A lethal dose of negativity.

I used to watch local news on television every night.
And in the morning while I prepare for work, the tv in my room is tuned in to BBC or CNN, thus, even when my eyes aren’t glued to the screen I can still hear the news from the bath room door.

For the past days though, I had opted to watch DVD and followed more prime-time series than I would like to admit.
Yeah, I know that it is not healthy to invest so much time and energy on things that, in the end, really have no weight or bearing on what happens in the real world. But there is nothing wrong with wanting to get away sometimes.

Of course, I still watch the news. That is important, in my opinion, since everyone needs to see the world for what it is and to get the right perspective. But this is becoming more and more a tiring exercise. Somehow, I find it disappointing to read the newspapers and watch the news programs, because I only encounter so much misplaced negativity.

Don’t get me wrong, as it is the media’s prerogative to publish or air these things, and they have a journalistic duty to tell the truth, however ugly or disheartening it might be. But I think, a lot of what is being reported nowadays is done in the spirit of pandering.

However, journalists don’t have total control over how their reports affect the landscape. Because ultimately, people will make their own conclusions, no matter how many sides of a story are presented. We are by nature selective and will take in and retain information as we pleased. Just like when I buy a newspaper, I don’t normally read it from cover to cover, instead, I read what I want, and skip the stuff I don’t want to read.

But I also believe, that not everything that happens in the world is bad. Good things happen, and good values are alive and well. So, can they maybe help increase awareness of the good?

Then possibly, I might be more inclined to stop playing online games, or discard following the mushy tv series, or better yet, put off that movie marathon for another day.