A world of mass attention deficit disorder

And truth is the casualty. Suthichai Yoon’s wisdom should be compulsory reading for anyone who is interested in the future of news. But, sadly, it won’t be – your article was more than 140 characters long. We now live in a world of mass attention-deficit disorder where tweets, sound bites and nuggets of information, much of which is fake, have displaced narratives and stifled intellectual debate, and where targeted news in social media has locked shallow-thinking users into echo chambers of their own biased opinion. As I have said before on this page, it is imperative that seekers of the truth read both the liberal-fascist mainstream press and the so-called alt-right alternative media, and check sources.
A case in point: last Saturday’s Nation contained a typically biased AFP article entitled “Big protests expected as Trump UK visit in July confirmed”, which quoted Owen Jones, a journalist from the Guardian, calling for “everybody out on the streets”.  The same Owen Jones claimed on UK television last week that “most” people in the UK are against the visit, earning himself a Twitter backlash from angry viewers. It was a lie – a recent Yougov poll showed 45 per cent of Britons are in favour of the visit, 39 per cent against, a fact that lay conveniently below the radar of both AFP and the Guardian, as we have come to expect.
Lord Buddha said it more eloquently than I: “Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true.”
Nigel Pike
Phang Nga