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One of the things that i decided to do at the start of the year, is to completely stop consuming the news in any shape or form, whether that's newspapers, TV(i haven't watched TV for years, so that wasn't new) or online. I think it was one of the best decisions that i have ever made in my entire life, so i thought I'd write about it.
A lot of people actually don't watch the news because they think that news channels are biased. The term "fake news" has increased a lot in usage over the last few years.But that obviously depends on your political opinions. But my reasons for not watching the news aren't political, quite frankly because i have no interest in politics. The reason i stopped watching the news,is because it has no real utility in my daily life.
It's in the news channel's/newspaper's/website's best interests to keep you addicted to their content
The trust(or lack thereof) you have in a news sources' content may differ according to your political orientation, but one thing that isn't subjective, is the fact that all news sources want to maximise user engagement and attention.
With this in mind, you have to realise that most news sources, regardless of their political leaning or method of delivery(print/TV/online) structure(and modify) their content so as to attract new people, and keep existing consumers hooked.
This is why all news starts off with something sensational, then moves on to something really tragic, and then ends with something vaguely positive. It's an emotional roller coaster, designed to make you constantly think about events that probably have no impact on your daily life.
Why do they do this? One reason could be that they want to project their political beliefs. A more simpler, more likely reason is that they simply want to make more money. If you are addicted to a news source, that increases a effectiveness of any ads they show with their content. This of course means more money.
This is one of the reasons I don't like it when people complain about clickbait on youtube or the web. How can you complain about online clickbait, while happily accepting something which is effectively clickbait in TV and print?
News also skews your perception of risk
This is probably an even worse consequence of watching the news. The news often takes short term, relatively small events and blows them up, while often not giving enough attention to the real horrific tragedies.
A simple example of this is the amount of coverage that plane crashes get, in comparison to car crashes. The chances of dying in a plane crash are 1 in 11 million. In comparison, the chances of dying in a car accident are 1 in 5000.
According to wikipedia, 459 people died in plane crashes in 2013. Do you know the number of people who died in car crashes in 2013? 1.25 million. (the reason i used 2013 as the year is because thats the latest year for which i got car crashes figures).
But yet, every time there's a plane crash, the media turns it into a week-long extravaganza. How many times have you heard the media talk about car crashes, or road safety, or anything related to that?
If you rely on the news for your perception of how dangerous things are, you're gonna get a seriously skewed idea of the world.
Learning about the world is good, but the news doesn't help you learn about the world
One of the arguments people use in favour of consuming the news, is that it's important to "be informed about the world and your country/surroundings". While i agree with that, i don't think the news helps you with that.
If you want to learn about the world as a whole, the best way to do that is to read books. If you want to learn about your local surroundings(city/town), the best way to do that is to actually communicate, to talk to other people near you. The information you get from the people around you will be more valuable than anything you get from the news.
My ideal form of the news
The kind of news i'd read, would be where the news source compiles a list of the actually important things that happened in the current year, write really in-depth, long-form articles on it. And then, at the end of the year, all the articles are compiled and published as a book.
That is what i would read. That would give me all the advantages of the news without all the drawbacks.
I'm interested in hearing other people's thoughts on this idea so please comments your thoughts below. Also of course, if you liked the post, please upvote and resteem it.