hold the press
I no longer read the news.
I don't read a newspaper, or check news websites, or listen to news podcasts, or watch news on TV, or follow any news accounts on social media.
That doesn't mean I have no contact at all with what's happening in the world, but it does mean I avoid or ignore most attempts by people I don't know to tell me about it.
I used to check national news websites fairly regularly. When I became more involved with politics, I started to turn away from the big sites and read news articles shared by other people in my network, which was usually from a much wider range of sources. Large and small media organisations, special interest publications, international sites, etc. This meant "the news" was no longer the aggregate headlines of a handful of major publishers. It became something much more like a mosaic, composed of many different perspectives and emphases.
I also ended up working for a major news organisation for some time. A peek behind the curtain was enough to turn me away from so-called mainstream news for good. It turns out there's not a lot of serious journalism left in the newsroom, despite the image it projects.
After I'd given up on the mainstream news media, I spent some years following just a few independent media organisations. They would generally go into more detail and discuss topics at greater length. But, eventually, I accepted the fact that I just couldn't keep up with so many different topics at once.
As I turned away from politics - at least, capital 'P' politics, the politics I had known - and my life became busier for other reasons, checking the headlines receded more and more into the background, until things reached the point where I just needed to give it a little push, and the news disappeared from my life.
A part of that little push was reading Rolf Dobelli's aptly titled 'Stop Reading The News' - a polemic that challenges the indispensability of the news. The central argument is not that we should bury our heads in the sand and isolate ourselves. It's simply that there are far better, and more sincere, ways to really understand something about the world. Books, long-form writing, real investigative reporting.
Here are the points from the essay I found most convincing:
- Almost all news is a poor source of information. Anything that's worth understanding will be more complex than the news is able to convey.
- The news industry sustains itself by contriving a false sense of urgency. It's not trying to inform you of current affairs, it's trying to monetise your attention.
- News media is largely irrelevant. Only a tiny fraction of what's reported has any real relevance to you and the people you care about.
That last point can be a little hard to swallow and usually prompts all kinds of protest. An interesting question to ask is "How many news reports over the last ten years directly influenced the important decisions in your life?" Probably, the answer is zero, or close to it. Even if it were as high as ten, the question then becomes one of proportion. Is it really worth suffering the relentless torrent of news content in case you miss one significant report per year?
My answer is no.