If you ask a normal adult why they consume "the news", whether it be from T.V., newspapers, or online articles, they would probably respond with something to the effect of "I want to get a broader view of the world" or "I want to be informed."
This is a noble reason for consuming news, but in the vast majority of cases it is not the end result. In most cases, gaining a "broader view" of the world is a means to figuring out how we should think about certain issues. These issues can range from things like political issues in which being informed may very well affect how we vote on a given subject or which candidate we vote for, to things like how safe we feel doing certain activities, such as walking around town or boarding a plane.
If news outlets wanted to be purely accurate and give us stories that reflected the world we live in and how we should go about our lives, then these stories would, in most cases, be very boring. News outlets make money when you consume their material, and if their material was boring, no one would consume it. So, instead, they give us stories that are interesting, novel, controversial, or in some way different.
To put it in statistical terms, news stories give us basically the stories that lie outside the typical 3-sigma points of a bell curve, i.e., the outliers.
There is nothing wrong with this, they are businesses free to feed us whatever we are willing to consume, but it is up to us as the consumers to be wary that the stories we watch/read/listen to may not accurately reflect the world we live in and may not necessarily tell us how we should live our lives.
Take, for example, a heartwarming news story about a puppy who runs away from home. After being gone for several weeks, his owners fear is gone forever, but, miraculously, the puppy (now a dog) turns up a year later 1,000 miles away and is reunited with his owners! It's a sweet story that will undoubtedly get good ratings, but is it accurate? Sure, it may have actually happened, but if your puppy ran away and was gone for more than a few days, should you expect to be reunited with it a year later? Probably not (although this may not be such a bad thing).
Stories such as the above example can be consumed and enjoyed with little negative consequence because most people are aware that they are unusual. We know this because we have real-life experience to the contrary, and our friends probably have real-life experience to the contrary as well.
It can be damaging, however, if we consume other types of news and take them at face value because we don't have first-hand experience of the claims. If you've never been to a given city, and no one you know has ever been to that city, and you see repeated news stories about murders in that city, then your opinion of that city may not be very high. You probably know that murders happen in any big city, but because the news repeatedly highlights the murders in this city, you assume that this city encounters murders more frequently than, say, your city. The reality could be a different story, maybe the news just doesn't like this city for whatever reason, and continues to highlight murders in it while ignoring murders in your city.
The news can't exactly shine a light on everything that happens in the world, so it can only show you certain things. You hope that the selections it shows accurately represent all the things that it doesn't show you, but that may not be the case. Take an American football game, for example. You didn't watch the game, but you were able to catch the highlights of it. In the highlights, they show a each team completing long touchdown passes. If you just watched this, you might assume that there was a lot of offense in the game. When you see the final score, however, it is 9-7, because the winning team got a safety at some point. In reality, the game was a defensive battle, neither team could move the ball except for two fluke plays where they were able to complete long passes. The highlight reel chose to show these plays because they were more exciting than showing a running play that got stopped after a 1 yard gain, even though the latter was a more accurate depiction of the game.
So what does this have to do with The Onion?
Didn't want to risk copyright infringement of their actual logo...
Image Credit
For those that are unfamiliar, The Onion is a satirical "news" site that mimics the appearance and style of most news websites, but features fake articles meant to be humorous and/or comment on real issues. Even though the stories aren't "real", it would not be considered a "fake news" site because it does not try to pass off its articles as facts, it is merely satire.
That being said, The Onion may very well be the most accurate source of news on the internet.
How could a site that doesn't post any real stories be "accurate"? Well, because even though its content isn't real, the messages may just be more "real" than, well, real news.
Often when we watch actual news, we are confronted with stories about death, destruction, lying, etc. Every time I see a story about a deadly car crash, I think "why isn't there another story that said a man got in his car, drove to work, and encountered absolutely no problems"? We often think that something of this nature wouldn't count as "news", but it is precisely the kind of story found in an Onion article. You see, The Onion features all sorts of tales about the mundane aspects of life. It may not be "news" in the traditional sense, but it is real.
I most enjoy Onion articles from the "Local" section, because they feature all sorts of funny takes on everyday occurrences, such as:
Dinner Party Conducting Full-Scale Investigation to Determine If Tip Was Included
Man To Continue Slowly Drifting Into Middle of Restaurant Until Host Redirects Him
Divorced Friend Burning Through New Hobbies At Unsustainable Rate
Takeout Burrito Shielded from Cold As Though It Were Week Old Newborn
Report: Someone Needs To Get Chips And Dip Away From Area Man
You may think, "yeah, it's funny, but what value does reading The Onion actually have?" Well, it helps keep you grounded. The amount of mundane and everyday "facts" included in The Onion helps you to remember that everyday life is, well, everyday. Sure, everyone's "everyday" is different, and The Onion undoubtedly refers to the "everyday" occurrences of mostly middle-class Americans, but its content, however silly, really brings home the point that life isn't a series of murders, car chases, scandals, and inspirational stories.
Life, for a great many people, is quite normal. There are odd occurrences here and there, sometimes triumphs, sometimes tragedies, but...on average...life is average.
The dangers of consuming too much "regular" news include both irrational fears and, likewise, irrational non-fears. In this list of the top fears Americans had in 2016, apparently no one was afraid of heart disease, even though you are more likely to die from that than anything else if you are an American. So, maybe instead of being afraid of a corrupt government official (like 60.6% of Americans), you should be afraid of those doughnuts you are wolfing down.
Conclusion
News sources in America (and probably other places in the world) used to be about objective and investigative journalism with strict morals and standards. Unfortunately, with the growth of the internet, news outlets have been forced to put out whatever content they think will get the most clicks. The end result is an onslaught of articles to the tune of "you won't believe THIS!" and "look who got caught doing THIS!" While it has been somewhat effective in getting people's attention, the long-term effects are not widespread knowledge, but widespread hysteria.
If you read sites like The Onion, then you may not be "informed" in the traditional sense, but you may very well be a little bit more sane.
