Marxism & Pluralism: Alain de Botton on the news

1) To some extent, I strongly agree with what Alain de Botton has to say about the news. For example, at the beginning, he talks about instead of waking up in the morning to the 'birding chirping' etc the audience wake up to their smartphones and read articles and videos on their and that is how they go to sleep. I believe that this is an accurate saying about the audience as they like to keep themselves updated every time of the day and in this modern day culture, where ever you go, you'll always see someone on their phones. However, de Botton sounded like as if he was giving this statement in a negative way and I believe that this isn't a negative thing at all. Even though that this isn't the most natural way of waking up etc, the audience will keep themselves update with what is going on in the world and I believe that this is a benefit as the audience are keeping themselves aware with the world.

2) Alain de Botton talks about how instead of the usual large news companies feeding the audience with the news, the audience themselves are publishing their own content across the social media sites and this may be a way in which the news that has been published by them, can become misleading. Therefore, the way in which a Marxist may look at this is that the media itself is 'dumbing down' and we, the media, have become very reliant on User-Generated Content. In addition, the same news keeps getting repeated and the audience themselves believe that it is different news but it really isn't and this is very beneficial for the Marxist as their income will keep rising and they will still look down at the poorer people.

3) A pluralist may believe that they can challenge the views of de Botton. He talks about how the audiences a great difficulty in telling what the difference is between soft news and hard news. However, a pluralist may argue that we the audience have the individual power to control ourselves on how we consume the news and how others may want to post their specific news online.

4) For
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/27/disaster-strikes-caribbean-tour-prince-harrys-ship-breaks/

Against
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/15/brexit-means-were-leaving-the-eu-its-not-a-crisis-its-an-exercis/