I say this as a person who does not follow news, after a decades long news addiction.
In its absence, there is no accountability pressure for any individual or organisational actor. It doesn't matter whether I as an individual know what's going on, nothing I can do anyway, but history is overflowing with societal change being forced to the surface through public scrutiny.
All kinds of horrible things happen when nobody has to look over their shoulder to see who's watching, and very obviously, the legal system is designed only to address escalations, not to generate them.
This is the modern justification of the news given in the 60s, but it ignores all the harm the news does too. For most of the existence of news media, they have been weapons used to push political or ideological themes by the people who could afford to fund them.
It should still be possible for us to have public accountability without a sports and entertainment section. The funding for and publication of investigative journalism is definitely important, but we have not yet found a good model for it yet.
In its absence, there is no accountability pressure for any individual or organisational actor. It doesn't matter whether I as an individual know what's going on, nothing I can do anyway, but history is overflowing with societal change being forced to the surface through public scrutiny.
All kinds of horrible things happen when nobody has to look over their shoulder to see who's watching, and very obviously, the legal system is designed only to address escalations, not to generate them.