Do you Still Watch/Read the News?
I haven’t watched the TV news regularly for a good 2 years now. I do occasionally read the newspaper, but mostly enroute to crossword/sudoku…though I do listen to what people are talking about, and if need be will run a quick search and skim, for the most part, I find it easy enough to be well informed and live my life "news free".
When I first started I didn’t know many people who were doing the same but lately I have been hearing more and more people who simply stop watching/reading. Which is saying a lot about the type of ‘news’ that we currently get bombarded with, and our (in)ability to do anything about it except perhaps get depressed/afraid.
If you also have stopped would be interested in learning why!
I look forward to the reminder/memory that news doesn’t need to be bad – that news is simply ‘something new’ and could be good too! [See below for two examples] An old idea but to be honest, think how might y/our world work look and feel and seem and respond differently if the news seem was of a more pleasant and fun variety.
In any case, I have shifted a bit from crying wolf to sharing my thoughts, protecting myself from terrible upsetting images while also making sure I am aware of world affairs, and paying attention to our ever changing world: It will be interesting to see the changes that are in store for traditional media sources and how these large agencies/organizations respond, though they are already…news is being given back to the individual, at least online… Radio has the opportunity to sustain itself because as human’s we have a long history and memory of oral storytelling…
Looking forward to hearing your good news!
In the meantime, if you are missing the news here are two places to read some good news:
- Good News Day: True and good story from Dilbert – sent to me by my friend Thomer
- Good News Broadcast: a broadcast about, you guessed it, Good News
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November 5th, 2006 at 4:02 am
Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock. –Ben Hecht
In 1997 I was doing IT for a publishing company which was entertaining the idea of taking money and software from a big software company in exchange for publishing a certain number of favorable articles about that company per year. It was the first, firsthand experience I had with something like that and from that time onward I stopped trusting anything I read in a publication which had any bottom-line concerns (particularly those owned by corporations).
I stopped reading news wholesale somewhere after Sept 11, in part because of the appalling nature of the US news coverage of that event and its ramifications. I was traveling to Europe somewhat frequently then for conferences, and I saw the difference in news coverage between the US and Europe. Prior to that I still felt some kind of civic obligation to read the news. After that, I started thinking no one should be obligated to read garbage.
I don’t think we should be surprised that the journalistic output of our major media outlets kinda stinks. Most outlets are owned by companies now and companies ultimately only care about money (high-sounding rhetoric aside, during lean financial times companies always operate in a way to save themselves, which means sacrificing anything except money — and we shouldn’t expect anything else from them, because that’s what they’re *supposed* to do). Many of the major organizations have offices at places like the Pentagon, so that “journalists” can walk down the hall, listen to a press conference, walk back to their office, and “report” on the “latest developments.” It’s easier and saves everybody time and money, but totally sacrifices the journalism. That’s the state of things in the US with corporate-owned media.
So, anyway, I take that Ben Hecht quote to heart. You don’t have to read the news every day. If anything, there are enough people on the street parroting the news that if you talk to people you get a sense for what was on TV and in the papers. But also, if your aim is to understand the world, you’re not going to get that kind of understanding from newspapers anyway, so why waste your time?