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Things You Notice When You Quit the News

• cylinder 10y ago
  I don't have much to add other than I agree with all these points and suggest more Americans ignore the so called "news" we're being pushed with into hysteria. Also your Facebook feed is probably a huge drain, I'd recommend unfollowing everyone or at least aggressively curating down to people and things you truly care about.
  • vinchuco 10y ago
    And be alone with my actual identity and have to deal with existential angst? I'd rather get upset about an issue I read to give my life some meaning /s
  • softwaredoug 10y ago
    Agree on the hysteria. Twitter especially rewards the pithy smartass that says something controversial. The thoughtful person interested in expressing complicated ideas and trying to empathize with other humans doesn't get retweeted/favd.
  • equalarrow 10y ago
    Or just dropping out of facebook and having face to face relationships with those that matter most. That's what I did and I don't feel any worse for it. My relationships are better too because they're actually real.
• charlex815 10y ago
  Everything in balance.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• ssaunier_ 10y ago
  Must-(re)read: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews - it was 10 years ago.
  • redsummer 10y ago
    He mentions: "instead of reading the back and forth of a daily, why not read a weekly review? Instead of a weekly review, why not read a monthly magazine? Instead of a monthly magazine, why not read an annual book?" Can anyone recommend such a weekly or monthly review? One that isn't particularly ideological. It would save so much time.
    • copperx 10y ago
      The Economist is a good weekly review; the stories are very short but the information density is high.
      • Patrick_Devine 10y ago
        I'd also echo that The Economist is well worth a subscription. It also has the interesting quirk that doesn't use bylines and all articles are published anonymously.
      • nnvvhh 10y ago
        +1 for the Economist. You get much more value than what you pay for an annual subscription. This week's edition has a letter to the editor from the president of Peru... It's that kind of publication.
      • sien 10y ago
        That and listen to a short, quality news bulletin once a day like NPR or the BBC is all you want.
      • RachelF 10y ago
        You'll battle to find a better source than The Economist. It is not as good as it was, as their editor was replaced last year.
• dbg31415 10y ago
  6) Watching "the news" makes you mad because it just seems like sensationalized bullshit when it's on in the background. You wonder... "How do people watch this dribble?" or "How could anyone believe this?" If your "news" ever says that something is good or bad... it's just an opinion piece. It's very hard to find impartial news outlets that aren't just pandering to confirmation bias, or that don't have an agenda. Sucks about all the competition for attention on the internet... people realized that they can catch more bugs with honey, and so they just tell their audiences what they want to hear.
• Tempest1981 10y ago
  The local news seems to always be about murders and violence. Why is it beneficial to learn about every instance of "humans behaving badly"? (Celebrities, ok, maybe, but random people?)
  • TwoBit 10y ago
    celebrities, not OK.
  • crimsonalucard 10y ago
    what are celebrities if not random people?
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  • closeparen 10y ago
    >Why is it beneficial to learn about every instance of "humans behaving badly"? Because it is your civic responsibility to care that such things are happening in your community, and to allocate your political activity, voting, and charitable giving in a way that you believe will mitigate that suffering. Because if everyone said, "sometimes humans behave badly; why should I care?" we'd be living in a hellscape.
    • Tempest1981 10y ago
      I see your point. I guess I would prefer a summary every month/year, vs. a graphic live video report each night.
      • ianai 10y ago
        It's because violence gets viewers and it's a constant. Every channel has a weather man/woman for the same reasons.
    • nul_byte 10y ago
• eigenbom 10y ago
  Hacker News, I could never quit you.
  • williamstein 10y ago
    Hacker news is incredibly useful to daily life if you're in tech. I've learned many things here that are critical to products I've built over the last few years. This community has worked very hard to avoid wasting my time with exactly the sort of headline news this post is about. Thanks.
  • j_s 10y ago
    Anyone care to link the various daily / weekly / monthly summary options out there for Hacker News?
    • ivank 10y ago
      http://www.hntoplinks.com/ http://www.hntoplinks.com/
• mcshicks 10y ago
  I read the headlines of Google news. That way when someone invariably asks me if I heard about this or that I can say "yeah I read that in the headlines". Otherwise people sometimes tell you what they read which is worse than actually reading the article.
• sean_patel 10y ago
  TL;DR: 1) You feel better 2) You were never actually accomplishing anything by watching the news 3) Most current-events-related conversations are just people talking out of their asses 4) There are much better ways to “be informed” 5) “Being concerned” makes us feel like we’re doing something when we’re not My own personal experience: I quit watching the news the day after the 2016 Election ended. I felt so ill the next day I couldn't even get out of Bed. So I googled stuff on "how to stop watching news" and came across this post by Buffer Co-founder Joel Gasgoine => http://joel.is/the-power-of-ignoring-mainstream-news/ http://joel.is/the-power-of-ignoring-mainstream-news/ It completely opened my eyes. Ever since I quit the news (everything incl. google news, reddit, huffpo 538, etc etc, except HN of course :) I've been feeling the following +ve effects 1) I am generally more happy and mindful, less stressed 2) I've finally made the most progress on my side-project that was languishing for years. 3) I am more mindful and get more things that are in my control, done. Related graphic => "Circle of Control vs Circle of Concern" http://www.jdroth.com/images/circle-concern-control.jpg http://www.jdroth.com/images/circle-concern-control.jpg 4) I smile more. I think this is because I finally realized that I can neither control, nor contain all the bad things that happen around the world, that we read about in the news. Don't let the new "wash over you". Take control of the things you need to get done, for you and your family and friends and career and retirement and life, and start hacking away at them using all the time you would previous waste on following and watching "the news"
  • copperx 10y ago
    I would agree, but some news affect your life deeply. Personally, I'm reading news daily to answer the question "should I complete that Canada residency application today, or can I wait a few weeks?"
    • themckman 10y ago
      You don't just sign up to be a resident in another country. You have to be invited. I know its fun to say "Screw this! I'm moving to Canada", but it doesn't work like that.
      • 10y ago
• pipio21 10y ago
  5. You are being manipulated by mainstream news. You can learn Arabic or Russian and go to Ukraine or Syria or Iraq and inform yourself talking to the people there, both sides of the story, or you can let the TV media tell you what is happening. I have done it(I don't know much Arabic and a little Russian but I have traveled there) and it is quite an astonishment that what TV shows you has nothing to do with reality. I remember talking with a Syrian showing me a CNN video from US News of a Syrian manifestation(from natives that were being flood by foreigners with bad intentions), they reduced the audio volume and told everybody the manifestation was from the other side(the side that US was supporting). The fact is that people that understood Arabic could listen what the protesters were saying and they(CNN) DID NOT CARE. They did not care because it is a numbers thing, most Americans don't know Arabic, and millions of them will watch the channel and make themselves an idea from the eyes and ears that people in power have chosen for them. The city where the protesters went into war and was bombarded for years and nobody displayed it on the news. Now it is displayed every single day because the people the US is supporting is losing there. Now it is so important civilians in this city, when for years they simply did not exist. If you control the perception, you control the emotions that people will feel, and you could make them do exactly what you want. They will even believe they are "free", because they are to behave as they wish, but they are not because emotions are quite automatic.
