6 Reasons Why You Should Not Ignore the News
The other day, I was browsing my way through a personal development forum. I heard people talk about making the most out of their lives. I saw them share new things they had learned. Most of what was said was rather good stuff. That was before I bumped into a post about how, in order to be happier, you should stop following the news.
I have seen that argument many times, and always, at first, it looks like a winning strategy: news only bring you down, so why don’t you just ignore them and focus on something happier.
Often, this suggestion comes disguised as a different wish: There are lots of happy news in the world, so why won’t the newspapers run those stories instead of the dramatic and shocking ones?
I agree that it’s OK to feel good from time to time (maybe even more often than that). But at what cost?
Do we really want to live in an imaginary Matrix world without knowing what is going on in the real one? Would we really feel complete in a world of utopia, where we only see our close, seemingly happy environment, while ignoring the rest?
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I would have to say no.
You can’t make a difference in the world if you don’t know what the world is all about. And you can’t understand life without understanding the place life happens in.
Here are my 7 big reasons why you just can’t ignore the news:
- Know the facts: If you want to be seen as a reliable source for information and a professional who follows the world events, you must know what people are talking about. The longer you keep ignoring the news, the more your information gets outdated.
- Inspiration: For a creative professional, the news serve as an invaluable source of information. If you’re a writer, the news can stir up an interesting novel idea. If you are an entrepreneur, you may find new needs for your company to fulfill.
- Understanding the world: Even conflicts and natural disasters are important for making us question our world views. And questioning your world view is always good. And keep in mind, not all news are about war and crime.
- Knowing what needs fixing: If you want to fix the (or some) problems in this world, the first thing to do is to figure out what the problems are. News are a logical place to start from.
- Being able to make the correct choices: Every day we are forced to make decisions regarding things such as our spending habits, our carbon footprints, our support for developing countries. How can we do that uninformed of the current state of things?
- Seeing if you made the news: Why not? You might well make the news - at least if you know what the world is all about and do something to change tomorrow’s facts.
But it doesn’t have to be all or nothing
I hope that by now you agree that it’s most important to stay informed on what goes on around the world. But what I’m saying is not that you should watch news every night at nine or read the newspaper when you wake up.
Those are both valid options but not the only ones.
Skipping the newspaper in the morning can save you time and money. Not watching evening news can mean that you can get rid of your TV and again save time and money.
But you need to get the information from somewhere. Here are some options:
- Go Tim Ferris and let your friends tell you the news over lunch
- Read the news from the Internet
- Follow news events on Twitter
- Go to specialized news sources: The Oil Drum for oil and energy news, GameDev.net for game development news, and so on
- Check news from a different culture
But even more important than finding the news is getting the background information covered.
Don’t just listen to the news and swallow everything that is thrown at you. Read about biology
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I think when it comes to news, the most important thing is being able to filter out all the crap so that you can truly benefit from news with value.
I tend to bypass a lot of the televised news because often it seems like they care more about getting eyeballs than they do about actually reporting something of value.
I have found online sources for news to be excellent for staying on top of the issues, but they too suffer from being concerned more with traffic than reporting.
I agree it’s good to be in the know. People need to be selective with what news programs and sources they choose to pay attention to. What is “news” to some is not always news to others. It’s important to pay attention to news that is truly newsworthy and not which Hollywood star is dating which other Hollywood star. However you decide to stay up on US and World News — needs to be convenient to you.
Nice topic, especially your point about ’seeing behind the news’. Tim Ferriss explained it eloquently in his “4hr work-week” book: why follow the news, as the world always follows it’s imaginary turn, and you can do nothing about it. It’s sad in itself that there’s so much bad news to bring (earthquakes, war, murders, robberies. But spending 1 hour a day reading up on all bad news in the end only makes you depressed. Just had a 3 weeks offline holiday but didn’t really bother that there were some thing that I missed (addict as I am, I still skimmed through the papers, though… the result being that there was not a lot *that* I missed).
There’s only so many hours in a day, and we have to make wise choices how to spend them. Disclaimer: I haven’t followed Tim’s advice completely through by stopping to read the papers completely, but I’m more skimming, and making trade offs if the article I start to read is *really* something I want to know about at this moment…
my 2 cents
Oh, and as far as no 6: I’ll just have a look at my referals and Technorati status :)
Great post, great points, you’re absolutely right.
