I wonder if Aaron would still agree that, in spending time reading coverage of this, we have not really changed our opinions or learned anything relevant to our lives? He sounds like a pragmatist, and I think he would.

Personally, as devil's advocate, reading the reports of yet another intelligent young person being pressured and victimized by the sickly allied commercial/government capitalist establishment (of their own country), it redoubles my stance that current era government lacks any honest sense of democracy; we desperately need to claw back the power of nations (and business) against the individual. (Assange is in some senses leading the charge here, and doing a good job!)

My point though is that sometimes news helps contribute to general impressions like this. I think that can be as valuable as the concrete relevant new life-actionable information that Aaron points out correctly is usually missing from news.

In short I agree with Aaron, but there are counter-points. (I haven't watched/read news regularly since pretty much ever... but consider myself reasonably informed on the issues behind the issues, ie. structure of government, general state of society in different parts of the world, methods of oppression. But that knowledge comes from the hacking community and travel (eg. Tunisia during revolution, many years living in China, some time in US&UK, Europe, most of Asia, etc.) not from mainstream news.)

Does anyone here still read news on a daily basis? If so, why?