  • cloakandswagger 10y ago
    Look at recent events if you need further evidence of this. The term "fake news" has exploded in just under a month in the mainstream media. If my memory serves me, tabloids like The Enquirer have been sitting on news stands for as long as I can remember. So how did this fervor over "fake news" coalesce so quickly and uniformly? Mainstream outlets move in lockstep with each other and these are the final, desperate death throes of an outdated and superfluous institution. Don't expect they'll go down without a fight though.
    • gnarbarian 10y ago
      The whole FUD campaign regarding "Fake News" is comically hypocritical in my opinion. Glenn Greenwald has an excellent article calling them out for it: https://theintercept.com/2016/12/09/a-clinton-fan-manufactured-fake-news-that-msnbc-personalities-spread-to-discredit-wikileaks-docs/ https://theintercept.com/2016/12/09/a-clinton-fan-manufactur... Edit: Ironically, that post was doing great until it got flagged. Edit 2: It has been unflagged Edit 3: Flagged again.
• codingdave 10y ago
  I quit watching the news right around 1999. My family once challenged me how I knew about important events, and I told them that people in my life would let me know if anything occurred that I needed to know. They challenged me by quizzing me on major recent events. When they did find one that I had no idea about, they asked, "See? Nobody told you about that!" I replied, "You just did." And they have not argued about it again. They do continue to inform me, though, and it all works out.
  • sean_patel 10y ago
    I don't get why everyone is downvoting this. Care to explain, down-voters? > I told them that people in my life would let me know if anything occurred that I needed to know. This is so true. I told my girlfriend the same thing after she got mad that I quit news and said "Oh, you'll need to know important local news (stabbings, crime in San Francisco, protests for traffic etc). That 1 time where someone 4 blocks from my home got run over by some dummy doing facebook live in her car while driving, the convenient store guy in my block asked me "Hey, did you hear about that so and so got run over." I said no, but you just told me. :)
    • JoBrad 10y ago
      So you're relying on others (who are watching the news that you don't want to get contaminated with) to tell you the news? How is that any better than just listening to it yourself? It sounds remarkably worse to me: telephone, but with real events.
    • tasty_freeze 10y ago
      Here are a few reasons * It puts the burden of collecting and summarizing relevant news on others * You are at the mercy of the grapevine effect, which only gets worse as more and more people take up this solution so your news takes more hops before you receive it * And, most importantly, your sources are also not getting their news first hand; their sources the very same crappy news outlets that you yourself rejected.
      • 10y ago
• wmccullough 10y ago
  If information was enough we'd all be billionaires with perfect abs.
  • bbcbasic 10y ago
    I'm still hunting for that one weird tip.
    • cyberferret 10y ago
      Someone's mom knows about it...
    • devopsproject 10y ago
      Click here to learn the 9 secrets to Wealth and Abs (number 5 will blow your mind!)
• open-source-ux 10y ago
  Well, I guess it depends on your news source. I'm from the UK and I've always thought the following about US news vs UK news (and this may be a bit stereotypical): - US TV news: hopelessly biased and sensational, sometimes hysterical. - US newspapers: outside of the tabloids, generally serious and reputable. Ethics and integrity are taken seriously within the profession (even if not always adhered to). - UK national newspapers: hopelessly biased, shrieking headlines, foaming-at-the mouth hysteria, click-bait headlines galore. Self-centred, nasty, unpleasant, possibly the most racist press in Europe. - UK TV news: far from perfect, but strives for impartiality, balance and even-handedness - UK radio news (BBC dominates): possibly better than TV news because you don't get the emotive visuals. (But, of course, sometimes pictures can convey the magnitude or seriousness of an event more than just words.) Also, unlike TV, you can access BBC radio news wherever you are in the world for free.
  • ldjb 10y ago
    Radio is definitely one of the best sources and unsung heroes of news in the UK. I feel BBC Radio 4 does this especially well, in that it provides coverage in a few different formats. The hourly bulletins allow you to stay informed without investing a lot of time, the longer news summaries cover a broad range of news, and the current affairs programmes (such as Today and PM) dig deep into the nitty-gritty of the issues. Elsewhere on the BBC Radio network, Radio 5 live does a good job with its rolling news coverage, the BBC World Service has fantastic features (I enjoy their technology programmes Click and Tech Tent), and the local radio stations are sometimes the only place you'll find decent coverage of local news. As you point out, the BBC does dominate, although I have a fondness for LBC and talkRADIO, too.
  • peteretep 10y ago
    > UK TV news: far from perfect, > but strives for impartiality, > balance and even-handedness There's a reason for this: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0024/86307/bc2015-07-section_5_due_impartialitiy.pdf https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0024/86307/b...
  • masondixon 10y ago
    Internationally, US Newspapers have a very good reputation. But if you read a US Newspaper daily, is is ridiculously biased. The longer form investigative reporting articles are usually outstanding though.
• webwanderings 10y ago
  Last time I glanced over local news channel on TV, I was surprised to see some anchors look old, and some as same as I used to see them 10 plus years ago. Sometimes when I'm in McDonald's or such places and I glance over their TV to see CNN running, I really wonder why in the world people spend their time watching these things. Well, I have on multiple occasions gone as far as to not read the news for many days through my RSS (where I have all the sources of the world). That would make you feel even a lot better. Aside from all the advantages listed there (all true) I'd say that the only disadvantage of not "watching" the news is, that you may miss out on the moving video scenes of some of the most iconic events in history, because TV repeats these things. But even that is not really a disadvantage.
  • zeroer 10y ago
    I think the calculus with McDonalds and airports is that CNN is the most bland, wide-appeal channel always playing that's available.
• gurneyHaleck 10y ago
  There was a period of time, starting upon the day of, and then continuing for some years after the 9/11 attacks, where "The News" was something you couldn't help but be engrossed by. Growing up during an era of Johnny Carson, in a house with no cable, and attending high school in the 90's, "The News" was something very different prior to 9/11. 24 hour cable news started providing information on fast moving events, and that was relevent, in the lead up to the Iraq war, when everyone was waiting for the other shoe to drop. It was obvious something bad would come out of 9/11, but what? There were hushed whispers of an Iraq invasion exfiltrating into grapevines by word of mouth (but not in the news, and not on TV) as early as January 2002, but would it become a reality? And if so, my god, why? By summer, word of mouth was firm. Iraq was going to be a thing, according to people with family members in the military. And so, you waited for that to show up in the news. By 2005, George W. Bush had been re-elected, and there was no longer any relevant information to be had. The ruse was over. It was clear that cable news was a sham. Popcorn, for the mob attending yet another gladiator tournament at the colosseum.
  • TwoBit 10y ago
    I think this started before 9/11. OJ's white Bronco was before 9/11.
    • sitkack 10y ago
      It was the first Gulf War where 24 hr news hype cycle really took off. Wolf Blitzer doing his sports announcer thing over footage of "smart bombs".
