News, tragedies, and turning it all off

There are tragedies.  They can be newsworthy.  But, in a 24/7 news cycle it seems like it is necessary to fill time so simply rehashing and speculating the same details ad nauseum is mistaken for actual reporting.

This is why I no longer turn on the news very often.
About 2007 I turned off talk radio (including NPR for this purpose and both liberal and conservative commentators) and with the conversion to digital I lost easy access to most local channels (do not get me started on the quality of what I have lost, it is not important that I lost sucky news since I do not have cable) and more or less stopped looking at web sites that were commentary or news based.

Facebook is not the refuge it should be. I am constantly being asked in really irritating passive aggressive ways to endorse (mostly reasonable, but not the point) causes.  I have online friends that constantly post updates and rants.  It is really easy to just "unsubscribe" to the irritating posters without having to "unfriend" them and explain why. I still have a few friends that forward the odd psycho email about some topic, but that seems to be fading.

Given all the headlines I get logging online, and the headlines that come across in normal radio listening, and some online postings, I still have a general idea of what is going on in the world.  I am no less informed in that sense since I do not think that TV news or talk radio provides much depth beyond those headlines.

Ranting and repetition have no value to me. I will gladly stay the TV news and talk radio free course.