via thefederalist:
Political Twitter is easily distracted by stories with a dangerously unbalanced ratio of news value to entertainment value, even more so than the cable networks. (I’m not excluding myself from this.) Because the conversation is driven by coastal journalists who use our accounts for social and professional purposes, there’s a premium on media gossip, insular Beltway chatter, and amusing viral content. Neither of the stories mentioned above speak to broader trends whatsoever.
The problem is that news outlets also use Twitter as an assignment editor, which has the effect of artificially inflating the importance of such stories—in newsrooms, boardrooms, and living rooms.
I still read a couple of my own curated Twitter lists, for the same reason I have to read fake news outlets like WaPo and the NYT. But getting off the platform as a participant is one of the best decisions I’ve made all year.
h/t SG