This is somehow correlated with the idea of knowing 'about' a thing vs knowing a thing. News, in a large majority of cases, is something that you learn about. Its not something you experience directly. In most cases, the most useful knowledge pertains to those things that you do or likely would soon experience directly, so news is therefore a mostly useless pastime.

And if there's an upcoming election, you can always just read the candidate's stated policies and record of voting.