A fucking mental story.

Had I kept up with the news I be aware of this hurricane coming....

There's a hurricane?

As it is with most things in life, both extremes are flawed and selfish. You could argue that keeping up with the news too often equates to sticking your head in the sand, as you basically let yourself get swept away with whatever the news channels tell you to care about. You end up becoming afraid (as violent crime is seriously over reported, resulting in many people believing that violent crime in America is on the rise, when in fact it has been declining for awhile) and obsessed with sensationalism, as media outlets constantly report whatever seems most shocking, relying on scaring people to boost the number of viewers ("Someone was shot in a city yesterday, and if you don't tune in to our interview with someone who wrote a book about getting mugged once, YOU'LL BE NEXT!"). Not only that, but you also become susceptible to each media outlet's bias, as they try to pander to the political leanings of whoever produces them. And half of the time, the sources aren't even checked with any serious scrutiny, as each outlet races to be the first to print whatever crazy stuff is thrown their way, which means a lot of the "information" is completely false and useless.

And yet it's necessary for most people to find some avenue of keeping up with current events, to find the information that you should know about (a nasty earthquake is predicted to happen in the near future, the area that your friend lives in is being ravaged by a forest fire, etc.).

So I would say that rather than decide to always or never watch the news, it's best to try to find the middle ground. Check multiple outlets every now and then, and try to not rely solely on one.

I've never watched the news deliberately or longer than 5-10 minutes except the live footage during 9/11. I don't care about anything they have to say. Some event like a horse being rescued from a river might grab my attention but I'm certainly not gonna tune in to find out. I hardly even watch tv.

What if it's a horse being rescued from a lake?

I can definitely understand that point of view. Plenty of people have been disillusioned/disinterested with the media for quite some time now, and they have good reason to feel that way. But keep in mind that 'the news' isn't always just watching a channel on TV; it's literally any avenue of information that provides you with what's 'new' in the world. Anything from reading stories posted online, to simply talking with people about current events, is a way of learning about local and world events. You could even say that JWB's monthly "How do you guys feel about ____?" threads count as news sources. So it's possible to find information that you care about without turning on the TV and having pundits yell at you. :laughing:

And now, it's time for the obligatory posting of Dirty Laundry...

Coming soon. Had I watched the news my friend and I would have known, that some ******* shot up a news anchor on live t.v. this morning. Why this pertains to me, it is eerily similar to the Mr Robot finale which was why the **** my friend came over. Now due to the amount of grass smoked prior to the finale party we watched 10 minutes of last week's episode before they kindly put 10 pt white type across the screen saying postponed until 9.2. 15. Hats off to you Mr. Robot for the decency not to air the episode out of respect for the victims familes. What's creepy is the finale was prerecorded and just happens to contain the same thing. **** you disgruntled ex news caster, and I love the fact that Mr.Robot practices what the **** it preaches, I'll be buying a shirt, hat, mug, whatever the **** else you've just sold my tiny consumer mind.

i dont watch news on tv or anything like that

i go on youtube and find crazy **** that way

What if it's a horse rescuing another horse from a river?

Over here we don't really have too much in the way of media bias, as our national news stations are mostly semi-state. I do like the way that, even when there's a bad news story about itself, our national channel, RTE, will report it, ie "RTE has been fined for misreporting a story", or "The wages of RTE presenters came under fire today in the Dail" (our House of Commons/Congress). One guy even had to read out that his OWN wages were seen as too high: that must have been embarrassing, but they didn't shy from it. They're also well able to take govt figures on, no matter which side of the fence they are, as well as opposition ones. They're pretty balanced as a whole I feel.