[abrahamepton]

Yes, I quite agree - reading the news once a week can lead you to be incredibly well-informed. But since the OP was asserting that one oughtn't read the news at all, I find "once/week" to be a rather different proposition.

[eggpy]

Valid point, you are correct. The part of your comment that caught my eye was

> being citizens of a democracy obligates us to pay attention

I agree with the statement itself, absolutely. I just don't think reading the news is necessarily the correct way to pay attention. If you read most news, hardly any of it encourages better citizenship. Much like Facebook, the news requires eyeballs to survive, it has an inherent agenda. To collect eyeballs it needs to have enticing headlines. I hardly think "look at me" is the same thing as "education for a good democracy".