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I enjoyed this post. I agree; I don’t think ignorance is the right way to go about anything, I think being able to think about things is more important than being in some permanent state of (ignorance-is) bliss. Your point about “not swallowing everything that’s thrown at you” is also something I agree with- so important. In class right now we’re studying dystopias, and a recurring theme is that despite whether the society is based around pleasure (such as in Brave New World) or pain (Orwell’s 1984) the general population has ceased to think for themselves. Not just reading but also reflecting about the news is a way to prevent this I think. :)
Thank you!
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People should be paying attention to what they feed to their body, but even more concerned with what they feed their mind. I think its important to keep on track of things, but still: propaganda is what the news is partly about. You wanted it or not. Therefore your note about seeing behind the news is really valuable.
I have been living without the news for a year now. Still I do get most of the news from some source. Simply because ppl talk about them.
The biggest reason I skip the TV news: repeated lies eventually become the truth.
@Veera: What makes you think TV news are propaganda? I don’t watch them either, but that’s only because we don’t have a TV :)
I would also be worried if my only source for news was other people because then I would be relying completely on their interpretation of the news. Don’t you think so?
I agree with you that you shouldn’t ignore the news. But like Veera says, the big events are hard to miss anyway because they become the talk of the day.
The trick is to be selective with your news sources. I clearly remember a couple of weeks ago, when I was surfing the tv channels and ended up with CNN. The program on the air was “The Situation Room” with Wolf Blitzer. I ended up watching it for 15 minutes, and it gave me a renewed insight in the fact that news channels are centered about pleasing the viewer.
My first real experience with CNN was when the first Gulf War developed. I remember that clearly, up to date news, a developing story, in a slick display with visual and audio effects (”suspence music”). It really sucks you into it, but that was a real story.
Now back to The Situation Room, 10+ years later. The same kind of setting, even more technologically advanced, with that suspence music in the background. I instantly thought something major had happened, but I got my share of news over the different pronunciations of Pakistan, Taliban and Nevada by Obama and McCain. And a guy reading emails on television on the question what the GOP should do to get the young voters (”Support the Obama campaign, LMAO” made it to the air).
It was worthless crap, presented as “follow this on the edge of your seat, because this is world changing news”. Definitely giving you the feeling of being on the edge of unfolding events…even when there are none!
Yeah definitely choose your sources, and diversify them to get different perspectives and build your own view.
Trivia: Wolf Blitzer didn’t know what LMAO meant. Cafferty chuckled and said he’d tell him after the show because it was too naughty for television!?
I am very picky when it comes to news sources. I haven’t had telly for some time so I get my news feed from couple websites. Sometimes I check those free newspapers on the way to work but generally they are rubbish.
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I never turn on the TV here in South Africa, it is just so depressing and the same violent news all the time.
I’m very active on Digg and Reddit so I do see some of the most important news, with a bit of humour and entertainment in between.
You do make some great points though :)
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My approach for years has been the “Tim Ferris” approach (I wonder if he used it back then). I let my friends talk about news either face to face or on the net, and then I go look up the things that are relevant to me at the moment. Too much news only gets me bogged down.
I think news _are_ a Matrix too. They do not give a balanced reliable image of the world we live in. Quoting Make to Stick: Astma kills 80 times more people yearly in USA than tornadoes. But you’d never get that impression from the news unless you go digging for details yourself. Living in a rural community you’d only head about the lion killing people if it was at a reasonable killing distance, but the modern news bring us all the horrible stories so that we can all worry about getting beheaded in a bus…
Great post, I’ve just found this website and it’s looking really good so far - I really like the comments that people make they seem much more thoughtful than the comments on most blogs.
For several years I didn’t watch the news or get much of it from any other source. But now I realised it wasn’t going to help anyone to ignore what’s going on in the world. So I’ve started paying more attention to world events and the state of the world in general, now I am a lot more interested in helping people and have started making efforts to do so. That’s one example of news having a positive impact.
Lynoure, I love your statement “I think news _are_ a Matrix too”. You definitely need to engage in critical thinking when watching the news. I saw a story in a new zealand paper saying that “1/3 of all children here live in poverty” - my first thought was “I can’t believe I didn’t know about this, can this really be true?”. As it turns out they were talking about relative poverty rather than absolute poverty, but they didn’t actually mention this anywhere in the article.
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Out of my little group of friends, Im the only one that watches the news. Actually, I think Im one of the few 16 year olds at my little community that watches the news. But you have to really be careful on what you watch like everyone else stated; some news is more biased than others. It’s hard to even watch TV in my house anymore though, my old man is always watching some game…. I have to flip the channels at a local pool hall, even then do my friends get pissed.. good post though
@Andy: Good to hear that there are 16-year olds who are interested in following world events!