"You Are What You Read" by Jodie Jackson

My first book in 2020. - I have encountered a serious problems reading-wise, as I became aware that Internet doodling completely replaced my lifelong passion for reading. 

In a way it is not really surprising because for many, many years I worked on a ships where I actually had no Wi Fi connection (there was, but it was too expensive and pointlessly slow) so I just kept on reading books with greatest pleasure - once I settled on land, Internet browsing became my preferable way of chilling out and somehow books seem to demand much more attention. I said to myself that this is just temporary but in fact, without paying attention, I almost stopped reading books all together. Handful of titles in 2019. can't compete with what I used to read before. And it is not about numbers - I couldn't care less if you count hundreds of titles, since I can also cheat and count short stories and cartoons if we start competition - but about quality, mostly from everything I read annually, there will be really just a dozen of really good choices. Well, I need to get back on the track so with a little bit more discipline I might return to the books again.

I was attracted to this title because it sounds very topic - we are bombarded with all sorts of news online these days and 90% of them are incredibly negative, therefore they create anxiety, anger, frustration and even numbness at certain point - after a while we actually can't hear about Australia burning, Brexit or US politics anymore - so I was looking for some insight of how the newspapers work and why they focus so exclusively on negativity. It turns out, guess what, negativity sells. No one cares for positive news. There is something in human nature that thrives on bad news and curiosity, it is scientifically proved. 

Some insights from this book:

"The simplest distinction between perception and reality is that reality is something that exists objectively and is untouched by human experience, whereas perception is an individual’s interpretation of that reality, or how we think about a situation."

Before the news are published there are several gatekeepers:

" - The person or people who see the news happen

  - The reporter who talks to the initial source(s)

  - The editor, who receives the story and decides to cut, add, change or leave as is.

  - The aggregated broadcast channels.

 - If the story goes overseas, further gatekeepers will decide if it is worthy of their time, regardless of whether it is broadcast or print."

"If we believe that the world can get better and we believe that we are able to make a difference, we will persist in the face of problems rather than simply accepting them."

"A common informational hazard is that the news tends to report more on the extraordinary rather than the ordinary. The psychological paradox of this is that the more we hear about the odd and the extraordinary, the more it starts to seem normal and ordinary."