      • gurneyHaleck 10y ago
        My house didn't have cable at that time, and I was not yet in high school. We watched the first gulf war in social studies class, putting it in league with the space shuttle challenger disaster. It was a classroom topic for a few months, and then gone. Next year it was Rodney King and Amy Fisher or something. More irrelevant popcorn.
    • gurneyHaleck 10y ago
• twblalock 10y ago
  I stopped regularly watching the news a while ago. I read the news from a few online sources. The consequence of this is that most TV news looks like breathless hysteria and fear-mongering when I do happen to watch it.
• nilved 10y ago
  I thought that "quitting the news" meant not consuming news, not simply abstaining from watching TV. At this point I feel like watching news programs is more unusual than not.
  • muzz 10y ago
    Exactly and more so for those like us who participate in forums like Hacker News. I.e. if one is getting their tech news from a set of links online, it seems odd that that same person would be watching television for other news.
• mikebay 10y ago
  Mainstream news, Google and Facebook's agenda is: Bad russia hackers, Bad Julian Assange and wikileaks, Bad Alex Jones, Good Obama, more Nobel prices to Obama, Recount of votes ??? Mainstream news ? Big no thanks! They are full of lies!
• sandworm101 10y ago
  Anyone who thinks they can disconnect from "the news" is kidding themselves. Unless you do the whole hermit thing, you are influences. Not watching CNN won't prevent other CNN-watchers from talking to you. Reading only paperback novels won't stop their authors, who also read newspapers, from influencing you. Politics is everywhere. Take star trek. We all know the basic stories, and the thematic changes over the years. They map to changes in US politics. Even at home watching DVDs, you are engaged and influenced.
  • jomohke 10y ago
    It sounds like you're taking it as an absolutist argument ("Why try to avoid refined sugar? It's everywhere, so you're always going to ingest some anyway.") > Not watching CNN won't prevent other CNN-watchers from talking to you. I think a conversation with a CNN-watcher is more interesting when you yourself have read slower sources than if you have both spent your time watching live broadcasts or reading live articles. You'll find you both have different kinds of points to bring to the conversation. I've found a large difference between the daily (or 24-hour) sources and weekly/monthly publications. The latter are more removed from the day to day events, and so tend to spend more time on the issue itself and wider trends, and less on personality clashes or rare, once-off outlier events (which by definition, you don't need to be worried about^[1]). Relying mainly on them, you'll have heard less about what has happened in the last 24 hours, but likely know more about the major events and wider trends of the past year. The daily sources are particularly bad at portraying those wider trends: they will show a violent crime every night regardless of whether a hundred or only ten occurred. [1]. The truly significant outlier events will still be covered by the slower news cycle and in normal daily conversations. There's no risk of not knowing that a 9/11 happened. I haven't found that it matters if I don't know about the latest disaster immediately: to the contrary, a conversation can be stronger when the other person explains in their own words what has happened, and I can ask questions with genuine interest. Note that he's not advocating being oblivious to the world. See the third paragraph: > To be clear, I’m mostly talking about following TV and internet newscasts here. This post isn’t an indictment of journalism as a whole. There’s a big difference between watching a half hour of CNN’s refugee crisis coverage (not that they cover it anymore) versus spending that time reading a 5,000-word article on the same topic.
• gbog 10y ago
  I found out that having no news at all is not so good, because you don't want friends and colleagues to believe you're living in a cave. But you only need the two three important headlines in the week, and I get these from Wikipedia home page. Also, if you are concerned by a topic, say war in Syria, just get your meat from Wikipedia article, it's not perfect but it beats all other info sources by very far.
  • losteverything 10y ago
    I never heard of anyone using wiki for for current events. How do you start.
    • maxerickson 10y ago
      Here's the front page for English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
      • hashmymustache 10y ago
        interesting. do you know if the "in the news" selection is generated or curated?
        • maxerickson 10y ago
          Seems to be curated. Each day has a history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events
        • ldjb 10y ago
          Items are nominated, discussed, and then a consensus is reached regarding whether to include them. There is information on the 'In the news' section at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:In_the_news https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:In_the_news The page for nominating and discussing items is at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:In_the_news/Candidates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:In_the_news/Candidat... In case you hadn't heard of it before, Wikipedia also has a sister project called Wikinews: https://en.wikinews.org/ https://en.wikinews.org/
• tbihl 10y ago
  I don't know that I've ever properly followed the news. The closest I came was regularly reading Business Week as recently as ten or so years back. It was, then, approximately the same as reading the first 80% of each article in the economist. It didn't have that final segment where the writer acts so proud of him/herself for reaching obvious or silly conclusions, but it had the great information. Unfortunately Business Week started to grow increasingly lengthy, and the writing quality probably declined somewhat in the same time.
• alistproducer2 10y ago
  This is incredibly relevant to me rn. I recently cut the cord and quit FB. I legitimately do feel much happier. My FB feed was just a stream of things to get pissed about and MSNBC was just filling my head with other people's opinions. Here's my daily routine: skim thehill.com, politico.com, reddit.com/r/news for headlines zerohedge.com when I want to see what's going on in right-wing land newsblok.com if I want to see what the crazies are talking about without giving them clicks thenation.com and theatlantic.com to see what liberals are pissed about today slate.com for mainstream opinion pieces verysmartbrotha.com for a laugh salon.com and rawstory.com for the lulz truthdig.com and counterpunch.org for neoliberal bashing essays cnbc.com to check the markets
  • nether 10y ago
    You quit FB so that you could read a shitload more of news?
    • robryan 10y ago
      The news they want to see, not whatever news the Facebook algorithm is feeding them.
  • white-flame 10y ago
    I find realclearpolitics.com to be a broad slice of articles and videos from "both sides", as well as holding actual raw polling data when questionably sounding statistics are being bandied about. It also links to other non-political news in other areas, showing the major splash headlines. Its front page is also very information dense, so it's a lot more efficient than hitting all those sites individually. I believe I've seen content referenced there from most those sites you've listed.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    • vog 10y ago
      > I find realclearpolitics.com to be a broad slice of articles and videos from "both sides" I didn't know that site and just had a look at it. I found that really disappointing! All "news" for today are about Trump and nothing else: Sunday, December 11 - Trump Honeymoon Begins: Confidence in Economy Booming | Cohen & Thomas, NYT - Why "Trump Boom" Is a Real Possibility | Kenneth Rogoff, Project Syndicate - Here's How to Drain the Swamp | Sen. Cruz & Rep. DeSantis, Washington Post - Forget Populism--Trump's Picking Orthodox Republicans | Doyle McManus, LA Times - How the Democratic Party Lost Its Way | Thomas Mills, Politico - Obama Preaches Empathy; Trump Projects It | Kyle Smith, New York Post - Donald Trump and the Art of Getting It Done | Monica Crowley, Washington Times - Why Scientists Are Scared of Trump: A Pocket Guide | Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker So you have a single event, the outcome of the US elections. The dust hasn't settled yet. Nobody knows anything about what the new president will do. He hasn't done anything yet. And of course he didn't, he is still in his first days. So up to now there is absolutely no information, nothing. Yet, lots of articles talking about that. Taking about, essentially, nothing. This is "news" without information. The worst kind of news. "Information" would mean: Choose a different topic where you can actually write something informative about.
