Mark Twain wrote: “If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.”
I'm not sure you are necessarily uninformed if you avoid newspapers any more. It's so much easier to hear about what's going on through numerous sources (even if you don't want to) - TV, radio, friends, parents, internet, social media, and we are now more interactively "in control" of our sources.
I have no idea why there has been such an outcry recently over so called "false" news. There has been plenty of false news for years.
Generally the news is rubbish at best and depressing at worse. It serves little point. It is nearly always bad. Or it's just comment or opinion or gossip. It's a waste of time. It's filtered. It is biased. It has an agenda. It's obsessed with wars and terrorism out of all proportion to the reality of 99.9% of the population. It peddles false flags, fear, negativity, and hate, with dubious motives. It's delivered by the sanctimonious BBC dressed up as impartial public information, or the trash gutter press obsessed with soaps, football, immigration, boobs, bombs and booze.
Frankly the sort of "news" delivered by the gutter press is blatant hate speak and I have no idea why it isn't illegal.News is everywhere - streamed constantly in train stations, banks, waiting rooms. It's always live! and breaking! and 24/7, but completely disposable, repetitive and boring. Read a newspaper a week, a month, or a year later, and the news won't have changed. Read the same "redtop" each day and the headlines will blatantly be the same day after day imbuing a constant subconcious indoctrination of the readership. I know it is awful what is going on in some places in the world, but there are no refugee camps of terrorist jihadists in my back garden as the Daily Mail would lead me to believe.
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| There is always a crisis |
News keeps us in a state of fear. I don't know why, or even if this is intentional for reasons of elite power and control of the masses, as conspiracy theorists would maintain, or is it just the human condition that we like to be frightened and shocked, like we would be at a horror movie, so we actually like to read about bad stuff happening, to other people... and only by the grace of god not to us, yet?
But here's a thing. News is actually rare - by definition. If these awful things were happening all the time to everybody, everywhere, it wouldn't be news any more, like heart attacks and car crashes (except big ones at weekends when there isn't anything else to report). Despite the apparent proliferation of shocking news, especially it seems in the last couple of years, statistically we still live in the safest time there has ever been in human history.
But here's a thing. News is actually rare - by definition. If these awful things were happening all the time to everybody, everywhere, it wouldn't be news any more, like heart attacks and car crashes (except big ones at weekends when there isn't anything else to report). Despite the apparent proliferation of shocking news, especially it seems in the last couple of years, statistically we still live in the safest time there has ever been in human history.
I used to read a newspaper - many years ago. It was supposed to be good for you. It meant you were knowledgeable about current affairs. I was even asked current affairs questions in interviews.
Not any more. I gave up the news. I realised it was just depressing and irrelevant. If you want to be optimistic and positive surround yourself with optimism and positivity. Ignore the news. Spend the time doing something rewarding.
Please have a watch of this excellent TED talk by Brighton resident Dr. Bramwell.
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