I didn't need to before Covid, but our government decided that it was okay to change rules (drastically), on a day-to-day basis, then when they got called out for changing them with less than 24 hour warning, decided that 48 hours was fine. If you didn't follow the news, you could get caught up and have to pay a not insubstantial fine, or more realistically you were planning to do something that was deemed safe enough some days earlier.

An older example: if you didn't pay attention to the news on 9/11 you risked being stuck in the airport for a very long time.

So yeah, there are situations where you do need to follow the news. Not often, but two global events have happened in my lifetime (3 if you count the fall of the Berlin wall) where you really did need to pay attention to the news.

Maybe some sort of exponential back-of is warrented? Say you check the news and if nothing relevant happend you check in again the next day, then you skip a day, then two, etc. When an event happens where you need to follow the news (say a local flood), you go back to an hourly checkup.

The final thing I have noticed is that the news you need to follow are mostly very local. What happens in other countries is, relatively speaking, of no importance to you.