Newspapers and worldviews

In 8th standard, I read an essay in a school text book on "intellectual rubbish" by Bertrand Russell. Simply put, this placed me on to the path of serious reading. But more on that some other time.

One of the methods recommended by Russell to avoid becoming too caught up in a bubble of views echoing one's own was to read a variety of newspapers with different editorial opinions. An excellent idea, I think.

In the 'international' (dominated by western countries, but just about international, I warrant) sphere, I read three newspapers regularly. The New York Times (NYT) is left-of-centre, the Economist is libertarian and the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is right-wing. All three are excellent newspapers, of course, in terms of their quality of reporting and writing. As for their editorial stances, I am closest to the Economist. But reading the NYT Op-ed pages reminds me that there are perfectly reasonable people who actually support trade unions, and scanning a WSJ editorial passionately arguing against inheritance taxes gives me pause for thought. Reading all three definitely helps me to appreciate the range of opinions that can be held by people smarter and better-informed than me, though I may still choose to stick my own ideas.

I wonder whether I can do so for Indian newspapers as well. For many years, I have been a regular reader of the Indian Express (IE). The quality of journalism is very good, though the writing leaves a lot to be desired. As for the editorial side, I often agree with it, but there are regular disagreements too. I just have not been able to get used to any other newspaper, mostly because the frivolous element so dominates them. But as for worldviews, I suspect that most English newspapers (in Bombay atleast) have more or less the same opinions - broadly socially liberal, but too anti-poor (see an earlier entry about how I think that pro-middle class is actually a euphemism for anti-poor). For me to implement Russell's suggestion, I would have to graduate to Hindi or Marathi newspapers. I have tried some Hindi papers, but their quality is simply not good enough to persuade me to read them regularly. Maybe I should take to reading the CPM, RSS and Shiv Sena papers, though I really suspect their quality.