Why Every Young Professional Should Read the News

I agree with you in theory. But the news media has a serious, horrible problem with the following:
1) Disingenuous and deceitful headlines
2) Disingenuous and hard-to-find corrections when mistakes are made
3) Truth telling

Now, of course, to flatly reject every news outlet is absurd – but I’ll draw an analogy to baseball. Is there really even one baseball player left that could do steroids and we’d be surprised? Nope. So, just assume they’re all dirty.

Do you have a list of these reputable, objective reporters? I’d love to know what to read but unfortunately there’s no meter telling me what’s ok.

Even Jon Stewart’s show edits the news in such a way that makes absurd things look a billion times more absurd out of context.

And how much are you actually benefiting from “keeping up with society”? How will it affect your behavior to stay informed, for example, about the Syrian war? What is the payoff for the time you have spent learning about it? Same goes for almost everything on the news. When was the last time you read something on the news that had an impact on your life?

When it comes to the topics that might actually affect you, for example Obamacare (or at least I think it might be a relevant example), you would form a much more balanced and informed opinion by spending an hour focusing only on it, as opposed to the shotgun approach of news, and from other sources than mass media!

If you really feel like you can’t live without having others feed you information in small, filtered pieces, you can always ask a friend or a colleague over lunch if there’s anything interesting on the news lately. This way you can use your own time and energy for something that is actually useful.

I have not followed any news in about 4 years now, yet if something happens that actually matters, I inevitably hear about it on social media or from discussions with friends. In the same 4 years I have read countless of books, blog articles and journals that have had a huge impact on my life. For example, I went in-depth into nutrition, fixing my own health and well-being along the way. Then psychology and neuroscience, which really shows you that even with best of intentions we can’t avoid our biases and beliefs. This undermines the value of news reporting even more.

Now I am spending time on learning about leadership, management, and organizational behavior, while also listening autobiographies of some of the most influential people that ever lived.

What do you think my employer values more? That I know about current affairs that have little or no impact into my life and work, or that every week I become armed with more and more applicable knowledge, not to mention having learnt from the successes and mistakes of the aforementioned great men?

Sami Paju Let’s try this.

Do you like Chick-fil-a? Did you know that this week the company’s president Dan Cathy blasted gay marriage by saying “we’re inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage”?

If you believe strongly in gay marriage, maybe you’ll think twice about spending your money at Chick-fil-a from now on. But the only way to know about Cathy’s remarks is by reading the news.

Another example. Do you or anyone you know have DirecTV? Without following the news, you would have been really confused over the past week when stations like Nickelodeon, MTV and Comedy Central disappeared from your channel listings. That’s because DirecTV and Viacom (the company that owns those channels) had a major contract dispute that was resolved only yesterday. The only way to know why MTV disappeared and then reappeared? Reading the news.

You’re asking me to deny the worth and importance of the press, which is enumerated in the Constitution. I simply can’t have that argument here. I am just trying to show you the news does matter to our lives in all kinds of ways.

Do you need to read every article everyday? No. Are some article super-short and really only give you the basic info? Sure.

But it’s a healthy exercise to stay abreast of the world. I didn’t invent this concept. I am merely trying to demonstrate that a solid understanding of the day’s events makes you a stronger working professional and citizen.