Why I avoid Video News

I want to start by putting a frame around this:

- I have never watched the films of the 9/11 planes hitting the Twin Towers in New York.

- I have never watched the videos of George Floyd’s death.

- I avoided all videos of Charlie Kirk’s killing.

- I am avoiding all videos of the recent Minnesota shooting.

This is quite deliberate, and I want to talk about why.

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By now I take it as a given that a high percentage of mainstream media news reporting is there for persuasion purposes - to get me to gut-level react a particular way.

That is why I ingest all my news in text form.

Videos, especially well planned videos, can have a visceral, gut-level emotional impact that it is quite hard to over-ride by conscious thought. It can have a sort of emotional trauma effect.

It can also create an instant, gut-level sense of complete conviction, the sense you are 100% sure you know what really happened - when you’re actually reacting to an emotional hit. That is hard to over-ride once the impact has been made.

I don’t want to let media mess with my mind that way.

With text it is much easier to keep a sense of distance and perspective, and to question what I am reading - it takes work, but it can be done.

I don’t trust mainstream media. They have a long, long track record of misleading, manipulating and lying for political agendas. I do not want to expose my mind to that.

Therefore, I make a point of getting my news from multiple sources, from places whose integrity I have learned to trust from experience.

And, I read my news. This gives me a better chance to step back, get perspective and think.

Is this a perfect strategy? No, but it gives me more of a chance to actually be able to think about the news I ingest, and choose my response.

I choose to eat a healthy diet, and I don’t put poison in my body. I don’t want to let media put poison in my mind.

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Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images</a> from Pixabay.