> 1. Realize that reading political/world news probably won't have any direct impact on your life. Don't watch TV news. Instead, spend time diving very deep into a particular subject areas by reading books about these areas and trying to answer your own specific questions.
While following this advice might make an individual happier, if most people followed it, we'd gradually become slaves to the ruling class which would happily exploit us without us noticing or willing to do anything about it.
I think most of the "news" is slanted to get people to do or think things. It's only in lesser visited corners of knowledge wrapped up in books or specialized study that the persuasion background noise dies down and real understanding is easier to piece together.
I avoid a lot of mass media (e.g TV) because if I absorb and process the same information everyone else does I'll think thoughts that are similar to everyone else. I guess that's good and bad. It's helpful to at least be aware of what everyone else is thinking.
The truth is closer to that the "ruling class" is more like "slaves" to us than the other way 'round. We can ( and do ) turn on them in seconds, and they are not heard from again.
Read Marshall MacLuhan and Vance Packard. Yes, they are dated and the words are musty. The reason not to watch a lot of news has more to do with the effects of that sort of media on your nervous system than what anybody intends by it. You sort of can't just unplug, but know the game and realize you're in it. Have a diet of long-form works to balance out the blurb feeds.
While following this advice might make an individual happier, if most people followed it, we'd gradually become slaves to the ruling class which would happily exploit us without us noticing or willing to do anything about it.