The News

How often do you check the news—and how deeply do you think it’s shaping you? In The News: A User’s Manual, philosopher Alain de Botton asks us to see a routine act—scrolling through headlines or watching bulletins—as one of the most psychologically significant habits of our age. We treat news as banal and inevitable, but de Botton argues it has quietly taken on the role that religion once held: guiding our morals, shaping our anxieties, and constructing our sense of the world.

This book is both diagnosis and remedy. The author contends that while the news promises enlightenment, it often delivers confusion, fear, envy, and distraction. He suggests that if we are to live intelligently and ethically amid the media storm, we must learn to read the news as carefully as we read literature or philosophy. Only by recognizing the biases and rituals of journalism can we free ourselves from its invisible control.

The Religion of News

De Botton begins by likening modern news consumption to religious devotion: we start our day with its rituals, trust its priests (the anchors and editors), and turn to it for truth and moral direction. Yet unlike religion, the news denies that it offers moral or metaphysical guidance—it pretends to be neutral. But every choice of headline, image, and tone implies a worldview. To live in the news’ shadow is to adopt unconsciously its philosophy of life, its sense of what is important or trivial, hopeful or hopeless.

This is why the author suggests we need a “user’s manual.” We may spend decades under this new secular religion’s influence without ever learning how it interprets the world. Whereas traditional faiths codified doctrine and included rituals to foster reflection, the news offers no pause, no perspective, and no moral training. The result is perpetual motion—millions of updates, images, and alerts flooding our minds without synthesis or meaning.

The Hidden Power of Headlines

De Botton shows that the news instructs us daily on what to fear, admire, envy, and desire. It determines our national mood as surely as sermons once shaped believers’ souls. From political scandals to celebrity gossip, it constantly asks: What kind of person deserves attention—and what kind of life is valuable? If religion once urged humility and compassion, the news often rewards outrage and ambition. It replaces salvation with success stories, saints with celebrities, sins with scandals, and miracles with technological breakthroughs.

The author dissects news types one by one—political, economic, world, celebrity, disaster, and consumer reports—to show how each reveals and distorts our desires. Political news teaches cynicism and moral exhaustion; world news flattens foreign suffering into cliché; economic updates glamorize numbers but erase human reality. Even “soft news”—dining and culture—is not neutral, shaping how we measure happiness, love, or success.

Why This Matters to You

You can’t escape the news—it is the water you swim in. Yet de Botton argues that awareness can turn this passive condition into an active exercise in discernment. If you can learn to decode the assumptions behind headlines—the belief in progress, the fetish for novelty, the denial of mortality—you reclaim ownership of your own mind. Reading the news critically becomes a moral and aesthetic act: an effort to choose what deserves to shape you.

He encourages us to ask new questions: What is the purpose of political reporting—to shame or to educate? What should world news evoke—pity or empathy? Can celebrity coverage become a study in aspiration rather than envy? Could consumer reporting guide us toward meaningful pleasure rather than shallow consumption? The news, seen rightly, could be a secular catechism for maturity and compassion.

(Note: In this, de Botton continues a project he began in books like How Proust Can Change Your Life and Religion for Atheists—translating moral questions into secular, everyday terms.)

A Moral Education Through Journalism

Ultimately, the book imagines a reformed media landscape: news that helps its readers become wiser, calmer, and more empathetic. This means slower reporting, contextual storytelling, and psychological literacy. It also means recognizing that, like art, good journalism must sometimes console and uplift as much as it critiques.

The challenge, de Botton says, is not to abandon news but to remake it—and ourselves as its readers. We need to move from anxious consumers to discerning interpreters, able to turn the daily flood of information into genuine knowledge about how to live. That transformation begins, paradoxically, by turning the camera inward: realizing that the news shapes not just how we see the world, but who we become within it.

In one of the book’s opening sections, de Botton explores why we are simultaneously addicted to and bored by political news. We tell ourselves it’s important, yet we rarely feel engaged. The reason, he argues, is that modern news is too fragmented and context-free. Headlines flash past us—‘Tenants’ Rent Arrears Soar in Pilot Scheme,’ ‘Central Bank Adjusts Spending Forecast’—without narrative or meaning. We know they matter somehow but don’t know how to care.

