Sunday, March 15, 2009
The News
Lately, I've had some time to catch up on my TV-shows and the broadcasting news. I typically enjoy watching the news. It allows me to feel a sense of accomplishment in the knowledge I gain by simply sitting on the couch and observing a series of topics and current events to discuss. However, over my Spring Break, watching the news only seemed to bother me. I felt anxiety, discomfort, shock and even depression after hearing some of the most horrific stories presented in a series that seemed to go from bad to worse. These stories included 2-year old girl victims of child-pornographers, drowning NFL football players lost at sea, crazy ex-husband homicide suicides and of course, the HORRIBLE economy. It seems that there is very little going on in the world right now. Rather than feeling aware of my surroundings, I am now disgusted with so many things about our society. Has the roll of the news changed? It's supposed to inform us. Now it's just depressing! There's no positivity. There's not any reinforcement on the good things that happen each and every day. As the feel-good stories seem to fade away, the crises and deadly black clouds over our heads seem to grow story by story. I encourage you to watch the news to see what I'm talking about. However, don't watch too long... you'll get upset.
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NBC Nightly News has an antidote for all the bad news. They have a section at the end of the broadcast called "Making a Difference." It used to be just on Fridays, but they seem to have it almost every night lately. It's about people who are doing good things for others. For example, they had a story recently about a church in Los Angeles that meets in a high school auditorium instead of in a building of their own. The pastor doesn't have an office; he writes his sermons on a laptop in a coffee shop. They don't have the physical buildings so the church can put all of its members' contributions to charity. All their offerings go directly to needy people. It showed church members giving an $11,000 check to a poor working mom whose daughter has cerebral palsy. These stories cheer you up because they reassure you about the good in people. You are right though,that there isn't much actual news that is good these days, which is why the Hudson River landing was such welcome relief in January.
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