Stop Watching The News!

Do today’s news stories make you feel sick?, Like, physically ill? It definitely makes me ill if I watch it too much, so I decided to do something about it – I stopped watching all American news. The minute you turn on any American news, even stalwarts like CNN or MSNBC, it’s nothing but scare tactics or fluff stories – there really isn’t any actual news on these stations anymore. Being bombarded with stories like this day in and day out take a toll on one’s body and mind, leaving us stressed out, panicky, worried sick or disgusted with the state of the world.

The local news is useless, filled with overarching stories that are irrelevant to you, and the national news is just hype over which Republican or Democrat had the latest affair. This is not news – it’s entertainment. Being in constant state of paralysis created by the “news” can make you sick, so I suggest you stop watching it. For good.

There are plenty of avenues for you to still know what’s really going on in the world without resorting to the standard American diet of “news”. If I am watching TV and want to know about the news, I turn on BBC News. Important stories about riots in Jamaica and Thailand, economy issues in Spain, and children being jailed in Turkey have all been on BBC News today – but not on any US news. Instead we get stories about American Idol, an actresses husband found dead, and Sarah Palin telling some random group that Obama is on heroin.

This is NOT news, it is NOISE. And it is time to free yourself from it. Check out the BBC on TV or online. Check out Al Jazeera news. Check out independent media not dependent on the ratings that come from covering scandals and hoopla. Hey, watch Comedy Central at night and at least be told up front that the news is entertainment! If you are going to ingest news, which most of us do, at least make it actual news and not scary stories that serve no purpose in your life.

The most important thing? Get your news and move on with your day.

I know people who have their TV’s on all day, so they hear the same b.s. stories morning, noon, and night…and then those same stories become their reality. Kid gets abducted 3,000 miles away? Your kid is next, so you better not let him go outside. A single person has some weird disease that has symptoms that match yours exactly? You are going to die!

You have to realize that the news, at least Americanized news, has become entertainment – and that’s about it. It’s all about ratings, money, and who can scoop the most useless story first. And it’s making us sick in the meantime because it becomes real to us. We have to stop letting it.

Stop watching it. Get what you need from actual news sources and be done for the day. I used to get pissed off and upset when watching the local news until I realized it wasn’t news at all. I still get plenty of information off the internet or the radio, but I have learned to tune out most of the irrelevant stuff. If you are feeling overwhelmed, I suggest you try it as well – it helped me immensely.

Sometimes too much information is just that, too much information…