Now is not the time to give up on the news

January 22, 2017 — by Amy Tang

If you really believe that ignorance is bliss, then go ahead and stop reading the news. Otherwise, although willful ignorance may feel like bliss, being uninformed about your community, your city, your country and the world around you is more likely to be hurtful than helpful.

 

If you really believe that ignorance is bliss, then go ahead and stop reading the news. Otherwise, although willful ignorance may feel like bliss, being uninformed about your community, your city, your country and the world around you is more likely to be hurtful than helpful.

Instead of crawling under a rock in despair — and the temptation is certainly understandable these days — change the way you read the news. Be a more active reader and a more active citizen. If you see a story that upsets you, dig deeper and find information about the root causes of it. Or even better, see if there’s a way you can take action, based on what you see in the news, to make your life or others’ lives better.

Look at the news differently. Even “negative” news can be read with a less depressing spin. A story about an arrest or a conviction is a potential bad guy off the street. Politicians arguing with each other is simply democracy in action.

Also, staying up to date on the news is beneficial to your  safety. If there is a hazard in the area, but you are not aware of it, your life could be at risk.

Regarding “fake news”: As long as readers carefully select where they are getting their information from (for example, CNN instead of BuzzFeed) people will realize that staying up to date on current events is an integral part of being an educated citizen.

Ultimately, as with anything, this is more about your own mindset than about the news. People who perceive the news negatively will become sad and cynical, and those who treat it as mere information become robots, processing the information without empathizing with  those who are suffering. Perhaps this is why engaging with daily news is so important; it allows us to connect with stories and people all around the globe.

Tuning out of the news is a cowardly move; simply ignoring problems like global warming or poverty or racial injustice will not make them go away. Those who choose not to read the news need to understand that reality does not cease to exist just because they ignore it.

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