A mirror, not a window
I ran today’s Sydney Morning Herald through a GPT filter:
About 45 per cent of content is war, politics, weather, policy, courts. The other 55 per cent is petrol prices, electricity bills, property values, interest rates, work, lifestyle.
Much of the “serious” news only exists to feed the second category. The Middle East matters because fuel spikes. Policy matters because mortgages move. Weather matters because disruption follows. Very little news is presented as purely informational. Almost everything is converted into impact.
The reader is positioned at the centre of every story. If it does not affect cost, comfort, or convenience, it’s not in there.
Out of curiosity, I ran the Guardian through the same filter. It’s summary was…
SMH model:
world → filtered → cost to you
Guardian model:
world → interpreted → why it matters (morally, socially, structurally) → optional personal angle
So it’s less self-absorbed in a financial sense, more self-absorbed in a moral sense.
A third model could optimise for:
accuracy under uncertainty, at the cost of comfort and attention. It didn’t exist because most people don’t actually want to think, or suffer any discomfort.
offshore westerly 