It's good and healthy to weed out some of the compulsive things we do and turn them back into choices. The only actionable advice I have is to have an alternative activity planned that you can jump into instead of the thing you don't want to do anymore. I don't know what you're into, but there's bound to be something you can slot into The Routine without much work, even reading a book a page or two at a time.

Yes, replace it with learning sed/awk/bash and answer questions on this forum when I can.

Sounds like a good substitute to me!

Exactly, on top of that Tom Friedman is one of the biggest cheerleaders for War with...everybody.

If he is so desperate for war, go strap on a helmet, body armor and get an M4 go for it.

Why would you wean yourself off reading the news?

The news keeps us in touch with what's going on in the world. It allows us to properly share this planet and to keep informed of what's happening to our fellow humans, creatures and the environment, thus improving our ability to make things better.

On the other hand, if you're wanting to wean yourself off reading the news *as presented by various sources* then that sounds great. There are a plethora of news sources out there and many are biased in their viewpoint of the world. However many are not. It doesn't need to be a simple choice of listening to the news or not. More than that, it shouldn't.

What source of news isn't biased? The Onion?

It's in human nature to be biased. But those sources which I consider less biased are the Guardian, the BBC, Al Jazeera, the Independent, news reports from groups like Oxfam, Amnesty International, Médécins du Monde, CERN, plus, to a certain extent, news agencies such as Reuters. However, in saying that, it's important to be able to distinguish factual reporting from editorial content.

Of course, bias is in the eyes of the beholder. If you have a certain political worldview then it is human nature to think that anyone with a differing political worldview is biased.

But, given the nature of your question, I'm sure your mind is already set and my answer won't satisfy you. To you, news is biased, full stop. It's a shame you believe that. Admittedly, you should never believe 100% in anything you hear or read, but in my opinion you have to make an effort to see what's happening and what people are saying around the world, and then make up your own mind as to what you believe.

I'm still working for a living and funnily enough the last week or so has been "crunch time". So I actually haven't been on LQ even.

I pretty much never have time to listen or watch the news. Makes me an ignoramus sometimes because I don't always know when people are referring to a big story in the news. Usually though I get exposure secondhand hearing about it or viewing it when I'm at the gym, my whopping 45 minutes or so per weekday.

The other half is that I do agree about "where" you get your news, and also have my thoughts about online. I used to browse daily online to read news, and yes mostly sports. Now today it is nearly an impossible act because of my perceptions of the following, and note that I'm in the US, sorry for those who have an entirely different perspective:

1. If I listen on the radio, I get "clips" and they go to commercial, or it's a sensationalist show and they talk about one thing, make jokes, or argue, and so I get no real news, either case I get no real news, so I listen in the car to my own music, or I talk to my sister. Plus I'm in the car about 1/2 hour per day.
2. If I watch, this is the same experience as radio, ... "Coming up we'll hear about the ..." and then they go to commercial. If I switch the channel, the other one is ALSO at commercial. Gah!!! So I watch a movie I recorded or simply don't watch.
3. Online browsing used to be OK and in fact I used to view certain newspaper sites daily. Over time two different things happened:
   1. They went to partial pay sites, so I can read some stories, but as a paid subscriber I'd get more and I don't pay, so .... cross that site off!
   2. They have so, so, so very many ads that I can't READ their site! I block scripts in my browser and I find I'd have to free up so much that it's not worth it, or on my phone which is harder and I don't wish to install the script blockers, plus the mobile apps make that harder, the worse part is that those sites take forever to load and as soon as I start reading, an ad moves it around or oversteps it and I can't read the story! So ... I don't read any stories on my phone