• booleandilemma 10y ago
  In Neal Stephenson's novel Anathem, there are different groups of intellectuals that have been cloistered from society, and they may only re-enter it for a short time every year, decade, century, or millennium, depending on what group they're in. Because of this, they only get summaries of the most important things that have happened, and they are left with plenty of time for scientific pursuits.
  • ashark 10y ago
    Chang told him that there were other books published up to about the middle of 1930 which would doubtless be added to the shelves eventually; they had already arrived at the lamasery. "We keep ourselves fairly up-to-date, you see," he commented. "There are people who would hardly agree with you," replied Conway with a smile. "Quite a lot of things have happened in the world since last year, you know." "Nothing of importance, my dear sir, that could not have been foreseen in 1920, or that will not be better understood in 1940." "You're not interested, then, in the latest developments of the world crisis?" "I shall be very deeply interested—in due course." -- Lost Horizon, James Hilton.
  • cmillard 10y ago
    Excellent novel- time for a re-read
• cyberferret 10y ago
  I haven't had a TV in the house for nearly 8 years now, and don't miss it at all. The biggest problem to me, seems to be the 24 hour news cycle for things like wars, elections and the like. I was visiting friends during a couple of major air accidents in the past couple of years (The MH370 and MH17 incidents in particular), and was astounded at the propensity for news stations on ALL channels to fill every minute of the day with news 'updates' on the events that eventually descended into getting quotes and theories from just about anyone they could get to talk in front of a camera. I was only exposed to that for a few hours at a time, but I found it absolutely exhausting to be bombarded like that. Not only that, I used to be a commercial pilot, and I could not believe the amount of disinformation and outright ridiculous theories being bandied about by so called 'reputable' news sources. No thanks. I would rather control my own news firehose, and be selective about the information that I want to learn more about.
  • cyberferret 10y ago
    In an extension to what I wrote above, I used to follow my local newspaper on Facebook a couple of years ago, just in order to keep in touch with local events seeing as I don't have a TV. I noticed their feed back then starting to change from a simple and useful dissemination of their newspaper articles, into a conduit for posting tabloid style or inflammatory/unverified web links and popular memes. I questioned them a couple of times on this in the comments area, but was told on both occasions by the page admins that their Facebook page was a 'fun and social' outlet for their paper, and if I wanted 'real news', I should just buy a copy of their actual paper. Shortly after, I noticed that their print paper started to echo their Facebook feed, in terms of unresearched articles simple copied and pasted from other sources. I stopped following them on Facebook and stopped buying their paper shortly after. When clicks, eyeballs and stickiness trumps good journalism, then that pretty much closes the door for me.
    • losteric 10y ago
      My theory is that profit destroys many news channels from the inside out. The channel start with the best intentions of conveying legitimate unbiased news to inquisitive educated audiences... but eventually the supply of news seekers gets depleted, while investors and advertisers demand more. The channel is "forced" to keep expanding so they start catering to people that don't seek out news... steadily devolving into click-bait infotainment articles. Low-brow content alienates the original news seekers, and they leave for cleaner sources of information... but by now the channel's legitimate reputation is lost. They must double down on the infotainment market to keep turning a profit. Eventually that gets saturated too, so the channel abandons their original (expensive) legitimate news reporting and continue chasing low-brow audiences, competing against all the other devolved spam-news sites. If their name held enough trust, they might chase profitable corporate/political puff-pieces ("fake news" aka lies). It feels like an awful game-theory scenario.
• joescrepes 10y ago
  >And I wonder if there’s a kind of “substitution effect” at work here. The sense of “at least I care” may actually prevent us from doing something concrete to help, because by watching sympathetically we don’t quite have to confront the reality that we’re doing absolutely nothing about it. This is something I heard mentioned a long time ago specifically relating to creative ideas. The concept was that you shouldn't rush to tell people about a new idea because that expression of it serves as a form of release.
• dba7dba 10y ago
  This 'old' book from last century (that is year 1999) sums up well why you don't need 'news'. https://www.amazon.com/How-News-Makes-Dumb-Information/dp/08.. https://www.amazon.com/How-News-Makes-Dumb-Information/dp/08.... Excerpt from desc of the book: Sommerville argues that news began to make us dumber when we insisted on having it daily. Now millions of column inches and airtime hours must be filled with information--every day, every hour, every minute. The news, Sommerville says, becomes the driving force for much of our public culture. News schedules turn politics into a perpetual campaign. News packaging influences the timing, content and perception of government initiatives. News frenzies make a superstition out of scientific and medical research. News polls and statistics create opinion as much as they gauge it. Lost in the tidal wave of information is our ability to discern truly significant news--and our ability to recognize and participate in true community.
• mmaunder 10y ago
  Agreed there is a lot of garbage news. The trouble comes about if you aren't up to speed on current events that affect you. Just a simple example from today: The CIA's claims regarding Russian election hacking. I'm the CEO of a cyber security company and I'd hate to think what would happen if someone asked me about that and I wasn't aware of it. It's not just CEO's that need to stay current. If you're in PR, policy, marketing, communications, law, research - all of those professionals benefit in many ways by knowing what is going on right now. Our company heard about the Mossack Fonseca data breach earlier this year and went and figured out a likely vector they used to gain entry within 24 hours and published. I had journalists from the AP on the phone within a few hours. Certainly there are jobs that can get away with a news blackout. But I'd consider carefully if you're one of those. And I must agree that many days I wish I could just turn it off. The signal to noise ratio, particularly on the mainstream news outlets, is atrocious.
  • BirdieNZ 10y ago
    I don't think the article is arguing to be completely disconnected, but rather to stop consuming TV and video news, and instead read quality articles on different subjects (current or otherwise). This results in being more informed about current and past events, not less.
    • devopsproject 10y ago
      so what orgs are putting out quality long form journalism?
  • ssijak 10y ago
    There are probably relevant security related journals that could inform you better about it than CNN or FoxNews.
  • op00to 10y ago
    "Oh? No, I hadn't formed an opinion on $newsStory. Please, tell me more." Works for me.
• ValleyOfTheMtns 10y ago
  Don't watch commercial news. News on publicly funded channels is much better. However, I find that I even need to take a break from non-commercial news from time to time.
• imranq 10y ago
  TV is one of worst forms of media out there. It is practically the definition of mind control and although there are multiple channels, there is a strange sense of groupthink. This is similar to the Murray Gell-Mann amnesia effect, where famed quark discoverer Murray Gell-Mann opens the newspaper and reads a physics article. He is disgusted at the lack of research, the blatant misinformation, and random theories disguised as respectable reporting. Then he flips to another section - like politics or war - and reads it as if it was somehow more accurate than the nonsense he just read.
  • nether 10y ago
    Social news online is even worse. At least with TV, there's a chance you'll be shown something from outside of your bubble. Polarization increased with deregulation of TV political coverage in the US. The internet has never been regulated in such a way, and has given rise to hyper-polarization.
