I stopped watching the news a couple years ago. I hear snippets of the headlines on TV or social media, or better yet on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, but I could not pass a current events trivia test to save my life. I have a hard enough time trying to keep my mindset clean and healthy without letting the gloom and doom of the world seep in through the back door.
I stopped mindlessly watching or listening to the news because of the media’s unhealthy focus exclusively on the bad stuff. It’s easy to get sucked in and tune in after a big event; they just keep the story in front of you for days, until the next big story. Imagine what that constant exposure to bad news does to our subconscious minds over time. According to British psychologist Dr. Graham Davey, who specializes in the psychological effects of media violence:
Negative news can significantly change an individual’s mood — especially if there is a tendency in the news broadcasts to emphasize suffering and also the emotional components of the story. In particular… negative news can affect your own personal worries. Viewing negative news means that you’re likely to see your own personal worries as more threatening and severe, and when you do start worrying about them, you’re more likely to find your worry difficult to control and more distressing than it would normally be.
So I’m adding a monthly posting on my blog with the intention of reminding us how good humans really are. I’ll share the amazing, inspiring, positive stories I come across that give me a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye. I will be a better person for just seeking them out, and hope it provides some respite and inspiration in a world that loves to amplify the bad news more than the good.
I’ve always loved Steve Hartman’s On the Road series and here’s a good one. A boring, tough math teacher quietly doing something unexpected in his free time.