Why Political News Puts You to Sleep

De Botton compares reading such stories to being parachuted into the middle of Anna Karenina—hearing a random courtroom dialogue but never seeing who Anna is or why it matters. Journalism’s obsession with immediacy, he suggests, destroys our sense of structure and proportion. We can’t locate events within a bigger moral or historical story. We are “standing too close to the painting” to recognize the full picture.

He proposes that news organizations act as librarians for our attention, helping readers file each story under meaningful categories like “The Responsibility for Poverty” or “The Psychology of Aid.” Instead, they abandon us to confusion, bombarded by disconnected facts.

Fact versus Bias

Our culture worships “fact” and despises “bias.” But de Botton insists that bias—properly defined—is essential. Every system of thought, from religion to psychoanalysis, frames the world through moral assumptions. The news, pretending to be neutral, only hides its biases—usually toward novelty, scandal, and fear. What we need are intelligent biases: lenses that organize reality and invite interpretation rather than overwhelm us with information.

He imagines news with the thoughtful “bias” of Jane Austen (concerned with motive and morality) or Sigmund Freud (alert to repression and guilt). Instead of data dumps and deadlines, journalism could be a form of civic philosophy, guiding citizens toward understanding rather than noise.

The Political Cost of Confusion

Finally, de Botton warns that confusion is not politically neutral. A population constantly overwhelmed by meaningless updates is easy to govern; dictators wouldn’t need to censor the press, only flood it. By fragmenting issues and shifting topics hourly, the news itself becomes a tool of distraction. Democracy requires depth, repetition, and patience—the very qualities newsrooms are trained to avoid.

“The status quo,” he writes, “could confidently remain forever undisturbed by a flood rather than a ban on news.”

Rather than chastising audiences for apathy, de Botton calls on journalists to reclaim storytelling. The goal is not less information but richer connection—to present politics not as endless chaos but as a human drama about justice, love, and fear. Only then can civic engagement feel emotionally meaningful again.

The news trades in two powerful currencies: fear and anger. According to de Botton, these emotions are not side effects—they are the business model. Every headline about pandemics, corruption, or global collapse is designed to hijack our survival instincts. Yet the resulting agitation doesn’t lead to wisdom or action; it leaves us anxious and paralyzed.

Fear Without Perspective

A meteorite above Russia, a mutant virus in Sydney, “deadly office chairs”—each story is true in a narrow sense but misleadingly framed. The news rarely compares such events to historical baselines or broader probabilities. “Perspective,” de Botton notes, was a breakthrough in Renaissance art; it allowed painters to locate objects within scale. Journalism, by contrast, flattens reality—turning the rare into the catastrophic. It creates the illusion that everything urgent is happening now and everywhere.

When fear is chronic, it erodes gratitude. The remedy isn’t disengagement but perspective—the ability to place disruption in the long rhythm of human continuity. Rome fell, but the world rebuilt; pandemics have come and gone. The news will never remind you of that, because calm doesn’t sell ads.

Anger as Entertainment

Similarly, online comment sections reveal how outrage has become a daily ritual. Viewers are invited to feel morally superior and perpetually betrayed. Each scandal promises catharsis—‘If only they fixed this!’—only to be replaced by the next. The news thus breeds a cycle of hope and disillusionment, offering political realism without compassion.

De Botton traces this dynamic to Enlightenment optimism: the belief that reason and transparency will fix all ills. When change proves slower and messier, the news substitutes outrage for patience. It refuses to acknowledge that some problems—inequality, corruption, mortality—are structural and continuous. Instead, each headline simulates emergency, keeping citizens emotionally aroused but ideologically stagnant.

The Need for Consolation

For de Botton, mature journalism would temper fear and anger with consolation. This doesn’t mean comforting lies but reminders of scale and continuity. Just as religion once offered mourning rituals for humanity’s flaws, the news should occasionally say: “You are right to despair—but this imperfection is normal.” Some stories require sadness, not rage. A truly humane media would balance critique with serenity, teaching us not only what to fight but how to endure.

Investigative journalism loves to play savior—to expose corruption and punish the wicked. De Botton acknowledges its triumphs but questions its blind spots. The fixation on villains distracts from deeper social causes. If a few “bad apples” are removed, he writes, we congratulate ourselves while ignoring the systemic rot that produced them.

