Secrets from the diplomatic world
How to be an informed citizen and not be angry (it is possible.)
by Stephanie Hilborn
I stopped watching TV five years ago. I refuse to listen to the news or the radio for the most part. I turned off all news notifications on my phone. People seem puzzled, “But why? Don’t you need to be informed? But you were a diplomat.” I read articles on topics that interest me but I do not let someone else set the agenda. That is the first mistake that leads to overwhelm and copious self-induced insanity.
We are living in a world of highly charged injustice and a paradigm of profits over people. Additionally, the news media is designed to activate heightened responses and in the process, we may lose our marbles more often then we would like to admit. Sensation, drama and conflict is prioritized. Think about it, when you are trying to get ratings to maximize ad revenue, chaos rules supreme. When I was working for the Georgian Government (one of the fiercely unique and radically anti-Russian countries previously bombed by Russia in a 5-day conflict with an afterglow of a few months to a year, depending on who you ask with about 192,000 people displaced in a short amount of time), I approached Vice and Wired about positive stories the government wanted attention to on educational reforms and technology. I was told point blank that…