You need to pay attention to the news. I am not just saying that as an editor for a newspaper, but I am saying that as a human being. We live in an increasingly interconnected time, when we can access news and information from almost every outlet in the world in a matter of seconds. There is no excuse to be uninformed on the events happening in your local, national or international community.
“A well informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny,” said Thomas Jefferson, the third U.S. president and one of America’s founding fathers. Jefferson saw the extremes of tyranny during the American Revolution, and he fought against them.
One of the primary struggles seen by the founding fathers during the revolution was the struggle of informing the public. Without the internet to help them spread information, they had to rely on slower forms of communicating – but they still got the job done.
If farmers and fishermen were able to stay informed almost 250 years ago, there is no excuse for modern citizens to be uninformed on anything going on in our governments today.
Because we have the opportunity to access so much information at the tips of our fingers, we are also given the responsibility to use that information to inform our daily lives. As students in an American university, we should be knowledgeable on major events happening in our community.
It breaks my heart to have conversations with people, specifically students, and hear how many important things go on right under their noses. When we aren’t taking an interest in the news of our community, we can miss out on the good things, and we can be unaware of the bad things.
It is important to learn about the good things that are happening around us because they should be celebrated. If we never honor the good things, our lives can get dark focused on the bad. On the flip side, if we never learn about the bad things happening around us, we run the risk of being taken by surprise when those bad things eventually impact us or our loved ones.
There are a lot of options for us to stay informed. One of the easiest ways I have found is through news apps. Every news outlet from the Associated Press to The Flor-Ala has an app in this day and age. If you want to be more informed, take the time to download at least one of them. The thirty seconds of download time could save you so many headaches in the future by helping you to stay up-to-date on all sorts of new information.
It is not enough to just be informed. We need to be accurately informed as well. In order to do this, we need to use different sources from different perspectives to help us learn the ins and outs of each story we read. Because we have so many different narratives available to us, there is no excuse to not use more than one. Finding the truth of a situation is so much easier when you have more than one source of information.
Getting your information from several different sources allows you to confirm details and make sure that you are basing your opinions off of accurate information.
There is no excuse for our demographic of educated and tech-savvy individuals to be uninformed. You need to read, you need to listen and you need to learn. Be informed. Celebrate good. Don’t be victimized by evil.
