Why I Don’t Watch the News
I have a coworker who is always going on about something, be it oil prices or a pandemic bird flu. He does this because, in my opinion, he’s buying into everything that the popular media tells him. I know other people like him who are all hooked on some kind of daily news, be it through newspapers, television, radio, internet, or whatever suits their fancy. Frankly, I try to avoid the lot of it.
No, I’m not a naive American who thinks that nothing is going on outside of my own microcosm. I’m actually happy to know what’s happening in the world at large and how it impacts me. However, I’ve come to believe that the news as a whole does not deliver this. Rather than reporting items of importance, the news is fixed on selling itself through sensationalism and scare tactics.
Don’t believe me? Have you ever seen commercials for the evening news? They give you snippets of information that is framed as vital to your daily life, urging you to tune in. It’s filled with new scientific breakthroughs and celebrity fitness secrets and other propaganda. It’s designed to excite you in one way or another so that you stay hooked and keep coming back.
More to the point, though, I have come to believe that watching the news is unhealthy. Knowing what’s going on in the world is great, but actually consuming the news will inevitably kill you through stress. Of course, you’ll never hear about the scientific studies that might prove this, because reporting it would kill their ratings. Make no mistake; the news industry is in the business of keeping you addicted, and they’ve gotten very good at what they do.
Thus, I don’t watch the news. I feel that I’m a happier person for doing so, even if it does cut me off from important information from time to time. I still keep an eye on things that I consider important through news providers who I believe to care more about the quality of their content than their revenue (e.g. Slashdot). It would be nice if other agencies would follow examples like this, but, with the state of the American media, I doubt that this will happen any time soon.