media - "The more information you have, the less you know"

Rebecca MacKinnon is investigating the influence of weblogs on the news coverage of China. (If you are a journalist who covers China, please click here to take a survey about the extent to which you use blogs as part of your story research). That brings ESWN in a reflective mood and he comes up with some great quotes.
A section from Peter Hessler's book: Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present (p. 302-303).:

In a typical foreign bureau, Chinese assistants searched local newspapers for potential stories, and they received tips from disgruntled citizens.
When something dramatic caught the foreigner's eye, he pursued it; child-selling in Gansu, female sterilization in Guangxi, jailed labor activists in Shandong. The articles appeared in American newspapers, where the readers couldn't solve the problems and didn't have the background necessary to keep everything in context. It was like the Fuling textbook: sometimes, the more information you have, the less you know. And there is a point at which even the intentions become voyeurism.
I didn't want to write such features, which meant that the main appeal of working for a newspaper was news. And news in China seemed pointless: the country changed every year, but the pace was steady and it moved subtly. There weren't any great leaders, and supposedly important events like the plane dispute fizzled out; they were like splashes of foam on the surface of a massive sea change. We had escaped history; news no longer mattered. Brave new world.

Buy Hessler's book here