Reading News

What exactly is the news? this is the most basic definition:

Information on the events around the world.

• A missle launched from iran
• A 34 year old women stab her own mother
• there are thousand people in sudan dying because of hunger
• Trump says he has 'a group of very wealthy people' to buy TikTok

Sometimes the media mark some of these as "breaking news". that said, they mostly irrelevant to your personal world.

Here, i dont wanna write much about the benefits of the news. I think people mostly agree on these two things about its benifits:

1. it helps me stay informed! it gives me better context about the world, and because of that i can make better decision in my life.
2. It expands my knowledge in general. i hear and watch about many topics everyday. Fast & easy!

Now let's think about its possible drawbacks in the headlines below:

false sense of empathy

I’ve always felt a kind of social responsibility to stay informed about the news. Every second you’re reading this blog post, there’s some kind of atrocity or tragic event happening somewhere in the world. And even if I can’t do anything to stop it, I feel like I should at least acknowledge it — as if simply being aware is a moral obligation.

I feel empathy by that.

The problem is quite obvious: taking an interest by simply consuming news doesn't solve anything. Genuine concern requires action.

If you truly care about the fate of victims of some bizarre event, donate your money to those who know where and how to provide practical help.

Now, you might say: "So just take action! Why are you pointing fingers at the news?"

The answer is this: when we tune into the news, we're constantly confronted with unresolved problems that we personally cannot solve. This can be overwhelming. I don’t claim this as an absolute truth, but personally, when I consistently follow the news, I find myself too drained to focus my energy on things I can actually influence.

There are two main ways you can genuinely help:

1. Practical Work – Crafting or contributing to a solution.
2. Donating – Supporting organizations that are equipped to act effectively.

So yeah, ironically, I believe it’s often better to be less informed about global events if it allows you to do more and be truly helpful where you can.

News barely explains anything in the world

Brief reports(Which is the essense of the news) are a tiny pieces of information--mostly without the context--that barely even scratches the serface around any issue.

If you regularly consume the news, you will get under the illusion that you can undrestand the world.

This illusion often results in over-confidence. People who deliberately and regularly consume news are annoying. They're experts in all domains of questions that you might ask. Specially if it's the controversial one:

What's the cause of the war between Israeil and Iran?

What's the cause of the war in Syria?

All the necessary skepticism and caution are washed away in these kind of people, by the flood of cheap information.

You don't wanna be like this. Reading long articles or books are much better options, mostly because 1. They are less cheap to produce 2. They actually give you the context about the issue. It takes more time, focus and enegry, but as a result, you will have a better and clearer vision of the world around you.

It's 10x harder, but also 10x more effective. This is mostly a nature of the type of media you are consuming--Short Videos/Short Texts in contrast to Books and Long articles--.

News and Its effect on human cognition

I've always been fascinated by how we think — thinking about thinking — a.k.a. metacognition. This curiosity often leads me to explore topics like critical thinking, logical fallacies, and how pseudo-science spreads. One area I’ve been particularly interested in lately is the cognitive effect of news consumption.

At first glance, staying informed seems like a responsible and necessary habit. But I’ve come to believe that the very format of most modern news actively inhibits deep thinking.

News today is delivered in short headlines, quick summaries, and endless scrolls. Instead of helping us understand the world, it often floods us with not well connected facts. We’re presented with alarming updates, incomplete narratives, and constantly shifting attention, leaving little room for reflection understanding.

This is not just an issue of journalism, but also of cognitive design of the news.

News is irrelevent

Is this even need an explanation? chances are you can not remember last time made a big decision in your life based of some news that you have read. And if it has ever happened, it was probably rare.

Most news stories have zero practical impact on our personal lives.

After all, It is a "for profit" business

Besides the political stand that a news agancy has, it desperately pushes it's labors to produce something that is, attention provoking.

Wrapping up

After reading the book Stop Reading the News, I'm quite convinced that I no longer want to actively follow the news. By "following the news," I mean deliberately consuming daily feeds — whether through television, Telegram channels, or other constant streams of updates.

Overall, i think if you need to know how the world works - or what actually happend around the world - there are often better options than main-stream media. Better forms of information. It can be Academic websites, Global gatherings and of course, Books! News are just a cheap way to explain the complex world we're living in.