The Temptation of Scandal

He recounts how high-profile arrests—politicians ousted for bribes or executives shamed for fraud—offer vicarious moral thrills. Cameras swarm the culprit in pajamas; justice feels cinematic. But beneath this spectacle lies an avoidance of complexity. Most social suffering—housing shortages, demeaning jobs, cultural decay—cannot be pinned on any individual criminal. Yet these issues receive less attention because they resist easy punishment.

The result is what he calls “gaffe journalism”—a hunt for slips of the tongue or small hypocrisies because true problems are harder to define. Scandal becomes surrogate catharsis, a daily exorcism of evil that changes nothing.

The Ethics of Shame

Newsrooms often justify public humiliation as moral correction. But does shame reform character—or merely entertain the crowd? De Botton contrasts this with religion’s idea of redemption: sin exposed, confessed, forgiven. The news, by contrast, freezes sinners in perpetual disgrace. It mistakes embarrassment for ethics.

He urges journalists to see themselves not as police but as “a government in exile,” whose true role is education. The goal of criticism should be to improve social systems, not destroy individuals. Exposing wrong is only the start; reforming understanding is the higher task.

(As Hannah Arendt argued after World War II, evil often arises from banality—the thoughtless routines of ordinary people. De Botton’s version of that insight is journalistic: the real enemy is mediocrity and moral laziness, not simply malice.)

Why do we know so much about global crises yet feel so little? De Botton explores how foreign news overwhelms rather than humanizes. Coverage from Congo, Uganda, or Syria delivers data and horror, but rarely texture—no sense of smell, weather, humor, or daily life. Viewers despair but do not connect.

Information vs. Imagination

Modern journalists assume that ignorance causes apathy, so they respond with more information. But people aren’t ignorant—they’re indifferent because the stories are emotionally sterile. The author argues that empathy depends on imagination, not statistics. Art, not accuracy, makes us care. A novel or photograph that captures mundane humanity in Congo—a father bathing his children, a crowded market—teaches more solidarity than a thousand casualty counts.

He urges news organizations to learn from literature: create characters, context, narrative arcs. Foreign news should not just describe suffering but help viewers identify with the “Other.” Journalism should not fear subjectivity; it should fear indifference.

The Tyranny of the Negative

We only see disasters abroad—wars, famines, coups. Without glimpses of normal life, foreign countries appear doomed and barbaric. De Botton calls this “globalized provincialism,” the illusion that our own culture is center stage and others are perpetual crises. Balanced reporting would alternate chaos with calm—street vendors in Kinshasa alongside rebel commanders, weddings beside war zones. Empathy begins with seeing the ordinary.

If news could borrow art’s power to “extend our sympathies” (George Eliot’s phrase), it might help us build not just awareness but tenderness. True empathy, de Botton notes, begins when we can see ourselves in strangers—not only in their agony but also their laughter.

Why do we obsess over celebrities? De Botton dismantles the easy answer—vanity—and finds something more poignant: a hunger for respect. Fame, he argues, is the secular substitute for divine attention. It promises what many lives lack—recognition, kindness, and dignity. Yet it also feeds suffering, because fame cannot heal the wounds that created the need for it.

The Will to Fame

Fame begins as the wish “to be treated nicely,” a reaction to humiliation. Many who seek it were ignored or dismissed as children. Its pursuit is an attempt to rewrite an old story of neglect. But adoration from strangers cannot replace love from parents. Thus, when fame arrives, it feels hollow. The adored star is still the rejected child, only now with an audience.

In contrast, the truly privileged person is not the famous celebrity but the anonymous adult who feels they matter to at least one other person. A decade of steady love provides more psychological security than a million Instagram followers.

Celebrity as a Mirror of Kindness

Societies with rampant celebrity culture, de Botton suggests, are not shallow but unkind. Where ordinary people are routinely disrespected, attention becomes currency. Fame rushes in to compensate for emotional scarcity. If everyone were treated with basic dignity, far fewer would crave stardom. The cure for celebrity obsession, then, is not censorship but compassion: a culture generous enough that recognition is diffuse, not hoarded by a few.

He inverts moral panic about celebrity gossip: it is not proof of collective stupidity but of collective loneliness. We should judge our societies not by how many people are famous, but by how many feel seen.