    • NolF 10y ago
      Although the internet allows for hyper-polarization, it also makes it easier to manage group polarisation by allowing alternative views to be only 1 click away. It's just intellectually easier to select information from places that confirm your biases and polarize them rather than be challenged and consider alternatives.
• ywecur 10y ago
  A good alternative to normal news is slow journalism http://www.slow-journalism.com/ http://www.slow-journalism.com/
• Clubber 10y ago
  6. Anything important is obfuscated anyway. Most of what we get now is mostly just emotional filler.
• pacomerh 10y ago
  Honesty yes. The news can affect peoples perception of other places to detriment. For example, often my friends or family who live in a other countries ask me about how bad crime is where I live, or how people are struggling with the economy etc. I mean, of course thats all they see, from my perspective everything looks pretty balanced out, yes I'll hear about something bad from time to time, but it's really not as bad as the sensationalism and extremist statistics they get from the news. So yes, the less news the better, if its that important you'll hear about it.
• muzz 10y ago
  A lengthy example of "ignorance is bliss"
• dghughes 10y ago
  This is highly subjective maybe US news but I find news here on Canada trustworthy. US news is what the Enquirer was in the 80s. PBS news hour and BBC America are good.
• jtcond13 10y ago
  Americans used to have an institution that gave them a steady diet of relevant news. It gave them a healthy mix of local, state, federal and international news in reasonable doses that could be read over dinner. It mainly gave its readers reason to consider whether the darn politicians in $STATE_CAPITAL were doing their damn job or whether the town council really had any reason to be raising taxes. It was called the local newspaper. ~15 years ago, we abandoned this to spend our free time sharing Buzzfeed quizzes with one another.
• BuuQu9hu 10y ago
  I this reminds me I really need to quit reading HN.
• transposed 10y ago
  You're probably a few orders of magnitude more informed if you only read a handful of full length, investigative articles per year (compared to 1-2 hours of news every day). It's a big world, but every now and then I'll sit down and give my undivided attention to a well written piece where the journalist traveled to multiple locations to interview several or more people. Sometimes it's shocking, and most of the time I feel appalled by the end of the article, but I have to forget about my own minor struggles and learn about what real people are going through outside of my bubble.
• pow_pp_-1_v 10y ago
  I depend on NPR and PBS for the news. It might not be the most impartial source when it comes to U.S. involved foreign affairs but it is much better that all the rest that's available.
  • alistproducer2 10y ago
    I would argue NPR is as impartial as it gets for a U.S news source. Could you name a source with less bias? I sure can't.
    • bloaf 10y ago
      http://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-biased-is-your-media/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-biased-is-your-media/ I think the PBS Newshour has them beat. NPR's Morning Edition is slightly more liberal.
• jeffdavis 10y ago
  How much of this applies to tech news, or in general, news targeted to your field of interest/employment?
• graycat 10y ago
  IMHO, a lot of what is in the OP is correct, but I conclude that a more nuanced view is important. Yes, I have long wanted, and still want, to know what is important, both to me personally and more generally, about what is going on in the world so still make efforts to be so "informed". Then, over time, I went through much of the negative views about news in the OP: (1) One summer while in college, I was with my parents in DC and read The Washington Post, a lot of it, everyday and at the end of the summer concluded that I'd learned next to nothing and 99 44/100% had just wasted time. (2) Later, one day I counted and found that, in trying to be informed, I was getting 22 print periodicals, concluded that even the 22 were not telling me much of value, and cut way back. (3) I happened to notice in an Andy Hardy movie from the 1930s that then, too, apparently the movie makers believed that their audience would accept that the news was junk information. (4) I have left over from the past three quite good TV sets and with my phone and Internet service have some TV service for no extra charge. Still, I have no TV set connected to a cable or any other source and haven't watched TV in years with one exception: I tried to watch the first Republican debate on TV; mostly that was a flop. I watched the debate later on the Internet and got and read a transcript -- much better. For the mainstream media, say AP, Reuters, NYT, WaPo, Boston Globe, LAT, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, NBC, Slate, Salon, Huffpo, Business Insider, and more, I have a triage: (i) I am willing to glance at the headlines if only to see what nonsense the MSM is pushing onto the public now. And if there really is a big story, say, a nuke exploded somewhere, then I will want to know and likely that will be in the headlines. Also I get some lessons by example in, say, PR nonsense from some experts in getting attention from even usually next to nothing in meaningful content! Like in the remark about writing news stories of the reporter in the original version of the movie The Thing, if the real story is not good, then he "will make it good". So, the news distorting the truth is an old story. I also learn about "the common man in the street" -- from the fact that millions of people watch that stuff -- maybe the most important thing can learn from watching the news is about people from the fact that each day hundreds of millions of people pay attention to that stuff! (ii) Any article written by a reporter or news organization, e.g., AP, I nearly always refuse to take seriously or even read at all anymore. From my huge sample of such articles I did read in the past, I assume that such an article fails even common high school term paper writing standards for meaningful, trustworthy content and that it is likely some or all of uninformed, misinformed, biased, and deliberately distorted, fabricated, or lying. I say that such articles are (borrowing from the Bogart movie The Maltese Falcon), with bitter contempt, by newsies and nearly always refuse to read them or, if read them for some special reason, flatly refuse to take the content at face value. (iii) I am eager to pay attention to news stories on topics I'm interested in and signed by people with high credibility. Mostly for such an article, I keep a copy on my computer with a reference to the source and with an abstract and an entry in an index. I believe that staying "informed" is important: E.g., here in the US we just had an election for POTUS. IMHO, the two main candidates were very different and promised significantly different, better/worse, results for the US and even my own life. So, first, I tried to say informed and, to some extent, more superficial than I would like, did. And by watching the campaigns, the candidates, and the reactions of the newsies and citizens, I did get some education in such things -- I got some more insight into people, personalities, politics, e.g., stuff I didn't learn much about studying mathematics! And, second, I got involved by practicing my writing and posting on-line -- so, I tried to do better as a US citizen. So, sure, now I get essentially all my news from the Internet. One important approach is to use HN as a filter to find more important content. Here at HN, often there are references to articles at the NYT. Unless such articles appear to be signed by people with credibility and independent of the NYT, I flatly, automatically refuse to read them. I have, maybe with one exception a decade, zip, zilch, and zero respect for anything the NYT thinks or believes. The Internet permits a news organization, maybe just some one person, to reach nearly everyone who might be interested in content from that person. From that fact, I am guessing that the Internet -- that does permit deeper presentations of information -- is the key to an irresistible, radical transformation of public understanding and effectiveness in the US democracy. So, net, with some nuance, I disagree with some of the OP and conclude that the news and staying informed, are important.
• etrautmann 10y ago
  The biggest question for me is how to track important world or national events without tracking the 24 hour news cycle. I'd like to understand trends that unfold over weeks, but not days, like a low-pass filter on the news. The best I can come up with is reading the economist, but I'm looking for better ideas.
