Is the news "bad" or "good" for you?

I can't say much about this, because to be honest I do not watch or read world news. I don't have the desire to feed into the propaganda that the world is a horrible place filled with violence and conflict, and little else.

-Kohadre

Is this what the news is all about? Is it propaganda?

lol...

Isn't everything?

The "selling of an idea"?

The media is bias in what they portray, that's a simple fact that many people are beginning to recognize and accept if they have not done so already. Many news stations are politically based, and push or re-package media to support their agenda, or discredit the agenda of another station.

Is this what the news is all about?

The news is a business and it is all about making money. By attracting an audience/viewers/listeners/readers they can sell advertising. They draw in more audience by inflaming their emotions. The greater the audience they more they can charge for advertising.

The media is produced by people, and people have biases. So while some stories are blatantly biased, others will be biased in another direction and others will be more neutral. It's up to consumers of media to be aware of the biases in what they read, try to find neutral or conflicting sources, and make educated decisions about which sources are the most credible. Of course there is more bias in a soft story than there is in a hard story, and there is more bias on the national news stations than on their local affiliates.

Believe nothing of what you hear, and only half of what you see.
Watching the news is equivalent to hearing it as they filter the story.
With this statement, its important to remember that this doesn't mean to ignore anything at all.

The more I know about a particular subject, the more I'm amazed at how wrong mainstream media reports things. It makes me realize that all the stuff I don't know about (that they might talk about) is likely equally wrong. The thing I like to keep an eye on is my own subjective bias which might exist as a result of emotional sensitivity to things I already disagree with.

I think people trust news delivery to be accurate and to have some knowledge about it, they try to connect to the presentation for insight into more detail emotionally, as if the presenters have spent some time going over the detail to distill it down into a few short sentences and then express their own opinion via body language. I think the only body language and vocal expression is their own bias though, and while oversight and editing was possible with print media, I think its less possible with audio/visual forms unless the company itself is overtly biased in its staffing. In which case it's obvious and should be recognized as biased.

If the news company is biased then it would be silly to use it as a single source of information. I wouldn't call it propaganda, but I think it would be a very unprofessional delivery of information.

If one would like to see the kinds of bias that the news tends to hold, and some of the absurdity that takes place, just watch some John Stewart sometime.

This would likely be one of the prime examples of what John Stewart would commentate on... you can watch this and not even need commentary... the example very loudly speaks for itself... (thanks to Joe for posting this in chat)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt1cOnNrY5s

Well ya know I typically get my news from organizations that don't play the money game like truth-out.org and democracynow.org but even then, they tend to focus on bad stuff. It's very stressful to hear bad news and stress is bad for you. So yeah the news is bad for you...