I would agree with you on the civic duty part if the news was just the news but it has morphed into a amalgamation of ragebait, social media content, and updates so granular to be worthless and just noise. Even the “good” sources of news do this. RSS feeds are nice but not a viable solution to the average person.

At a concept level I think you are right that a well informed population is better. I just don’t think our current handling of news and journalism is at a spot where that is even possible without a ton of extra work (hence this thread).

Choosing a level of engagement that prevents you from turning into a screaming asshole is key and unfortunately that level varies from person to person.