Do you NOT watch the news?

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Not that I don't hear about the latest terrorism/mass shooting etc. Or local news violence or world news (I at least walk into the living room and it seems to always be on.)

Parents thinking OMG! we are going to war over the ISIS Paris drama.

The Paris flag as logos everywhere.

BUT!

I don't actually turn on the news to watch it!

I will glance around Yahoo! and see what's up if I so choose but I rather click happy laughing baby videos or silly puppies/animals than OMG! violence!

Not sure it's that I don't care. Should I care?

While the victims get a passing mention I do dig around for Yahoo! articles after the events and find out ABOUT THE VICTIMS! Shocker! and the tragedy they faced while society and the news is more worried about finding out WHO and WHY the killer/s did what they did!

Everything from Giffords having a helmet and using a shopping cart to learn to walk again etc. Boston event people losing limbs 1+ year later finally married trying to walk are such happy articles to read far past the tragedy date 1+ year out.

A girl from Newtown rubbed blood on herself to look 'dead' so she possibly wouldn't get shot it saved HER LIFE!

But NOPE society! Lets focus the news on the WHY and HOW and WHO did this right?

Also I have a great neighborhood! I don't need to worry of local violence thrown about on local news!

Any happy local news????? Any at all???

Can anyone relate? Is it wrong not to watch the news? I hear you should know what's going on outside in the world but if the world is so cruel and bad and violence at every turn (if news is to be believed) I rather avoid it and live my life try to be happy instead of dragged down and depressed about what's going on in society.

Plus HONESTLY I have a Criminal Justice degree and the statistics say you are more likely to be killed by family than *insert psycho violence anyway!*

I read the news online but honestly wish I didn't most of the time. Violence and sensational headlines are what get the views/ clicks, so it stands to reason that "if it bleeds, it leads" is an old maxim in journalism. I'm happier when I don't read the news.

I keep trying to convince my mum not to have the news on in the morning because it's noisy when I'm still half asleep and I don't want to watch the news at all, especially not in the morning.

People have to know what's going on in the world.

The US frequently doesn't report enough on the world--they usually only report on themselves.

I stopped reading and watching the news 20 years ago, when I finally noticed a correlation between my obsessive interest in current events (including politics) and my lengthy bouts of extreme anxiety, anger, and depression. My moods improved and became more stable after that. Additionally, I started to get along better with other people (especially coworkers) when I stopped involving myself in their discussions about current events (because I no longer believed that I had an 'informed' opinion to offer).

Prior to that, starting at around the age of 10, I avidly read all the news I could get my hands on, and watched the TV news as often as was permitted in our family (my parents tended to push us all away from the television as much as possible). Unfortunately, this lead to somewhat dogmatic and annoying behaviour in conversations with other people, as well as frustration, isolation and anger on my part.

Now, I read about current events, but I also try to remember that much of what is reported is missing key information, is motivated by undisclosed bias, and is either a distortion of the actual facts or is outright fiction. Also, because news is a commodity that is for sale, there is a built in bias for the sensational, unusual, and the anxiety-provoking. Ironically, reading or watching the news can build a very distorted sense of what is happening in our world.

I find it's worked best for me to temper all of my current events news consumption with recently published accounts of history, particularly ones which are based on information that has been newly revealed by technological advances or (in many cases) the release or discovery of previously classified government documents (or corporate or personal documents). As I'm addicted (currently) to science news, a lot of what I do read is filtered through the minds of people who tend toward a more forensic approach to learning about and analyzing events.

I've had a lot of UNlearning to do over the years, and I don't doubt that this process will continue for as long as I live.

After all, as Mark Twain is quoted as saying "It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble.
It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so."

I don't make a point to watch it. It makes me angry and gets me down.

The barrage of bad news, the biased and sensational reporting, the celebrity news and other twaddle... It raises my blood pressure without even really raising my awareness, because there's so much spin and outright propaganda.

It's ALL spun. MSM spins it. WND/Alex Jones spin it. BuzzFlash spins it. Bloggers spin it. Everyone spins it. I guess all it's really good for is ToM practice.

Can't avoid it though. I do tune in for the weather and traffic report-- and have to watch major stories to get there. I find it here, and on other boards. It comes over the radio. You can't get away from the news.

I can get away from the news by going away for the weekend to a cabin.

I almost never watch the news. I got rid of my TV years ago.

As I see it, the Internet is a vastly superior source of information (once you learn to filter out all the BS), as it is possible to *link* to additional material/the original source, present interactive content etc.

Why, then, watch TV? Or read printed papers? Or listen to the radio?

I also read very fast, so I find it annoying having to watch a several minute TV segment in order to acquire the same information I can get from a written source in a few seconds.

I only read the news, mostly the European press online. TV news bulletins have become so much like entertainment that I don't believe what they're saying. The newsreaders are like actors in a soap.

If anyone is interested in reading a selection of the European press, there's an excellent site called VoxEurop. Here's the link: www.voxeurop.eu

It's totally free, and can be read in about 10 different languages, including English. You can read the original article if you want, as well as the translated version. It's fascinating to see what the various EU countries' press think of events in other countries ... very enlightening.

The only news I get is from FARK headlines. http://www.fark.com/

news stations are a business like any other: they want more customers.

combine that with how negative emotion causes a bigger response. if they keep finding storys that are "tragic", more people will read and buy their stuff.

I don't watch the news, but I do like to stay informed so I do follow a couple of news websites...the BBC and Al Jazeera(yes weird name but has pretty good international news that is somewhat balanced) those are the main ones right now.

But yeah I don't even watch t.v. mostly because of commercials.

My spouse and I stopped during the era when all the old-school television journalists were replaced with beautiful people who had no clue about what they were reading off the teleprompter. It was over maybe a five year period & then none of the local metro area stations had any investigative journalists left. We followed their blogs at the time and learned that their investigation skills were no longer valued; rather all story decisions would come from a corporate office, usually in another state. Same era that all the big name political television reporters dropped out, too. Our TV's are far more likely to be used as pc monitors or to view movies now; displaying actual television shows from the local PBS station maybe 3-4 times a year.

Personally, I like to read my news, from multiple sources.

Didn't hear about it until the next morning, was busy on the computer or sleeping through the day.

i am a news junkie. i get my news fro NPR and from the internet. i don't find it depressing. i sign petitions and call my congressmen and women. it gives me a sense of involvement.

While in school, I was always shamed in my social science class for not watching the (especially political) news.
And I still don't watch them! Ha!

Well, sometimes when I have the chance to peek into a newspaper or whatever, I look at it, or when my mom has the TV on, sometimes I get on the sofa and watch a bit, but not in a planned regular fashion.