Btw you do NOT need to read the news to help people
You can do all of these things without reading the news:
Go to protests
Volunteer
Join a mutual aid network
Write to your representatives
Donate
Clean up trash and pollution
Curate and provide resources for your community
Citizen science/citizen history projects to help the environment/etc.
Much, much more
Reading the news is not a moral obligation. Following people whose posts make you spiral is not a moral obligation.
I am more able to help people when I don't regularly read the news. I volunteer more. I go out early to go weed invasive species at a nature reserve. I have more capacity to support my friends and the people I care about.
I have more energy to work on this blog, for that matter. (Obviously I regularly read a lot of good news. Which I recommend. The rest of this post is about normal news, which highly rewards negative content.)
You cannot pour from an empty vessel.
What matters is doing something to help.