  • theGimp 10y ago
    Every morning, I start my day by loading a bunch of news sites I enjoy reading and look at the top couple of headlines. If something piques my interest, I read it. My news sources: NYT, BBC, CBC, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star. I'm Canadian, as you might be able to tell. Sometimes I read what Brookings puts out, but it's important to keep in mind their biases as a think tank.
• rosege 10y ago
  This is QI - Philosopher Alain De Botton's take on the new industry https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKvOW6RwmFg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKvOW6RwmFg
• hartator 10y ago
  > Read three books on a topic and you know more about it than 99% of the world. This.
• devsquid 10y ago
  Yay! More pride of ignorance...
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• CSMastermind 10y ago
  I traded in TV news for The Wall St. Journal, New York Times, and Economist. I read Ars and Hacker News for tech stuff. I get my sports news from Reddit. Best decision I've ever made.
• ChuckMcM 10y ago
  I really resonate with the 'read three books on a topic and you'll know 99% more than the rest of the world.' That is a bit extreme but it is true that very few people actually try to learn about things that the news makes them concerned about. That said, I do record the news on my DVR, skip to the weather forecast and then fast through the sports highlights. That way when I go to the office if I'm asked about how the local team did or did I see that move or play I won't be completely clueless. And I don't leave without rain gear if its going to rain. Those are pieces of information I can use.
• known 10y ago
  If you don't read a newspaper you are uninformed. If you do read a newspaper, you are misinformed.
• Waterluvian 10y ago
  Go to CNN, Fox News, NBC, etc. and count the number of "scary or negative" headlines/links. You can be the judge on what's scary/negative. I bet you it's probably near 90%.
• white-flame 10y ago
  I find the best source for current events news is large general internet forums, if it's not related to some hyper-selective socially slanted cluster like social media groups. You tend to get multiple perspectives, but also a higher chance of having actual people close to or directly informed about the goings on, and hopefully decent moderation to keep the discussion sane. Real perspective and information is nearly impossible to get from for-profit sources. It's not really what they peddle, but rather sizzle and shock value.
• Animats 10y ago
  Ignoring local news has its downsides. I didn't find out that someone I knew was mayor of Palo Alto until his second term.
  • devopsproject 10y ago
    How did this new information affect your life? What did you miss out on?
• ianai 10y ago
  Am I the only one who feels compelled to watch just to see whether another 9/11 is ongoing? Like after a while of being disconnected.
  • Tarq0n 10y ago
    I'd argue that 9/11 is a good example of news media blowing something out of proportion with 24/7 coverage and lots of drama. Yes it was a tragedy, but ultimately the amount of people that died is a tiny fraction of the amount of lives lost in the middle east due to a disproportionate response.
• thesimpsons1022 10y ago
  when you quit the news you don't remember or know about the horrible track record of a certain party and ideology and elect it back into power. but hey, lets celebrate ignorance and have everyone learn everything from headlines on facebook.
• iUsedToCode 10y ago
  I unplugged my antenna almost two years ago. The only time i switch the TV on is when i wanna watch a movie on a bigger screen -- but i only connect my laptop to it. The antenna is cut right through. There were a couple of moments when i was exposed to news. I couldn't believe it's this much manipulated and in your face sensationalist. Watching this everyday must be toxic as hell. I spend lots of time on the internet though, so it's not like am disconnected. I just dodge the most vulgar of manipulations (i hope).
• jokoon 10y ago
  I've always thought that reading the news is only informing you of the very recent events, but by doing so, you lose the context of what is really important, which is the opposite of how history works. One way to be better informed would be to read a daily digest of world history and contemporary geography. I often watch a german/french short TV show called "Le dessous des cartes" (translates to "Under the Maps"). This show is fabulous, because it explain a lot of political, economical and geographical context to explain the world and specific countries and their problems. It's backed up by scientific data, but is also able to do some geo-political analysis. I have not found any equivalent in the Anglo-saxon world. Once you know about the basics of what countries have what regimes, their economies, their history, you realize you learn nothing by reading the news.
  • vog 10y ago
    > I've always thought that reading the news is only informing you of the very recent events [...] > One way to be better informed would be to read a daily digest of world history and contemporary geography Wow, this is really strange. It seems you are so bombarded by minutely news, that daily news appear slow and well-thought to you? A weekly summary is more than enough for most events. Let the dust settle. Give the journalists (and Wikipedians) some time to do their research and investigation. Same for politicians, firefighter, scientists, lawyers, judges or whoever is also involved. The first days after and important event are full of false claims, mostly by accident, simply because nobody really knows. No earler than a week later (sometimes it takes a month or more!) the facts and non-facts are mostly separated. But then, nobody cares anymore. If you delay the "news", you get to know from the event, but also get a well-informed picture, without the useless crap of the first minutes, hours and days after the event.
  • draven 10y ago
    About le dessous des cartes, they're available with english subtitles. "Le dessous des cartes" has been translated as "Mapping the world." Example: http://www.arte.tv/guide/en/067846-003-A/mapping-the-world-iran http://www.arte.tv/guide/en/067846-003-A/mapping-the-world-i... Search for "mapping the world" on the arte.tv main page.
• ultim8k 10y ago
  Could not agree more!
• known 10y ago
  VERIFY and TRUST; "Media does not spread free opinion; It generates opinion" --Oswald, 1918 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_West https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_West
• uppermcleod 10y ago
  I was on my way to get riled up at "all the stupid shit" on google news (or if that failed, RT) when I decided to stop by HN first... I lived in London for 10 years and could never understand why people would read the free tabloids given out in the mornings on the way in and out of the stations. Surely the fact that theyre free is a red flag. During the 2009 financial Crisis I was living in italy and my tv had few English channels (I had no internet access at home(!!!)) and so I watched a significant amount of CNN. This was my first real exposure to continuous US style TV news and it caused me a significant amount of stress due to the nature of my work. However, watching that news provided me with little other than anxiety - it is a strange kind of entertainment, a bit like a horror movie or a thriller or a rollercoaster. I worked for a large news organisation in London which published tabloids and non-tabloids, where I had free subs to all their papers - I never read any of them and was even less likely to having knowledge of how they are put together. So, with the italy exception I was mostly no-news most of my life. Something has happened to me lately though - I like to find news articles which are clearly biased, let myself get worked up, find other publications which confirm it, get a bit more worked up, take a break and remember it's all a load of crap. I'm turning into a bored old man. I suppose this is one reason people read those free tabloids on the London tube - it is much easier to stimulate an emotional reaction when something is "real". And if you have an emotional response, it must be meaningful, right??? RIGHT?!!? I would like to thank OP for putting me on the path to recovery this morning. The first step is the hardest...
• cmarschner 10y ago
  Media has an important function for society, that of creating an "agora", a place where society comes together. In essence, it is an information processing system - given that we surpassed the range of 400-or-so people societies where everybody knows everybody else, how can the individual get enough information so that she can function to serve the society? In the case of western societies this means for example being able to vote, or get voted for. An ill-informed, egotistical individual might become a danger for society as a whole, like we are seeing in current US politics and the discussion about the "post factual" society. The term itself hints towards a failure of the media system. And to that end, the filter bubbles of social networkd have a huge responsibility in it. Being informed means that one has to be confronted with inconvenient truths and become part of the quest to resolve them through argument and reason. Given that we now have unprecedented means to filter out diverging opinions, we as technologists have a new responsibility for this that we are not living up to. It might have to take a catastrophe first to hand off the power of making decisions here - eg new policies - that force social media companies to optimize for other metrics than just "engagement" to live up to this responsibility. Chanced are the catastrophe is just unfolding in front of our eyes.
