Comment by jwarden
Reading the news and being informed are two separate things. Being an informed citizen, the kind that democracies need to survive, also requires 1) being informed of history and 2) understanding issues in depth.
People who consume a lot of news tend to have very shallow understanding of a broad range of current events. Worse they tend to be passive receivers of news instead of active seekers of information with intent to understand the world.
As a result, they are very susceptible to manipulation through selection of what makes the news they tend to consume. They become passive pawns in political power struggles.
I'd like to get a little pedantic here and suggest it's not reading the news that's so problematic, it's 1) watching it, and 2) scrolling it. Not that print can't be effective propaganda, but it's less optimized to the task than 1 and 2. The passive pawns can't get enough of either.