A recent article by the Guardian discusses 10 reasons why news can harm you. It’s an interesting read, one that reinforces a message that we regularly communicate to our clients: news is sensationalized to draw viewers but it should be taken with a grain of salt and not relied on to make investment decisions without doing your own research.
The article references the sensational and shocking stories we see. These stories are designed to scare us into doing something (or not doing something). The article fails to recognize, that there is a lot of insightful, objective, and thoroughly-researched journalism produced every single day that readers should be reading. Length does not necessarily indicate quality. Long articles can be sensationalized just as much as a tweet. And a tweet can be more insightful than a long article.
The problem becomes: How to determine quality news from an eye catching headline with regurgitated content. Second, where do we find quality news and who can we trust?
We will cover those questions in a later post.