HappyHorse - The Monday Morning Memo

“Did you ever see an unhappy horse?
Did you ever see a bird that had the blues?
One reason why birds and horses are not unhappy is
because they are not trying to impress other birds and horses.”
– Dale Carnegie

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Newspapers have changed their character during my lifetime. They used to be the principal carriers of the world’s news, but television holds that position now. Television, however, has serious limitations; it is a visual medium, and it is dominated by the principle that nothing is news unless you can take a picture of it. It is here that the newspapers still hold their own; so much of what goes on in the political world cannot be effectively photographed; statesmen, in their expensive but uninteresting clothes, make very poor TV and their prolonged deliberations are dull when we see them on the box. Politics must be interpreted, and newspapers have become their untiring interpreters. Even MacNeil and Lehrer cannot hold you for too long with a description of what is happening the world, but at your leisure you can read half a dozen interpretations written by newspaper columnists and draw your own conclusions. That doesn’t happen on television; it draws your conclusions for you, and the conclusions it draws are those of people whose primary job it is to see that you do not change your channel. Thus catastrophic wars are seen in terms of starving children, or weary troops or refugees; the reasons for the wars, even when they can be discovered, are too complex for the picture-box. If we knew the reasons, our sympathy might cool. The TV journalists cannot permit your sympathy to cool, for emotion, not intelligence, is what holds you to the small screen.

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- Robertson Davies, The Merry Heart, p. 356

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