Why read these days?

Something has changed in me.
 
Am more excited reading news articles these days than reading opinions.
 
Why was I so addicted to the opinions of people I don’t know or care for?  Because their writing was so good (and well edited/presented by my favourite free-to-read platforms). But in the main I read them because they reflected something close to my own opinion — and dressed up so very nicely.  So very entertaining. So, I chugged along , taking brief note of the actual facts in the news, skipping over those depressing facts to rile myself up by reading for laughs the sarcasm and the skewering (in what I thought was my own rather cool echo chamber).

Because the writing was so damned good. But suddenly, I find that I am finding the actual news quite fascinating. All on its own. I don't need the filter of an opinion to tell me it it fascinating.
 
It’s news. It’s real. It’s fact. It’s happening. NOW!
 
What was the turning point?
 
During one of the feasts of indulgence over some scandal or other last year, when the outpouring of opinion was bilious — and in some tabloids that bile was being presented as news — NEWS! I decided to check out a free platform — RTE’s website.  It was fabulous. Such a relief. Facts. Quiet boring cool facts. No opinions. Very few adjectives. Most opinion is adjectival.
 
So, my New Year’s resolution is to read more news and less opinion.  
 
I started this morning with a news item in the Guardian (free platform) written by Agence France-Presse in Moscow. It is uncovering the fact that the laws in Russia are being changed to protect the elected law makers.

To protect politicians from the voters knowing too much about their money business?
OR
To protect the lawmaker's data (is it a GDPR thing)?

Dear reader, you decide.  Form your own opinion backed up by fact. A summary below and link to the article.

FACT:  Lawmakers in Russia are being protected from transparency about their personal finances being available to the voters/the people who elected them.
 
FACT: a Moscow court ordered the closure of Russia’s oldest human rights organisation, the Moscow Helsinki Group.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/25/russian-mps-vote-to-hide-details-of-their-tax-returns-from-public-view

#facts #opinions #reading #writers #politics #AlisonHackett #blog