One of the most common recommendations teachers seem to give to their students at the beginning of VCE Economics is “you should be watching the news”.
I know I’m guilty of saying it to my classes on more than one occasion.
Should you actually be watching the news though? The news media in Australia has inherent biases towards specific political agendas and therefore the news you’re receiving has been presented in a very specific manner. This often means the news is one sided and does not tell the full story about the economic impacts of what is happening across the nation.
This goes both ways the Murdoch media (news.com.au etc) leans heavily to the right and therefore tends to support any liberal policies and criticize any political decisions made by the left. Meanwhile the more left leaning media (abc news for example) may skew too far in the opposite direction.
Either way it is 2021 now, you should not be watching the 6pm news on TV as it will just be a collection of stories designed to gain the tv network ratings. Also the news cycle is 24/7 now and news is available all of the time. I honestly recommend reading the news from as wide of a range of sources as possible to gain a holistic view of the economy.
I also hope that your teacher will be able to break down any major economic events for you in class in a non bias way to help you fully understand how the world is changing. Finally, some unbiased sources for
In summary: if you spent 30 minutes a night watching the 6pm news for 200 days of VCE, that’s 100 hours or more than 4 days of your life wasted. Much like the economy you should aim to be as efficient in your consumption of news.