; incomparably more entertaining and readable.  A column in The Times by Matthew Parris has even deservedly earned a place in the New Oxford Book of English Prose ~ the first column by a hack ever to do so; and it is only a matter of time before a news story in The Times wins a place in the next Oxford Book of English Fiction.


But therein lies the danger:  the picture of the world presented by the media is both much more beautiful and much more ugly, both much more eye-catching and much more dramatic, both much more simple and much more complicated, than in actuality it ever is." ~ Peregrine Worsthorne.


[This appeared in a 1999 book. Is 2012 even more "dumbed up?"]
~ The Penguin Book of Journalism, Secrets of the Press edited by Stephen Glover. 1999.