In rare emergency situations, such as floods or earthquakes, I watch a TV news show for a few moments. Other than that, I stopped watching TV news 20 years ago. I stopped listening to news on the radio 15 years ago. These days, I tend to get 100% of my news from the Internet, spending less than 15 seconds a day skimming the news; and I suspect I am not alone. I am a judgment broker who writes a lot.
A long time ago, radio and TV news was much more important for reasons that included back then, there was less choice about what to watch on TV. And, before the Internet, TV and radio news was the fastest way to learn what was happening worldwide. The Internet ruined the newspaper business, and conventional radio stations are finding it more difficult to stay profitable. These are five reasons I do not watch TV news or listen to radio news:
1) Media news often exaggerates, and may even occasionally lie. Consistently, every news source or anchor seems to say almost the same thing. Sometimes later, the facts seem to indicate that the real story was somewhat different. News cannot avoid covering topics with selective bias and/or selective indignation, which omits some news, and focuses on a limited number of topics.
2) Even if TV and radio news was 100% accurate, it just does not seem to apply to me. I prefer to focus on good things, and what I can do now and in the future. I do not focus on what the world does or does not do. Why worry about what I cannot change?
3) Media news is constantly repeated, sometimes in mind-numbing detail, often for trivial topics. Most news topics do not improve from knowing all the details, however media news seems to dig to find trivia, and present it as being important to understanding the main concepts of the story.
4) Just like newspapers, TV networks and stations, and radio; we get the same news, much faster on the web. There, we can catch up on the news while watching TV, a movie, listening to music, etc.
5) Media news is often disturbing, biased, and celebrity-centric. These are things I prefer not to focus on. If I watch TV news, I watch it only in short and fun doses, for example clips and discussions on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, or the Colbert Nation show with Stephen Colbert.
The Internet is changing our world as much as electricity did. News is something we want to know the full details about, only for topics that interest us, and that is best accomplished on the web. You can set Google News, and other news portals, to show you just the news stories that interest you.
TV and radio news may work best by sticking to the headlines. Maybe if TV and radio media news just offered headlines, and had several good comedians telling lots of jokes in each show, that would persuade me to tune in again.
Mark D. Shapiro, a judgment broker at JudgentBuy, and I never watch the news.
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