When Russia first attacked Ukraine, I couldn’t find out why the hell it was happening. I read and then skimmed roughly 15 articles trying to figure out why. But all every article did was mention NATO in one sentence, said Russia and Ukraine had tensions, and moved on. I was so confused as to why the attack was going on, and as someone who genuinely cannot understand things unless I know why, I was totally dumbstruck.
It took someone sitting me down and walking me through a short history of Russia and Ukraine, explaining a small portion of NATO, and saying that Russia simply didn’t want a wall of nukes on a border of theirs. (This is simplified, but it works.) This explanation took less than 5 minutes, and yet not a single article had it. If it wasn’t for this person’s background knowledge and east European origins, he wouldn’t have been able to read between the lines the way that he did.
I already don’t read the news much in the first place, as the news feels more like manipulation than information. This event only reminded me why. Every news source has their bias, and I thought the true answer simply laid in between the two extremes, but I’m starting to see it’s not that simple. When news is just made for the sake of making money, neither side says anything that makes sense, and there is no info to be found anywhere. It’s not just about Ukraine and Russia either. So many news pieces of important events simply completely cut out information and only leave in parts that trigger someone into anger. Hell, look at the LAPSUS$ hack on NVIDIA - I’ve only been able to find screenshots of the actual demands through Reddit/Fedi, and next to no articles about it have the actual screenshots. (Yes, there are some! But for some reason, they’re ridiculously hard to find with a search.) They simply paraphrase and cut out over half of the information.
The news is too much effort. At this point, I think I’ll settle for being blissfully uninformed instead.
