[BeetleB]

As a former news junkie, I can confidently state that getting a view of the (rest of the) world by watching the news will give you an extremely skewed view of the world. Just look at how much coverage they give to one event (e.g. the recent Israel-Gaza conflict) vs others with an order of magnitude more casualties to get an idea of the skewness.

An exercise I came up with years ago: On a piece of paper write down the most important issues in the world. If they match the exposure that the typical news media provides, then you've lost the ability to have an independent perspective.