I think we're talking past each other. I agree with what you're saying here. Maybe I didn't make it clear, but I agree that e.g., watching cable news and skimming headlines will not give one a particularly accurate or useful picture of the world, and may even harm one's mental health.
I'm saying there are better ways, and their value is not diminished by the firehose of low- or negative-value information most people consume.
> People don't need to be experts about everything to become relatively well informed about many things, nor do they need to try to solve every problem at once.
My impression is that people are generally not well informed on anything. They know some factoids, they can repeat some headlines, but they don't understand half of it. And how could they? Even the journalists don't. Read the daily news about a topic you are an expert on and assume that they're as correct about everything else you're not an expert on.
Kony wasn't stopped by people knowing about him and his crimes and everybody spreading Kony 2012 and other Clicktivism. It doesn't change anything, other than your state of mind, which will be in a much, much worse condition.
If you do something, that's great. But it's obviously not connected to watching the news. Almost everybody watches the news, but almost nobody does anything.