Vicious Cycles: Theses on a philosophy of news

News is presented as a system that manufactures its own urgency. Because daily life does not reliably produce enough dramatic developments to fill continuous coverage, media relies on “pseudo-events”: speeches, rallies, press conferences, political feuds, and other staged occasions created largely to be reported. This turns politics from the work of making policy into a performance aimed at attracting attention. Coverage then becomes career drama about politicians’ media skills and journalists’ judgments, rather than sustained scrutiny of governing. The argument is that this pattern predates the internet: newer platforms have disrupted the news business, but television’s older fusion of information and entertainment remains central to news culture.

The format of news also shapes what audiences feel and believe. It declares each story crucial, then places it beside the next item and urges viewers to keep watching, offering distress without a meaningful path to action. The migrant caravan coverage before the 2018 midterms illustrates how even debunking a manufactured crisis can amplify its prominence; once the election passed, the story largely vanished from public attention. In this cycle, media attention - not the scale of human need - helps determine which events seem important and how long they matter. News can therefore feel like serious learning while functioning as low-effort stimulation, leaving little knowledge or capacity for action. Until news can stop when nothing significant warrants attention, it risks confusing its own demands for content with the world’s actual priorities.