How important is the news to us? Why is it that we trust the truth of stories more when we hear it from a news source? The simple answer is that news sources are a business, just like any other. It is the business of news sources to seek out stories and report on them in an unbiased fashion. The importance of those stories is deemed by us, the consumers. Lately, it seems that we prefer the lighter content; making free “news” sites our go-to source for all things important to us.
Back when I was little, which wasn’t actually too long ago, I remember my mother and father sitting down with supper to watch the six o’clock news. The news stories I remember hearing about were local; what happened around town, what is currently happening around town and what events will be taking place in town. Of course, I didn’t care much at that time about my community. My biggest concern was what my neighbourhood friends were doing after they were finished eating supper.
Now that I am thinking back on it; I realize that our main news source on t.v. was hyper-local, and reported in such an objective way that it was monotonous. Not only that, but things didn’t change much from year to year. The same events would happen, with the same people organizing them. Crime wasn’t too bad because Yorkton wasn’t too large.
Once our connection with the rest of the world grew, our news sources started reporting on other things happening all across different countries. With the emergence of the internet, our news sources were suddenly connected with other news sources, making information faster to obtain and therefore faster to report. I remember first hearing about turmoil in other countries through our own news sources, and trusting the information I heard since they had faithfully reported on local news for so long.
Here is what’s getting tough though, or at least what I think is the answer. We are connected with the rest of the world now more than ever. We can discuss politics at great lengths over the airwaves, wherever we are. It’s as simple as a live video chat on-air. We can broadcast whatever we’re doing, as we’re doing it to whoever will watch as long as we have an internet connection.
With so many years of hearing about violent devastation in the Middle East, the famine across Africa, the diseases among third world countries, we’ve developed an apathetic nature to it in order to handle it all. We don’t care about what is happening in our communities because we are constantly hearing about what is happening in other communities an ocean away.
Our news sources that have continued to report on local events all the while have been pushed to the wayside while we consumed the news of the world. We forgot about it. We forgot about it because we have been too busy trying to handle the sad news of a corrupted world while not being able to do much about it. Our solace is becoming more apparent in the news that we are taking in now.
Smartphones are being picked up to look at stories of rescued animals, unlikely animal friendships and other uplifting content. Free news sites that were once small are now becoming larger corporations simply because we are pouring our time into consuming their content; this ‘evergreen’ content.
The fact that we are giving it more attention means that they will pour more resources into putting more of this content in front of us. In this respect, we are being taken advantage of. Our escape from sad reality is becoming a sad reality we cannot escape from.
While it is nice to have uplifting and pretty content, it is important to remember the source. It is likely a business, just like any other, wanting to profit from the content you share.
If it’s wanting to help change the sad news we’ve been exposed to for a few years now, perhaps helping locally might help your state of mind. Help out a person instead of a business.
