When I was a little girl, my family had a tradition of watching "Good Morning, America" as I got ready for school. The show had it all—hard news, health tips and fashion advice that my 9-year-old self would never follow. As a result, I was a relatively well-informed elementary school child. As my middle school years came to an end, we changed the layout of our family room so that the TV that I watched each morning for my daily dose of news was no longer visible from the kitchen. Suddenly I was missing 20 minutes of prime GMA time each day. So I began supplementing by reading sections of the Sunday paper other than my usual real estate, travel and sports at Sunday breakfast. Then another major shift happened: I went off to college. Like many undergrads, my roommate and I elected not to install a TV, and so suddenly, paperless and TV-less, I found myself without a steady stream of reliable information. The dangerous part of this whole situation was that I initially did nothing to fix it. It wasn’t until my teacher made a reference to something about which I was clueless that I that I decided I might need to make an effort to stay connected to the world beyond my usual John Oliver watching.
Over the course of the next two months, I went from being one of the least informed people I knew to one of the most. A few days ago this proved true when I was talking to one of the most informed people I know and I was able to share some information about the Panama Papers. When I realized how little this person knew about the scandal, I began gently asking other friends. I soon realized that many of them knew little to nothing about this major news event. These were friends who were attending top universities around the country. This scandal is an important one not because it breaks ground with the idea that politicians and the very wealthy sometimes try to hide their wealth, but in that such a large number of the elite are starting to be held accountable for their transgressions. For me, this was also an important story because it showed me just what I could have missed if I were not actively seeking out news.
Now, I do not think that being in college is the problem, but rather, I think there are a number of factors that contribute to how little we are informed. For starters, we have ceased to live with our parents where reliable news is provided almost through osmosis, and so we find ourselves with less ready access to reliable sources of news. The other is that as students studying in America, our news outlets are focused on America and not the global community of which we must learn to be a part. This is evident by stories that are not reported on at all or are reported on insufficiently in America such as the coverage of elections in India in 2014 and the Mumbai Massacre in 2008. While the media has a duty to report information to our citizens that is relevant to their lives, we as global citizens have a responsibility to be informed about local and global issues alike. So, in order address both obstacles that may prevent students from being informed citizens, I encourage you to follow any one of, or all of, these tips.
- Download a news app. If you’re looking for more national coverage with some world issues, I like Yahoo News Digest (and yes, I’m as shocked as you are that Yahoo is my “go-to” for anything). The interface is simple, the articles are manageable and there is a section for more information about the subjects at the end of every article as well as a section with tweets about the subject from interesting sources.
- Take a look at the BBC and the AP apps. BBC has an easy-to-use app available for both Apple and Android products. The information on BBC is for someone who wants to be informed about global issues.
- If you can’t find the time to read about issues, then please download the NPR app and listen to the news.
I encourage you to open these apps up on your subway ride to work or your bus ride to school. Read about Putin while you sit in lecture hall in the minutes before class. Become familiar with the issues in the EU while you spin at the gym. Listen to NPR before bed. Or open the Wall Street Journal Snapchat while taking a study break. Being isolated from the world can feel safe, but as we transition into adulthood and the responsibilities that it entails, we should arm ourselves with the information to take on those responsibilities.
So whether you live in the bubble of college or maybe just the bubble of America, you can fight against the plague of no information by spending five to 10 minutes a day reading and then tell someone about it. If we do, we can make America great again the right way, through pursuing knowledge and striving to be better global citizens.
