The ability to access news is within the reach of our fingertips, but despite accessibility being at an all-time high, people are choosing to ignore the reality of world issues as a way to maintain a form of normalcy that alleviates tensions in their own lives.
Even though your social media feed may be flooded with the constant onslaught of news articles, people are choosing to stay ignorant. This often stems from wanting to avoid the emotional toll that negative news articles often bring and an overall distrust of the media.
With people opting not to watch the news, they are treating world issues as a metaphorical wound being covered by a band-aid. Just because you cover the wound doesn’t mean it’s not there, much like how news persists whether people choose to watch or not.
Universally, news avoidance is at an all-time high. According to a survey performed in 2025 by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism of people across 50 countries, 40 per cent said they often opt to avoid the news.
In this age where misinformation is more common than not, the idea that people are choosing to remain in the dark is both surprising and overwhelmingly not.
In a world where misinformation is encouraged by news outlets such as Fox News and where fearmongering is occurring daily — orchestrated by decisions of the president of the U.S. — it’s no wonder people are choosing to tune out the static as a way to remain positive.
Sure, it’s easy to turn off the TV and pretend that global issues aren’t occurring when the crisis isn’t in your backyard or when it “doesn’t affect you.”
The news is also a continual fixture of ruptures and crises happening around the globe — whether that’s the war against Ukraine, the U.S. attacking Iran, the ongoing violence within the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the crisis in Haiti or the Taliban’s continual war on women and girls in Afghanistan.
Although distrust of the media continues to increase, the realization is that this distrust is not only produced by news outlets that misrepresent information, but also by the ongoing slew of AI-generated images and videos that present fabricated information.
AI-produced videos are detrimental to news outlets with vetted credentials, as well as to the representation of credible and true news stories that are told with the intention of informing and stirring up a population.
The news is vital in maintaining and understanding humanity. The value that a journalist brings does not diminish just because people choose not to watch — if anything, it makes their jobs more important. In an age where information is fragmented in every corner of the internet, journalists still choose to wake up every morning and tell someone else’s stories. Sometimes this is at the cost of their own lives and livelihoods, and often wading through swampy water, surrounded by pay cuts and criticisms.
Listening to the news is worth it. It allows you to have access to information beyond yourself. You might not want to listen, but it matters. It matters to listen to voices and stories that might not always be positive, but that are the lived reality of people around the world.
It pays to listen, read and hear news stories — it pays to be informed, well-read and to listen to voices other than your own. So next time you may be thinking of turning off the news, keep it on.
