Great article on Charlie’s Diary: PSA: Ignore the news
[…] publicly available news media in the 21st century exist solely to get eyeballs on advertisements. That is its only real purpose. The real news consists of dull but informative reports circulated by consultancies giving in-depth insight into what’s going on. The sort of stuff you find digested in the inside pages of The Economist.
First, there’s photographic evidence and rumour. Then there’s some initial information—immediate numbers of dead and injured, scary photographs. But the amount of new information coming out tapers off rapidly after the first hour or two, and gives way to rumour and speculation.
Seriously, once you start noticing the pattern you’ll see that this happens with everything. I even saw a 30 minute long video posted by a “friend” on facebook today about how the Sandy Hill massacre (you know, a bunch of children killed by a nutcase) was in face perpetrated by the government (and covered up) to help ban assault rifles and continue on the world government. Or something. The 10 minutes or so I could stand of the video (think tin foil hat folks) was basically piecing bits and pieces of news from different networks and different times and you could just tell that they were grasping at straws and using what kids were telling the news right after it.
Anyway, it was disgusting and you should stay away from the 24 hour news stations. Seriously, you’ll be happier. De-friend stupid people on facebook as well.