I think it is best to take a wholesale view that the news as we know it is a religion. That sounds a bit odd given that a lot that is in the news is fact oriented and a lot of current affairs is discussed. But in a formal church there is mention and prayers for those caught up in actual events.
Fundamentally though the news requires belief. It is there for the 'capitalist flock' who have a world where the government, democracy as we know it and the laws we have define the world.
With normal religion the real things that happen with celestial bodies get interpreted in some narrative that has to do with some carpenter's son who died a long time ago. A whole new world of god is created which is an abstraction of physical realities. Rather than 'primitive sun worshipping' there is this new religion to believe in, the religion accounts for everything in its own special way.
If you could teleport 500 years into the future and learned about TV news and how people believed it then you would wonder how people disbelieved facts they observed with their own eyes and what they knew to be true by the calling of their own heart and their own sense of reason.
Therefore, at least as a thought experiment, see the news and the nasty things said about people outside capitalist countries as 'religion'. It all becomes clearer then.
I'm not really sure how this is so controversial. Even formal mathematical systems contain axioms. And science is largely based on faith in other people's truthfully reported observations. And news is founded on faith in a whole bunch more different things, and there is sectarian tension between the congregation s of, let's say, Fox and NPR. Even the qualia of physical existence can be considered as a matter of faith , but typically it's only practical for philosophers to worry about that. But, it is practical for everyone to consider the matter of faith in news, given human history.
One could also describe it simply as a tautology. It comes with its own simplified, illusory cause/effect chain and line of reasoning based off of itself, without necessitating the same "feeling" or "spiritual" sensibilities as most religions or cult movements.
Fundamentally though the news requires belief. It is there for the 'capitalist flock' who have a world where the government, democracy as we know it and the laws we have define the world.
With normal religion the real things that happen with celestial bodies get interpreted in some narrative that has to do with some carpenter's son who died a long time ago. A whole new world of god is created which is an abstraction of physical realities. Rather than 'primitive sun worshipping' there is this new religion to believe in, the religion accounts for everything in its own special way.
If you could teleport 500 years into the future and learned about TV news and how people believed it then you would wonder how people disbelieved facts they observed with their own eyes and what they knew to be true by the calling of their own heart and their own sense of reason.
Therefore, at least as a thought experiment, see the news and the nasty things said about people outside capitalist countries as 'religion'. It all becomes clearer then.