Pressure, yes.  I don’t know anyone who follows the news – they say it’s too painful, so they stay away.  From my first time in Israel I learned that no one ever missed the news.  It was turned up loud in the bus, in the grocery, every hour.  Even if we were deep in a conversation, we stopped for the news. We knew that our fate depended on it.  

It’s different now.  Our inability to really understand what is going on makes the news painful without being informative.  Why are we being told what we are told?  Is it true?  Is it slanted?  Is it shaped by the government, by some advertisers, by attention-seekers?  Is it meant to scare us? comfort us? deceive us?  Perhaps it is better to avoid the news, feel no pain.

but what is really going on?  makes you nervous, doesn’t it?