The OJ Simpson trial, the Gulf War, and Y2K. The Casey Anthony trial, the kinetic action in Libya, and the Mayan 2012 prophecy.
The largest problem with the hyping and mental ingestion of these events is the ability to lead you to inaction.
The wicked person is hyped so that you feel like a good person. This person is the devil therefore you are not the devil. Without the newscaster or preacher hyping the wicked, it is difficult for a person to define how they are good so they go out and do good things. In the presence of the hype of the wicked person people can feel as though they are good without doing anything good at all. Feel good about yourself not by comparison but by doing good things. Don’t wait for the world to balance itself out, do it yourself, outweigh the wicked by doing inversely greater acts of good.
The foreign war is hyped to give the viewer a skewed perspective of their society. America is so great because Iraq/Afghanistan/Libya is so bad, an extension of the hype of the wicked person to be a hype of a wicked society. Rather than making our imagination or hope the scale for which our society should strive the lowest common denominator is given in order to make the viewer complacent with the status quo.
The end of the world is hyped to make you feel like you have accomplished all that you possibly can. Again it provides the lowest common denominator to make you complacent with what you have accomplished thus far and not lead you to strive for greatness later on. It stifles your ability to formulate long term goals like writing that script, finishing school, or saving for a house. You hear it all the time when someone mentions a vacation or a wedding planned for 2013 a person will jovially retort that there will be no 2013 as the world is going to end in 2012.
tl;dr Throw away your TV.