Growing up as a kid, I was not too fond of the sound of the news station; I was more comfortable with watching cartoons with no care of what was going on in the world or my country. What can I say? I was just young, dumb, and naive. As time went on, I began to see the importance of news after this beautiful incident happened.
I was on my way to see a friend in Surulere, Lagos State. While on my way, we got to the Ketu bus stop and noticed how crowded and jampacked the place was with people. Within a few seconds, there was a gunshot, and I was already praying for forgiveness. I was able to survive that day with the help of a few people who were also running for their dear lives. After I got to Surulere, I called my dad to let him know what was going on so he wouldn't pass that same way on his way home, but he didn't seem bothered, and it was like he saw it coming. He told me about the news he watched on TV and some of the things that had been going on in Ketu, so he predicted something like that would happen on that day.
I was surprised because he was able to gather this information from the news and was able to make good decisions. Since that day, I have become a fan of watching the news.
The truth is that information can be manipulated to control those masses. This is not something new in our modern world; this is why I watch news from different sources. If one source fails to talk about information in detail, then the next source will do so. When I wake up in the morning, before turning on the TV, I check some newspaper blogs to see what's going on in my country and environment, then I open Twitter to read some of the things trending. I put on the TV and make sure it's on the news station (mostly CNN) while I move around doing my house chores.
Image sourced from Unsplash
Some news stations sometimes I tend to be careful with the information I listen to because one thing I know for sure is that information can be manipulated to favor some particular people while painting others badly. I have learned this lesson from watching news stations like BBC News, Al-Jezeera News, CNN News, Channels News, and many more. There are some news stations that do breaking news without half-baked facts, and if a person decides in a hurry based on those things they heard, they will turn out to make a bad decision.
I am not saying all news on the internet has a loophole or something; I am just saying that not all news should be believed blindly without consulting other sources. Imagine someone like Starstrings making news on Hive saying
"Panda-x will be giving out free tokens to everyone who participated in the Monday talk show in the Hivelearners community."
I am sure this piece of information will have a huge impact because of the person the news is coming from. Even if this news is fake, I am sure we would have a full house on the Monday talk show; that's how information works.
In conclusion, always confirm information before spreading it, and look for alternate sources, before doing anything. Thanks for reading.