I stopped reading, watching or listening to any broadcast or narrowcast news channels or sources completely about five years ago, when I read a little about the damage the 24-hour news cycle is doing to all our mental health. Even so, I’m made aware of far more supposedly newsworthy incidents or developments than I would have been in, say, the 1970s or ’80s, when I would have only watched one newscast a day on TV and maybe leafed through a newspaper at college or at work. The idea that anyone needs the volume of “news” the news outlets are obligated to supply in the age of 24/7 broadcasting, let alone the always-on, infinite capacity internet, is ludicrous.

I don’t think that limiting and controlling your news input is a bad thing at all. You’ll still get more than you can handle on bleed-through but you can at least make a conscious decision which stories or events to follow up and learn more about instead of allowing a news editor, with their own, primarily commercial, criteria, to set the agenda for you.