On average it’s not, at least not for the average person.
But not everyone is average, and for some of those who do invest the time in going beyond superficial headlines, the payoff is considerable in terms of power, prestige, influence, and wealth.
There is also the fact that if everyone disregarded the news, society would quickly disintegrate as bad actors leveraged people’s ignorance for the own personal ends. Thus, there is a social responsibility aspect to keeping abreast of current events.
The solution may be to go back when news wasn't some action filled adventure to be consumed every hour. Social responsible news should inform the public and provide the necessary background so people can form their own views and conclusions, rather than current system of news companies that carves an audience to whom they can provide entertainment and engagement.
To make a second reference, Yes, Minister has an excellent sketch over UK news papers, beautifully illustrating how each paper has carved up their own piece of the population and provide entertainment to serve those readers. It almost 40 years old and still fairly accurate description.
It not an uncommon sentiment to hear people saying that Wikipedia is a better platform for news than news organizations, since the content will stabilize fairly fast on that which everyone agrees on, and contentions over facts becomes noticeable. The general resistance to emotional loaded words also helps combat some of the worst aspects of news.
> There is also the fact that if everyone disregarded the news, society would quickly disintegrate as bad actors leveraged people’s ignorance for the own personal ends. Thus, there is a social responsibility aspect to keeping abreast of current events.
Can you provide an example of this? I honestly can't think of a single time when I learned something in the news that fit this description.
There are lots of examples of politicians resigning from press reports about them. Just recently a senator from NJ stepped done because his court case caused tons of negative publicity.
Public shaming has been less of an issue the past 10 years but it’s still kind of a thing.
You can read up on what is happening like once per quarter in like a couple of hours. Following 'this just in' with 'developing stories' is a waste of time.
E.g. I read the wiki entry for Trump's assassination attempt after like a week and saved myself hours of rumours and guesses.
But not everyone is average, and for some of those who do invest the time in going beyond superficial headlines, the payoff is considerable in terms of power, prestige, influence, and wealth.
There is also the fact that if everyone disregarded the news, society would quickly disintegrate as bad actors leveraged people’s ignorance for the own personal ends. Thus, there is a social responsibility aspect to keeping abreast of current events.