Reading News isn't good?

IS IT NECESSARY FOR US TO READ THE NEWS?

We are accustomed to thinking of what we refer to as the news as a tool that may assist us in overcoming ignorance: we will be able to correctly comprehend what is going on and where the most significant events are taking place as a result of its updates. We may, however, discover that, if we investigate the role of this phenomena with deeper skepticism, it is just as responsible for blinding us to our own selves as it is for introducing us to the complexities of what we refer to as "reality."

The constant presence of the news, even if it is done subtly, encourages us to lose sight of our true feelings in the wake of certain incidents. Storytelling almost always encourages a particular set of responses: this is outrageous, he's wicked; this is awful; she's victim; they're repulsive... These conclusions may appear totally fair, but only too often, to an extent we are pressured into forgetting, they aren't quite right... We may, in our hearts, strangely but truly, not believe that anything is such a tragedy after all, and we may not care in the least about something that we have been continually urged to believe is important. And we might develop feelings for someone we're supposed to despise. Alternative paths of investigation and response are effectively closed off by the news report.

The news, at its foundation, is hostile to introspection and self-reflection. It despises the idea of us getting to know ourselves better, and it obsessively separates our emotions from their genuine, but often difficult to grasp, targets. When we experience feelings of rage, for example, it takes those feelings and redirects them away from our acquaintances or early care-givers to causes that aren't even important to us. It confines our worries to an ever-changing roster of monsters, and as a result, it prevents us from seeing what we truly need to be watchful about before it's too late to do anything about it.

The news has gained such prominence in our collective consciousness that the rushed judgments of nervous third-rate minds are allowed to influence nothing less than our communal perception of 'normalcy.' When it comes to 'catch up on the news,' it is nearly universally perceived as sensible rather than, as is actually the case, exceedingly unsafe and irrelevant for the most of the time. There is basically little we truly need to know about anything other than what has happened in our own thoughts and in the lives of the 10 or so individuals who rely on us for their well-being.

If we decided — as we should — that we would only check the news once a week from now on, and that the rest of our time would be spent exploring the contents of our souls through meditative thought, we would undoubtedly be made to feel uncomfortably out of place.

While claiming to provide us with information about the state of the world, the news has evolved into a powerful tool for forgetting about ourselves.