Thoreau on news:
"I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter - we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?"
How true. Also, see how all his examples of "news" were negative things? It reminded me of something Philippa Perry says in "How to Stay Sane" about how we should limit our exposure to the TV (including the news). She says:
"...even the news appears to be filtered for maximum emotional shock value, which means it has a bias towards bad news rather than good. Be careful which stories you expose yourself to. I'm not saying it is not important to be informed about what is going on, but to be informed repeatedly about bad news will give us neither a balanced view of our world nor of the other people who inhabit it."I think Thoreau was onto something.
