I was a journalist for ten years, and I'm still a news junkie. We don't have a TV, but I hang out a lot on reddit and twitter and spend an hour or two each morning reading news from a variety of sources - world, national, industry - before I start my day. My spouse also likes to keep up with world events and news, especially keeping up with news within our industry. Because of this, our kids have grown up with the news of the day being fodder for dinner conversation on a daily basis. But our conversations not only discuss the what is happening but the possibly whys and outcomes. We also have talked at great length about what we can or cannot do to effect change over something we see in the news. After one story about the children at a local hospital having very few toys to play with, we talked about it over dinner, and our kids - on their own - chose several toys that they thought were sturdy, interesting, and in good enough shape to donate. It took a sad story and created not only an empowerment over the bad news but a great lesson in sacrificing personal gain for the greater good. Our kids have all synthesized news within the context of their own life and knowledge, and so the disgust and outrage over horrible events is tempered with the larger understanding of it being an event and not an edict of all human behavior.