• Steeeve 10y ago
  Most important line in the article, in my opinion: > Their selections exploit our negativity bias. Which is true of a whole heck of a lot more than just mainstream news. Some people go overboard and try to get rid of all negative influences in their lives, but that's just going from one extreme to another. A lot of social media is negative - because controversy inspires discussion, discussion means engagement, engagement means value. There's too much focus in online engagement in the form of controversy and I'm of the opinion that it is a very bad thing. There's all kinds of room for innovation and disruption in the form of solutions that create healthier online engagement.
• yakult 10y ago
  Imagine if your demographic disproportionately heeds the author's advice while nobody else does. The first downside you might notice is when the next president gets elected on a platform of taxing your demographic into space, with zero opposition. You won't notice the coverage, obviously, but you will notice the decreased paycheck. You have not had to do much about what's in the news because your demographic have been disproportionately media savvy.
  • Noseshine 10y ago
    It's quite a jump from what's in the blog article to the claim that you end up "voting wrong". Actually, it seems to me you didn't pay any attention to what the text says at all. Please actually read it. The more I think about your point the less of a connection or relevance I see with the text I just read.
    • yakult 10y ago
      Let me elaborate. The article argues that you are better off 'switching off' from the media because you won't be doing anything about any of it anyway, other than having uninformed water cooler conversations. The truth is, for the vast majority most of the news that's been happening for the vast majority of anybody's life, it's not worth doing anything about it, including investing the time to read books on the topics. Because, honestly, most of it is of no consequence to us, either way. And that's because the politicians know that people like us read the news and and are willing to spam social media and wreck their election chances at the slightest provocation, so policies that are against our interests are pre-filtered. But it doesn't hold that this will always be true. If you and people like you grow complacent and block out the news altogether, one day you might notice that laws have been passed that oppress your demographic and your demographic alone. Because you didn't protest and the politicians know you wouldn't protest, because you switched off and they know that too. This requires no ill-will on their part. It's just that their optimization function for re-election requires balancing the interests of only those who are willing to do something to protect their interests. Which necessarily requires them to be at least minimally informed. And for this, partial and shallow information is a lot better than no information at all. The danger isn't that you end up 'voting wrong'. The danger is you'll stay home the day everybody else votes for the stormtroopers to kick your door in and take all your stuff.
• bshimmin 10y ago
  I can't really get onboard with this. A lot of the comments here, and the commentary in the article itself, talk about how depressing the news is, how biased it is, about Gell-Mann amnesia -- and they're all right. But from my own experience, the people I know who don't follow the news (either at all, or extremely minimally) are spectacularly ill-informed; they get their news either third-hand (which suffers from all of the aforementioned problems plus being re-reported poorly), or not at all, and operate with only the sketchiest understanding of what's happening in the world. They aren't going to "read three books on a topic" (from the article), they're just going to remain oblivious. And that's far worse, in my opinion.
  • voidz 10y ago
    I think this is inevitable. Even the effect of mass media going against so-called "fake news" won't have the effect they desire: In my estimation people will stop trusting and hence following all of it. It pays off, for as you and I have both gathered from the comments it is obvious that people do feel their lives improve once they "tune out". Since 2010 or so, this applies to me as well. Besides, I don't know for how long mass media has existed in its entirety, but TV only existed for maybe 60 years. Before that we managed just fine without it and I think we'll manage just fine in the future as well. We'll find other ways to connect with matters we care about, which is the basis of news anyway. When things such as what we need to spend our time on become obligatory, and enforced by social pressure, people will feel entrapped sooner or later. That's what's happening now. The media keeps dividing us into so many categories, and then passes judgment on all of us. To them, no one can escape, no one is free, no one is good - it's the only thing that sells. We're all stampeded on by editorials and pounded on by inducing guilt and forcing ads. Conflict is a cash cow. Personally I think that the importance of news is terribly overrated - I've yet to hear of any reason for why it should be important that resonates with me. As I've said, I've tuned out for many years.
    • voidz 10y ago
      One thing to add: the only source I loyally follow is the No Agenda Show (http://www.noagendashow.com http://www.noagendashow.com - a podcast which I help out technically, fully pro bono) because they are the only source of media that has no advertisers to keep happy, they get 100% of their income via donations, and they don't even digest the news as much as analyse where the news comes from, and what the interests and hidden agendas are of those that bring it. The show is interesting, fun, informative and thought provoking, so worth mentioning in its own right. That being said — as it, despite my intentions, might be considered a plug because I am a volunteer with them (i.e. I am not benefitting from more listeners, though do get a kick out of seeing the numbers increase), it feels more appropriate to detach this bit from my parent response.
• DanielBMarkham 10y ago
  Nice thesis, especially since I agree with it :) A few other things the author failed to note. 1. News delivery requires emotional engagement by the audience to keep them consuming and coming back. That means fear or people arguing. If you can get people arguing about things people are afraid of? Even better. 2. Investigative and beat reporters are being eliminated wholesale. Political reporters are the ones left. This means news outlets tend to tell stories in political terms -- even stories that may be technical in nature. Everything becomes politics. (Which we can then slot up people to fight about!) 3. Best form of journalism? Opinion pieces. That's because opinion pieces are required to show bias up front, have a thesis and some kind of logical structure to support that thesis, and provide contextual details from news and history as part of the argument. These details provide the context completely absent from most msm news sources. 4. Anything that can be used to drive engagement _will_ be used to drive engagement. Disgusting pictures, sexual titillation, mesmerizing graphics, misleading headlines... it's all fair game. This means that "fake news" is a sliding scale. On one end we have people admitting their bias and trying to report anyway, even if what they have to say is boring. On the other end we have people who have a bias and motives that are completely unknown to us trying to create any kind of content required to get us clicking. Quitting news is probably the easiest thing to do to get a boost in mental health, and as long as you love reading, ironically you'll actually end up much more informed than before you quit.
• tomohawk 10y ago
  This is why the break from political news on HN is so welcome. Just about any topic that has a partisan angle is going to be reported with a big slant, or outright fabricated. There are plenty of other venues for that.
• agumonkey 10y ago
  What seals the deal about news is that for the vast majority mainstream medias are both late and innacurate[1] compared to just reading from upstream sources (medicine, technology, economy, geopolitical events). Also now twitter and the like are taking the night spot. Anything happening then won't be covered by most medias, or in a hurry which means they'll be as crude as a twitter feed. Lots of wasted "brain" time. [1] In fields I know it's completely useless to listen. Makes you wonder about other fields too .. It feels like entertainment rather than information. ps: I'll add the neurotic swing of medias. So many crysis (greece, ...) you hear about for a month constantly. Then nothing. No follow up or so rarely. It just doesn't matter what they say.
