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How much should I care about news? (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 10 months ago by Danterious@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/chat

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I read this article recently and I was just thinking about my news consumption and how much I want to be affected by it.

I feel like it is important because shit is going on in the world however I usually don't change my habits much over it.

I also think that there should be a middle ground somewhere but I can't think of it so if anyone of you have ideas please share them.

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[–] Evkob@lemmy.ca 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Personally what I've found works for me is to focus on news that's local to me, the more local the better. So I start with news about my municipality, then my province, then my country, and I try to keep it at that for the most part. Of course, world news slips through, especially American politics, but I try to keep it at bay as much as possible.

I honestly had a bit of a nervous breakdown around the start of the war in Ukraine, doomscrolling through articles and updates everyday. I realized I needed to dial back and tried to cut out all news, and that just ended up making me more anxious. Focusing on local news has been the Goldilocks zone for me. I'll still consume stuff about world news occasionally, but it's usually in a way that relates to my country, for example articles about Canada's support of Israel on the world stage.

Some news sources are definitely more inflammatory than others. I'm also of the opinion that television news in general is a farce, to the extent that the best "journalists" on TV in recent memory have been comedians like Jon Stewart and John Oliver.

[–] Danterious@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Why did cutting out all news make you anxious?

[–] Evkob@lemmy.ca 8 points 10 months ago

I'm francophone and queer living under a conservative provincial government that dislikes francophones and queers, I do like to be on top of what rights they're trying to attack this week.

Apart from that, I guess a general sense that you need to know what's wrong if you want to fix it. Am I aware that I'm ultimately powerless to fix societal woes? Yeah, that's why I cut back on the news, but cutting it out completely feels like giving up any hope of fixing anything. That's just too much of a downer for me.