The news is the most powerful and prestigious force in contemporary society, replacing religion as the touchstone of authority and meaning. It is usually the first thing we check in the morning and the last thing we consult at night. What are we searching for?

The news does its best to persuade us we must keep up with its agenda - but to what end? What are the ghastly, wondrous, thrilling, destructive, bitter stories for?

It would be most honest to admit that we don't yet know: we're still working it out collectively. We're still among the first generations ever to have had access to news on the current scale and we're struggling to make sense of the deluge of information.

One thing is for sure: we don't yet have the news we deserve. The news of our times is predominantly an agent of confusion, envy, purposeless excitement and needless terror. In a wiser, more mature society, we'd still engage with the news on a daily basis. But we'd have clearer and more ambitious ideas about what we needed it for.

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People who take global warming seriously tend to get apoplectic at this point. They're not wrong. While delightful, Taylor Swift's legs are of little significance in comparison with the fate of the planet. But getting angry at our fascination with the thighs of a singer is counter-productive in a democracy. We cannot be collectively dragged into being more responsible through guilt. And for a very simple reason. We don't have to pay attention. If those who care about arctic melt are going to get angry, bitter and stern, they'll just be ignored.

The problem is, we really do need to do something about that ice. But the starting point has to be indulgence towards the way our minds work. We are interested in Taylor Swift's legs not because we are evil - but because we are wired in unhelpful ways.

If we are going to be interested en masse in the defrosting poles, we need to take our fragilities on board and therefore get serious, very serious, about trying to make important news not just "important" but also beguiling - almost as tempting to hear about as Taylor's legs. Then things stand a chance of changing.

Alain de Botton is the best-selling author of The News: A User's Manual, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion and (with John Armstrong) Art as Therapy. He is the founder and Chairman of The School of Life.

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2015/08/10/4290778.htm

As usual, Alain de Botton is too nice and misses the point. The point here is the "news" agenda at present is DELIBERATELY concocted to suit a society that has rulers and slaves. The news has zilch philosophical value. The news is deliberately devised to divide, entertain, distract and push a political agenda which should have been thrown out a long time ago. Here the News proprietors and their political controllers have a firm agenda which is akin to drugging the masses of people with illusions of knowingness. Ignorance, froth and porkies are bliss...

Yes, dream on about utopia, Alain... 

Where the news gets the news?... What is this shit? Does the Telegraph thinks it's really creating the news for others to copy? Are they mad? This is the most misleading advertising campaign ever devised by devious crafty bastards, knowingly full of their own delusion of self-importance. What a lot of crap ! Come on, ACMA, hit the Daily Telegraph with a kick up the arse.

How much longer are we going to go on imagining things will get better if only Labor or the Coalition could get their acts together or find the right leader? Folks, it's over. We need to reinvent the way we do politics, writes Tim Dunlop.

It's time we faced it: the image we have of democratic politics as one where major parties use the power of office to generate a viable and coherent platform for governing in the name of a majority of citizens is dead.

The divisions that caused Labor's leadership ructions, and that are causing the current unrest within the Coalition, are not some passing phase that the parties are going through and that can all be put to rest if they could just find the right leader to unite them.

They are part of the wider disruption of how we organise our society.

Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten are not the problem, any more than they are the answer: they are the symptoms of a crumbling paradigm. They have risen to the top because the system rewards a particular sort of operator.

Division and mediocrity are not bugs in this system, they are a feature.

This means that most analysis and commentary on political events is starting from the wrong premise, which means, in turn, that we are all being chronically ill-informed.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-14/dunlop-its-the-end-of-politics-as-we-know-it-and-i-feel-fine/6694488

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And who or what informs us I would ask?... The MMMMM? The murdoch mediocre mass media de mierda? Hum... A suppository of half-baked news gathering I suppose... Hell, I feel sick... Tim Dunlop is over-optimistic... Between you, me and an outback dunny, there is buckleys' chance of things changing... I could be wrong of course... 

Please visit: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjD0e1d6GgQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52KLGqDSAjo&list=PL82yk73N8eoX-Xobr_TfHs...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdnZ1l5TxJk