Filtered News

Most of my readers know that I don't follow news. I don't read newspapers and I don't watch newscasts. Most definitely it's not the right thing to day. But then when did I claim to be a doer of right things? I do things as they suit me. As do most people, they just delude themselves. If you didn't like reading newspaper, you wouldn't.

My contention is still the same - reading newspapers doesn't make you feel good. If there's bad news, being a good person you feel bad about it. If there's good news, it happened to someone else, and you would feel jealous or at the very least, envious.

But still, I miss some things by not following the news. Each news item aside from being good or bad also gives us new things to think about and sometimes opportunities to learn something new.

There have been times in my life when I did make a conscious effort to follow news. For example, the time when I was trying to learn the stock market. The share market is impacted by all things so it's useful to stay on top of the world news if you really want to be good at it. I never got anywhere with it. It was too boring to follow news even with that extra incentive.

There was that time when all my classmates were reading newspapers in order to improve their English. I stuck with stories and storybooks. Worked great for me. Much better than the newspaper readers.

There have been periods in my life when I did read newspaper regularly. But I only read two sections - the comics and Bollywood. The latter for the photos, the articles and gossip bore me even in that.

However, even though I don't follow news, I do get my news, indirectly. I read blogs almost regularly. And I look at the Facebook newsfeed from time to time. And I do talk to a lot of people on the internet. Through these and other such channels I get my news, filtered as it were.

What's the news?

Most people look at me like I am a criminal the first time they hear
that I don't watch the news. "YOU ARE KIDDIN' ME!?" is the first
reaction, the second one being, "How can you NOT watch the news?" Well,
I just don't watch it so that accomplishes the not watching part of it!

My logic is very simple, if I watch the news I'll get to read or watch
about one of two types of things generally - good or bad. If it's good
then it happened to someone else (if it had happened to me, I'd know,
right?), then I'd feel a desire, a longing, or even envy that it didn't
happen to me. If it's bad, then being a sensitive guy, I'd feel really
sorry for the unfortunate victims - like the Virginia Tech victims, and
it'll get me down, bringing down my productivity levels. In none of the
cases does it make me feel good. So why should I invest my time and
money in something that is sure to make me feel bad?

Another argument is - to stay abreast of current affairs. I don't need
to watch news for that. If it's big enough I'll hear it soon enough,
from some source. I was in office when 9/11 happened and NOT watching
news, but I heard it before the 2nd plane hit.

If it's relevant, I'll hear it quick enough. I was not watching news
when the US H1B visa quota got overapplied on the first day in India,
but I heard it within a couple of hours of the embassy closing. So
there's no chance that they'll propose my name for the Nobel Peace Prize
and I won't hear of it because I was not watching news.

There was a time when I was meddling in the stock market. During that
phase I used to keep tab of stock prices and related news. But I never
had to pick up a newspaper for that. It all came to me, from various
sources.

Time and again, under the tremendous pressure of the news-reading
community, I have tried to get into the habit of reading a newspaper,
but it has always bored the hell out of me. So I went back to my
original practice of turning to the comic page as soon as I picked up
the paper, then reading the jokes if any, and if I still had nothing
better to do, skimming through the paper to look at ads featuring
beautiful girls.

In this day and age, when information is the most important and most
expensive commodity, the news channels as well as print media exists
only to sensationalize anything they can find in order to promote their
own business. I'd much rather watch the re-runs of the re-runs of the
same episodes of the same comedy TV shows than waste an hour watching a
news-discussion of why Prince William dumped Kate Middleton. If the
former can make me laugh once in the half-hour, it's a good investment.