I read the news before I do much of anything.  Well, after a shower and a cup of tea, I mean.  I don’t know why I try to keep current.  I just do.  Curious, I guess.  Mostly habit.  It is a way to start the day.  I have always been a news-junkie but I have pretty much given up on the usual sources.  I just don’t trust them or else I trust them to be completely wrong.  Either way, the usual sources are no longer the usual sources for me anymore.

When I say ‘news’,  I don’t mean the Canucks, the latest gang shooting or lurid Downtown Eastside hard-luck story.  I don’t mean dead bodies found in abandoned cars, lots or buildings.   I don’t mean real estate prices, transit stories or even the latest crooked dealings of one sociopathic, narcissistic fat cat or another.  I certainly do not mean news from techie-shills selling bits and bytes, fashionistas or the drivel of foodies.

And I don’t mean anything that is said by our so-called leaders, politicians, bankers or even, I am sorry to admit, the heads of any large institutions.  I have come to suspect all spokesmen, spokespeople and spokesmodels so much that I now trust them to lie only.  I lost interest in ‘public affairs’ officials a long time ago.  They may as well wear a button that says, ‘liar, spin-artist, diffuser, dissembler and B-Sér’ on their lapel.  Whatever they say is 100% guaranteed not to be true.

And I sincerely believe that any press release is also at the very least, a partial lie.  Most often a complete fabrication.

The Vancouver Sun is abysmal. Same for the whole chain, the Globe and Mail and the National Post. I can’t stand them.  Light-weight, irrelevant, boring, corporate-toadies, writ-by-rote and following a recipe-cum-pattern that, in itself, defies the chaotic and randomness of real news.  Not worth my time to get ’em for fire starter.  It is a crime against trees.  And the columnists that used to actually ‘say something’ have gone flaccid.

On the whole, mainstream reporters have been gelded, news gathering has been gutted and only goofs are put on the air to gab.

The CBC broadcasts hours and hours of nonsense, gibberish and irrelevancies.  There is a woman on in the afternoons by the name of Joanne something that drives me screaming from the room.  I swear that when I was working with the schizophrenic, the demented and the chemically and naturally psychotic, I could tolerate their babblings longer than I can hers.  It is beyond mind-numbing, it is like having a cat sharpen it’s claws on my brain.

Yes.  I turn her off.  And then I drink wine.  I blame her.

I now get the Tyee. I read the Discovery Islander and the elite and off-the-radar Snot Rag.  I also get the Common Sense Canadian.  I listen to the BBC.  I listen to NPR now and again.  I read Asian papers (translated).  I read Britlish papers.  I pick up headlines from CNN.  And, of course, I let Google send me a selected collection of articles on various subjects, the sources of which change all the time.

And one of my best friends is a librarian with a pair of scissors and lots of envelopes.  Sally and I both love her.

But it is not enough.  I need more.  I don’t know why.  I just do.

So, I read books.  I read voraciously.  All but the rare exception are non-fiction.  The last book was Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken.  Very interesting.  Basic premise: we are, as a species, evolving faster than ever before and all that change is coming from the bottom up.  It is ‘network’ based and ‘organic’ in the sense that movements are happening in every country and on every subject and in all walks of life but they are somehow linked in a manner that is good.  He explains the amorphous nature of the OCCUPY movement, leaderless, formless and seemingly unfocussed.  And he wrote about it all in 2005/6.  BEFORE the movement even manifested.

Mind you, it had manifested.   It was just not reported enough in mainstream media so the general hoi poloi didn’t see it until it morphed into the OCCUPY movement.  According to Hawken the momentum for change is so well founded now, the name or even durability of any one group is not important. Change is underway.

And ‘news’ is part of this evolution. Hawken points out that the old sources are not working fast enough nor are they working for the common good anymore.  They work for their corporate bosses to make a profit.  The old fourth estate no longer has integrity.  In effect, what good there was is growing into the fifth estate – social movements.  And that is because much of social networking is working for the people.  It is revealing the truth.  It has the integrity of an innocent child and no sophistication or even informed knowledge but it is maturing.  Much of the local, small town media is even better – especially on local issues.  Hawken is saying: ‘small is so beautiful, it is beginning to grow large!’

I am somewhat encouraged by his summary of what passes for evolution in this matter.  I hope he is right.  I certainly think we have to find our news differently.  We have to seek out new sources.  We have to start with local and go international.

Think globally, act locally?  About news?  Absolutely!  And with an emphasis on thinking.  We no longer have any Walter Cronkites or Edward R. Murrows we can trust.  We gotta find out for ourselves from now on.  Forget Murdoch, forget Conrad Black, forget the Vancouver Sun, Global TV and the CBC.  That is just news as bad entertainment.  Go bigger.  Go smaller.  But don’t stay on the same channel.  Now is the time to ‘touch that dial’.