We certainly are catering to the least intelligent among us in almost every respect. Oddly enough I was thinking about this earlier tonight.

I went to use the bathroom at a restaurant and they had some framed newspapers hanging up in there that were run by the local newspaper in 1918. The whole front page was news about WWI but it looked very different from war coverage in newspapers today. Each article was very detailed and covered distinct parts of the conflict during that week. There were sections on American, Canadian, and English troops detailing whether they had advanced or retreated, how much fighting they had to do, and references to commanding officers, obscure geographic landmarks, and lines from speeches made by foreign leaders. It was clear from the way they were written that the author expected his audience to be familiar with all of this to the point that he could mention them in passing without offering any explanation as to how they were related or what significance they held.

This is in stark contrast to current reporting on the Palestinian conflict and to a lesser degree the war in Ukraine. Journalists rarely mention details in such a way and when they do they offer much more context, assuming the reader is unfamiliar with much of what is being discussed. Of course, they’re not wrong in that assessment but I do wonder how much of that has to do with the public being slowly conditioned to expect simplicity in reporting. These articles often read more like a political interpretation than a description of events. Nuance and the expectation of sustained interest in the subject seems almost entirely absent.