Today I am wondering why I bother watching the news. It's so depressing.
I never really grew up watching the news, except for maybe the morning news shows before I went to school. But the last couple of years Ryan and I watch the news nearly every night. Before I had Joe I would spend the day writing or reading with CNN Headline News on in the background.
Whenever the local news comes on and they say "Breaking News" Ryan always says, "It's either a house fire, a car accident, or a shooting." He's usually right. There is rarely ever breaking news that a child was cured of cancer or that a father of 4 finally returned home after a 15 month tour of Iraq.
There are chilling mugshots of murderers flashed on the screen. (Have you seen the mugshot of the alleged shooter of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords? That smirk, those eyes- it's pure evil.) There are stories of people losing their homes to fires or natural disasters, getting scammed, abusing animals, killing infants, abusing children and elderly folk. There are stories of wars, bombings, big companies screwing over common people. It makes me wonder why news shows are still on. Why do people keep turning on their TV sets to see these sad stories? It makes me think we are on the verge of the end of the world. I know there is evil in this world, but it just seems like that is all the news reports.
So why do Ryan and I watch it? Mostly for the weather and sports. Plus we live out in the sticks, so we like to know what is going on in the world. I also like hearing the heart-warming human interest stories. They give me some hope for humanity!
Maybe I will stop watching the news and stick to getting my info from the Internet- at least I can skip the headlines that will give me nightmares.
Do you watch the news or do you stay away? What do you think of all the sadness?
7 comments:
I have always watched the news because I think it's important to know what's going on, to be an informed citizen of our country and the world. Just because we don't read about/watch something doesn't mean it's not happening, you know?
I agree that all of the sad news can be really heartbreaking, though, and wear you down. I think the positive side is that the reason all this sadness IS considered "news" is because it is unusual. That is much better than the other way around!
I think 24 hour news has ruined "news". But that's just my opinion.
I watch the weather and I watch the sports. I don't turn on the news too terribly often...but get most of it on the internet (newspaper online, etc.)
Exactly why I don't watch the news! Way more sad news than happy news! I still can't stay away from it completely though, because my grandma insists on telling me the worst things that have happened which usually involves children. I just can't handle hearing about stuff like that.
I most definitely don't watch the news because I know who funds them and I find it very wrong that news stations can be "bought" to give whatever story they are told and then present them as facts. Most of the time I watch the news I am yelling "Liar liar!" at the t.v. haha, I just can't handle it. I get the majority of my news from the internet but I make sure not to get them from search engines such as yahoo, google or mozilla who control every search result with bias. The other portion of our news we get is from radio shows that we subscribe to who we have found to have the most accurate information with the least amount of gain and profit to be had. You should try what Mike and I do, we use "our" news sources and find topics then he will take a few and I will take a few and gather as much information as we can on them making sure to get both opinions because there are always two sides. Then we share with each other. Most of the time I go to books and therefore I'm reading like three books at any given time. We don't have t.v. so this is just something we do for fun! It is always surprising what we "uncover". And rarely is it ever good is the sad thing!
I thought you watched the news so you could see me!!
It is so depressing isn't it? I only catch it on the internet and then catch the TRUE religious news on EWTN.com. I think the world has gone mad!
Ha, this is another topic that I have a draft of in my blog file! I'm totally with you that the news is depressing. I mostly just ignore it, which I don't think is exactly the right way to go about it, but that works for me for now.
For a while I did think I needed to be more informed and so I started just getting news from Catholic sources (since everyone has a bias, I at least would know theirs!), but even that was too much after a while. I got tired of all the sad abortion stories and a bit annoyed by the Obama bashing.
So now I keep a variety of news headlines on my Google homepage, so I at least have a vague idea of what's going on, but I generally don't read the actual stories.
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