On News

There’s certain qualities news has that could be considered. News can be true or false and good or bad. News, for the most part, is a message about events. The message is delivered through a medium. Messages can be delivered through notes, gossip, television, loudspeakers, telephones, online media. News appears to have a significance to the present. Past events with no current significance would be deemed moments in history rather than news. Though one can’t know the future in the same way one knows the past, there can be news concerning the future in the form of plans. The most trustworthy information is perhaps one’s own experience. Albeit without a well-informed worldview one may not have a sufficient understanding of events. It seems difficult for one to construct a message that can adequately express events without the necessary understanding. Once constructed the message doesn’t appear difficult to replicate, a repetition of the message would suffice. When trying to parse true news from false, one must consider the fact that homo sapiens can error intentionally or unintentionally. There are various levels of news based on understanding, and various domains that use news.

Communities appear to spread news based on some importance threshold. There’s perhaps more ability to confirm the truthfulness of community news due to the locality, though perhaps one may not have the authority to request answers for certain questions. Religion is another institution that uses news. Those whom some god/s has deemed worthy deliver the messages of said god/s. This news can be difficult to confirm because of the weak connection between the source, content, and receiver. The state uses news to deliver commands and the current state of affairs. Identifying the lies of the state may be dependent on one’s intelligence. Major events are harder to cover up than minor events, but one may be too remote from either to obtain the appropriate facts. Science uses the news. Events are expressed in very specific ways to make understanding uniform (or more uniform than merely speaking the same language). Receivers are asked to repeat events to confirm the truth of the conclusion of the messages. Other domains that use the news don’t typically have this ask, in many cases such an ask is impossible.