A person spends a whole morning alone with a newspaper, and the poem suggests this is not as peaceful as it sounds. The speaker compares reading the news to being in a prison that is hard to escape. Nothing physically holds them there, but the paper has a grip on their attention, and the pile of bad news makes it difficult to put down and walk away.
The last image shifts the feeling. The paper becomes "the flag of some country / we are made to fear." That suggests the news presents the world as a set of threats, with distant places turned into symbols of danger. The word "made" matters: the fear is not natural but something we are taught or pushed into. The speaker seems uneasy and a little resigned, aware of being shaped by what they read. The mood is quiet, isolated and faintly ominous, helped by the short, broken lines that feel like small, uneasy breaths.