Politics 4: Watching the news is harmful to your inteligence.

This is what's wrong with the news. It's a formulaic narrative run by a commercial enterprise, which is why it's frequently scary, nonsensical and obsessed with sensationalist topics which have nothing to do with the facts. The facts are the only thing that ought to be important, but nobody wants to read that, that's what Wikipedia is for. But they keep changing these facts, and it's hard to keep track of them. But not that hard. The news makes perfect sense if you know some of the backstory, i.e. everything that's ever happened. It's like a daily list of changes, so it's almost in it's nature not to provide a lot of context and to ignore things that don't fit the stories that already exist. That's why the only important story about the civil war in Sudan for the majority of the conflict was the fact that no one seemed to do anything about it or care very much. This happens to a lot of important things. The news is so ephemeral there's genuinely no telling what's going to happen, or what has actually happened without getting your information from other sources, but less and less people do that. The news, seriously defective as it is, is the main source of current information. It is a playground for the smart manipulative assholes that politicians employ to communicate with the public. The only thing standing in the way of constant 24-hour propaganda from politicians, business and third parties is the people who make the news. But they're under-informed, underfunded and under constant pressure to keep you interested. Is it any wonder you alternate between being bored, frustrated, angry and scared every time you watch it? There's no way to fix it either.