Every day brings new horrors—a crash in Nepal, a murder in Manchester, a suicide in Manhattan. Yet de Botton asks: what are these stories for? He distinguishes two uses of catastrophe. The first is voyeuristic: to titillate with horror and reassure us that evil belongs elsewhere. The second is ethical: to remind us of our fragility and capacity for both cruelty and compassion.

From Horror to Tragedy

Drawing from Aristotle’s Poetics, de Botton argues that tragedy teaches empathy by showing us that evil is human, not alien. A murderer, a suicidal doctor, a neglectful mother—these figures in the news could be us under pressure. Tragedy helps us think: “How might I, too, become capable of this?” Horror, by contrast, invites only disgust.

He compares BBC headlines to Greek drama: the difference isn’t content but framing. The Athenians transformed grotesque stories (like Medea killing her children) into reflection. Modern journalism leaves them raw. It lacks the chorus—the moral context—that could guide understanding.

Using Pain as a Mirror

Even accidents, he writes, can clarify values. Reading about a fatal car crash can awaken gratitude for ordinary safety; hearing of sudden death can reorder our priorities, reminding us not to waste time on vanity or resentment. The phrase “memento mori” belongs as much to the newsroom as to monasteries. But instead of inviting reflection, the media fills the gap with updates and speculation. We are stirred but not educated.

The challenge is to read bad news as moral literature—to treat pain not as spectacle but as scripture, teaching us how to be more humane and aware.

To understand a society, watch how it shops. De Botton’s section on consumer journalism reframes lifestyle news as moral philosophy disguised as market advice. Behind every product review or restaurant column, he sees deeper psychological hungers—for calm, confidence, connection, or simplicity. The problem is not materialism itself but its misunderstanding.

Buying States of Mind

When you crave a luxury hotel, you may actually be longing for tranquility; when you want the latest smartphone, perhaps for competence or clarity. Advertising is powerful not because it lies but because it knows this truth better than philosophy. Consumer news could redeem itself, he suggests, by admitting that purchases are attempts at moral self-improvement. It should teach us how to link desires to their real sources rather than mocking or indulging them.

Imagine financial sections organized by virtues—‘Conviviality,’ ‘Resilience,’ ‘Calm’—instead of ‘Travel,’ ‘Gadgets,’ or ‘Fashion.’ This would reveal consumption as a modern ethic of the good life. A restaurant review could become a meditation on generosity; a furniture feature, an essay on serenity.

Material Goods as Teachers

Quoting Zen traditions, de Botton reminds us that material beauty was once a moral tutor. A well-made pot or temple guided the soul toward simplicity. Likewise, the right object today—a humble chair or sturdy jacket—can still cultivate inner order if approached reflectively. The failure of consumer culture is not that it values things too much, but that it refuses to see them as teachers.

“Happy shopping,” he concludes, should not mean shallow pleasure but informed spiritual practice—learning how to spend in alignment with who we wish to become.

De Botton ends by imagining an evolved journalism—one that accepts its power to define reality and uses it for moral repair. The news today cultivates cynicism, he says, by focusing only on chaos and corruption. Like architecture that builds only prisons, it forgets that documenting virtue can also shape the world.

The Need for Hope

In his discussion of British riots, de Botton notes that each violent headline imposes a story of national decay. Yet for every atrocity, there are a thousand quiet acts of generosity—neighbors helping, children learning, systems working—that never make print. He argues that societies don’t collapse from naive optimism but from “media-induced clinical depression.” To stay sane, we need examples of decency—not as propaganda but as instruction.

Like good architecture, journalism should flatter us into moral maturity, showing us not just what we are but what we might be. A hopeful story, even imperfectly true, can expand our capacity for empathy and effort.

Redefining the Function of News

For de Botton, news reform begins with humility. Its real task is not to inform us exhaustively, but to cultivate wisdom. Just as art, philosophy, and religion once taught how to live, a more self-aware news culture could guide citizens toward emotional intelligence. Headlines could inspire gratitude instead of hysteria; photography could teach compassion instead of voyeurism. Journalism could become a secular replacement for scripture—an hourly mirror for our moral education.

The last challenge, then, belongs to us: to consume news as students, not addicts; to read headlines not for distraction but for meaning. The news can only be as mature as its audience—each of us, choosing what ideas to let shape our souls.