What News ?

Apart from taking food on a regular basis, some people have made it a daily routine to read , listen to or watch the latest news. This would be about local or foreign events.

This habit has become an obsession to them to a point of it becoming an addiction.

With the advent of modern technology , the availability of news has become easy and fast. Before the coming of satellite television and internet it used to take days , if not weeks, before an event occuring in one part of the world was known by the rest.

A lot of events are now broadcast live as they happen. Most of these are sports events.

I recall in 2001 on September 11, when there was a terrorist attack in America. I was on leave, and I was watching BBC World Service television in my living room.

Suddenly , there was a news flash mentioning the attack on the Twin Towers in New York. The horror of the attack was unfolding live infront of me !

Although news is essential for us to inform of what is happening around us, the question one should ask himself is whether one needs to know about it soon enough or hear about at all ?

A live broadcast of an event that is showing a tragedy is unsettling. This is because apart from not knowing the next thing to happen, it is a danger to the news crew tasked to make a recording of it.

I watched the attack on the second Tower with my tongue in the cheek , and I noticed that the news presenter in the BBC studio was also unsettled . The rest of my day was spoiled as I kept recalling what I had just seen.

The other type of news which one should decide whether to follow or not is political news. Time in and time out similar stories are reported in the media.

You would be told about one politician going to visit one part of the country or outside. An agreement signed between this country and that one. One politician denouncing another because of being a member of the opposition or belonging to a leftist organisation. etc.

When I was at the University in the early 70s, we used to buy daily newspapers which we carried into the lecture theatres. We would read these just before or soon after the lectures.

There was a colleague who never bought any newspaper. He was fond of borrowing them from other students to read.

He became so notorious at this habit that, one day someone decided to teach him a lesson.

An old newspaper of the previous year bearing the same date as that of the day was brought into the lecture room. The "newspaper borrower" got hold of it and was captivated by the "news". He kept on nodding his head as he was reading the newspaper. Later someone handed him the current newspaper. The guy was so embarrassed after realising that he had been reading a year-old newspaper for close to five minutes !

This incident demonstrates that some type of news some people are hooked to is not really of any benefit to them.

The only news that is beneficial is the Good News that our Lord Jesus Christ brings to us through the Bible. This News does not become stale with time.

What news are you going to read or listen to today ?