Stop Reading the News by Rolf Dobelli

Author:Rolf Dobelli
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
Published: 2019-11-17T16:00:00+00:00

20

News Produces Fake Fame

A functioning society requires cooperation. A person’s reputation is a signal: it tells us something about their potential as a collaborative partner. Unfortunately, in the world of the news, this signal is no longer reliable. In our evolutionary past, a person’s reputation was directly related to their achievements or their power. If somebody caught a wild animal with their bare hands, saved another person’s life or was skilled at making fires, they would be accorded a commensurate degree of respect (fame acquired through competence). A tribal leader who kept his position at the top of the clan by forming coalitions and playing a shrewd tactical game was also rewarded (fame acquired through power).

Later, long after we’d left the Stone Age behind us, there remained an indissoluble bond between fame and achievement or power. Aristotle, Sappho, Augustine, Beethoven, Newton, Darwin, Marie Curie, Einstein – all of them acquired fame by virtue of their competence. Emperors, kings and popes, meanwhile, acquired fame through power. Marcus Aurelius managed both – competence and power.

With the advent of the news, we suddenly found ourselves haunted by strange ghosts unknown to our ancestors: ‘celebrities’, people famous for reasons that are utterly irrelevant to society and our own lives. These days, the media bestows the rank of ‘celebrity’ upon talk-show hosts, sports commentators, supermodels and pop stars for such trivial reasons that it undermines the relationship between fame and achievement, creating fake fame. Celebrity is a self-referential system. A celebrity is a celebrity because they’re a celebrity. How they became a celebrity is soon forgotten and plays no role in the media circus. Journalists report on the celebrity because they’re a celebrity. It’s virtually impossible to name someone who became famous before the advent of the news media whose fame wasn’t based on competence or power. At most, you could come up with a few criminals.

Ever heard of Donald Henderson? He led the World Health Organization team that wiped out smallpox. For thousands of years, smallpox was considered one of the world’s most dangerous diseases, both highly infectious and highly likely to be fatal. Henderson’s systematic immunisation programme combatting the disease finally achieved the supposedly impossible: smallpox was defeated. For good. This is the only time a deadly pathogen has been completely exterminated – one of the greatest triumphs in the history of medicine. Henderson was showered with accolades. In 1986 he was awarded the National Medal of Science, and in 2002 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the USA’s highest honour. Nor did Henderson shy away from the media. On the contrary. After smallpox was eliminated, he became a dean at Johns Hopkins University – one of the most important medical universities in the world – and a senior advisor to the US government. Yet his name appeared hardly anywhere in the media. Why?

Because the media focuses on celebrities. Henderson ‘only’ had his achievement to offer – no weird hairdo, no gobby opinions, no smart designer clothes. Thanks to this –

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