Predigested food

BEIJING – Back at IU, there are a number of people I greatly respect who, on any given day, have the latest copy of The Economist in their backpacks. It’s all they read, and for what seems like a good reason – it’s comforting to have solved the policy woes of a dozen or so world leaders before one’s breakfast is finished.

But as universal a currency of thought as The Economist is in the West, it is mostly reviled in China. I once tried to discuss it here with a government university professor who dismissed me with a wave of the hand and told me that it simply wasn’t “a reputable publication.”

The first reaction is the easiest, to dismiss the opinions of people who live in authoritarian countries as wholly inspired by authoritarianism. But I met too many people I also greatly respected in the halls of Beijing University to see them as outright wrong. At least they read The Economist.

When my government professor suggested I start reading the Chinese economic newspaper Workers’ Daily, I gave up, not because of the difficulty but because of its penchants for nasty little asides about the follies of the West, and sweeping generalizations, which frustrated me to no end.

It might seem surprising to find a country where one of the West’s most prestigious newsmagazines is seen as garbage, but then, you have to realize how many Americans might see the news sources you trust the most with a similar level of suspicion, even if these Americans are spread out across the country.

People don’t get their news based on where they live, nor do they find an appreciable difference in the level of credibility between papers such as the Washington Post or the New York Times. The basis they choose upon is, essentially, the story arc that the paper presents. The Economist presents policy solutions much like recent graduates of “Introduction to Economics” – privatize, deregulate and watch perfection unfold.

The New York Times, meanwhile, seems to have struck a compromise: If it walks, it is being actively oppressed by rich white men. If it doesn’t walk, the government should set up a bureau to regulate it (or give it universal health care until it is healthy enough to walk again).

We speak about how people’s thoughts are controlled by the government in places like China, but rarely about how people voluntarily limit their thinking through consciously choosing which version of the truth to believe, and which to immediately distrust. These days, if people get their news from only one source, they eat what F. Scott Fitzgerald described as “predigested food.” He complained that, for two cents, voters bought “their politics, prejudices and philosophy.”

At least my Chinese classmates knew their domestic media was controlled by the government and tried to read things like CNN and the BBC to balance their opinions. We, on the other side of the ocean, have a nasty habit of assuming that once you have the ability to read whatever you want, there’s nothing left to be done.