"I Don't Keep Up With The News..."

It always disturbs me when I hear people say this. Partly, I think, it's because I'm a recovering news junkie, and know how depressing it can be, so can kind of understand it. Funny thing... I noticed that when I started to moderate my news watching, my suicidal tendencies went away completely.

This kind of reached a head yesterday when I was at my day job. Headline News was on in the breakroom, and they were talking about the terrible flooding in Pakistan, and none of my co-workers seemed to know that it was happening until that moment. This flooding has been going on for over a WEEK. There are 1500 known to be dead, and it is affecting millions. And they hadn't heard. This was followed by a “news story” about a girl who lost her cool at a McDonald's drive-through because she couldn't get McNuggets, and broke the window and attacked the window girl. They ALL seemed to know about this. Old news to them.

Which of these stories is the more important, you think? Personally, I think that only one of these stories BELONGED on the national news, and here's a hint as to which one... no McNuggets were involved.

I understand that the news is depressing, people, but it's important to remain INFORMED. If you don't know what the hell is going on, and you pass a group of teabaggers carrying signs about how Obama is putting our children and grandchildren in debt, you think “Oh my God, that's terrible.” But if you're informed, you realize that the vast majority of our debt problem came from the Bush administration, and that, in 2003, when Bush wanted to pass this massive package of tax cuts for the wealthy, Cheney said “Deficits don't matter.” I agree that this deficit mess is a problem, but blindly replacing one party with the other won't help... they're BOTH corrupt. But I will give you that Obama isn't doing a lot of the things that I hoped he would.

GET INFORMED, PEOPLE!

So how do you do this without watching news basically 24 hours per day, like I used to?

One way is to use the internet. Check to see what the top news stories of the moment are, and then look to see what several news sources are saying about them. And allow yourself to go out of the sphere of American, corporate-driven news. Check the BBC. Check the Swiss News Agency. Check Al Jazeera. Get a variety of viewpoints, even and ESPECIALLY those that disagree with you.

My main source for news is the PBS Newshour. There are no pretty, exciting graphics and they aren't afraid to air negative stories about their corporate underwriters. They focus on four or five big stories, and then spend about ten minutes in the middle of their show hitting other news stories.

For the sake of our country, people, get informed.

Peace.

Rev. Randal