  • andrewflnr 10y ago
    What's a good "upstream" for geopolitics?
    • agumonkey 10y ago
      I don't have one 'yet'; I read accounts of people living in the countries I want to know (most recently the Turkey failed coup), you get a lot more details. You also have more than one viewpoint. In the case of Turkey, Gullen movement which is depicted as repressed political opposition in the western world, is seen as scientology in Turkey. It's harder to conclude, but I prefer to have many sources of dense data to handle rather than one shallow conclusion.
    • ohthehugemanate 10y ago
      Very hard to find, because it's not a hard factual area like medicine. Take a page from anthropologists and look for a variety of primary sources, or sources that do good analysis albeit with known (or explicit) bias. Personally, for anything international and important I like to mix BBC (known bias), Al Jazeera International (different known bias), and Economist (explicit bias, in-depth analysis). Your tastes may differ.
      • agumonkey 10y ago
        And somehow politics ~= news. That was the first meaning of journalism, relating politics.
• imartin2k 10y ago
  I took a break from Twitter because of the community's obsession with (mostly depressing) day to day news and the outrage about it.
• veddox 10y ago
  While I wholeheartedly agree with the author that we often spend way too much time "consuming" news, I do not agree with him that following the news is totally superfluous. As a citizen, I want to know what is going on in my country and what the government is doing about it, so that I can take an informed decision come the next election. I also want to know what is going on abroad because I have friends scattered all over the world, and I want to know if there is anything major that might affect them. (Quite apart from the fact that global news often impacts national government.) There was a time when I got my news from the BBC website (I have never really watched any TV). It was very interesting, I heard a lot that I wouldn't have otherwise heard - but in the end I used up hours of time without truly learning anything. Nowadays, I get a daily news digest via email; just one short paragraph telling what has happened and where (takes about two minutes to read). I have also subscribed to a respected national weekly newspaper that doesn't so much report news as comment on current developments (takes about four hours to read). This combination of small daily updates plus detailed weekly analysis is working out very well for me. I stay abreast of current events while not wasting any time on half-baked articles, but also don't miss out on thought-provoking quality journalism. Not a bad situation, really.
  • thenomad 10y ago
    Where do you get your news digest from?
    • veddox 10y ago
      The Deutsche Welle, a German news agency. They also provide their newsletter in English though: http://www.dw.com/en/newsletter-registration/a-15718229 http://www.dw.com/en/newsletter-registration/a-15718229
• masondixon 10y ago
  I could not name any news outlet today that I would consider unbiased or trustworthy. Every news outlet seems to unashamedly have a clear political affiliation. Can anyone suggest one?
  • scottishfiction 10y ago
    Disclaimer: I work for the BBC. The BBC doesn't have 'a clear political affiliation', and neither does Channel 4. Both are public service broadcasters that are committed to non-bias reporting. However, they are run by people, and people are bias.
    • masondixon 10y ago
      I think its very common in most countries for public broadcasters to lean left, and there is nearly always the perception. In my experience this has always been true. It might be because a right-wing government is more likely to make cuts in funding of a public broadcaster than the left. I have not thought the reason why it is in depth though. I wonder if you have an opinion?
      • xorxornop 10y ago
        In general conservatives seem to be more close-minded. It makes sense, really - they want to keep things the way they are. Liberalism on the other hand encourages introspection and change; informing oneself is a necessary part of that. So, those that distribute information are likely to be less conservative. You see the same trends in technology and science in general. Note that this is not an absolute endorsement of liberalism; change can only be positive if people are properly informed, and doing it for the right reasons. And, well, they aren't - not for some time now. And it's been hijacked by identity politics (some is very good; some very bad, more to do with narcissism than anything else, sigh)
      • scottishfiction 10y ago
        I wouldn't say that its an unreasonable theory. There's also the tendency for those working in media to be of the left. My main point though is that any perceived bias comes from the individuals that happen to be working on that production. The organisation itself is non-bias and has many measures to avoid bias.
• serge2k 10y ago
  This is possibly the most pretentious thing I've ever read.
• daxfohl 10y ago
  News is one thing, political spin is another. I think news is good. Most "news" is really political spin though. As a US citizen, what I did was start only reading UK news. That helps because I'm not interested in UK politics, and articles about US politics there are both fewer and a little less spinny. So reading BBC/Guardian lets me focus more on the actual things happening in the world.
• Arkaad 10y ago
  I can't help but feel that this article was targeted toward TV news. I usually read the news online. And most of the time, reading only the title is enough to be informed. It just takes a few minutes per day.
• alkonaut 10y ago
  I'm thinking this article is US-centric, yes? I haven't felt that my news are spun to be sensationalist, have a negative bias etc. I watch public service news mostly. Do americans feel this way about C-Span or PBS?
• jyriand 10y ago
  I would suggest this as a 30 day challenge. Remember doing it a while back. Found out that I had no idea what my colleagues were talking about when they started discussing some recent events. I was buzzled for a few seconds, feeling like I must have missed something important, but then I remembered that I'm doing this challenge. But it's interesting to observe how people start talking about recent news as if this was common knowledge.
• gpayal 10y ago
  Point #5 is spot on. "“Being concerned” makes us feel like we’re doing something when we’re not". Just watching the news and feeling that I care so much actually makes us less likely to actually do something about it.
• ivanhoe 10y ago
  To me this is a bit like throwing out all the mirrors from your house because you don't like your new haircut. You can ignore all the news, but the world producing those news will still be out there, exactly the same (good/bad/evil) and you'll still have to live in it. Keeping your eyes shut can help your inner peace, but it will not stop outside problems from hitting you in the face just as hard as anyone else. Except that you will not see them coming...
• boggydepot 10y ago
  Related, a documentary film by John Pilger about the news we get: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glnYs7Fz0SM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glnYs7Fz0SM As for the "concern" topic. I believe it's an evidence that you have to do something about it. But first, one must seek out the truth just as Socrates advised us millennias ago. Living comfortably is just not possible in an unexamined life because we are by nature rational beings. You can probably ignore, as they say, ignorance is bliss, but only until it hits.
• kriro 10y ago
  """Imagine if you spent that time learning a language, or reading books and essays about some of the issues they mention on the news.""" This seems like a bootstrapping problem. How do you know what issues you should study up on. As a thought experiment, let's imagine a person that is completely ignorant of the news. How would they even know that Syria is worth researching without stumbling upon it by accident or getting input from another person that consumes news? I think the pledge here is for better news and not for no news. I strongly believe that staying informed about what's going on in the world has value. It builds empathy and curiosity about different cultures and problems other people may have.
• ideonexus 10y ago
  One of the contributors of FiveThirtyEight made an observation that, along with this article, has convinced me to start filtering out the news. They were discussing what public policy initiatives we could expect from the incoming administration, and she said that she could not speculate on the subject because Donald Trump's signal-to-noise ratio in his public statements was so low as to render forecasting initiatives impossible. That's the problem here. The signal-to-noise ratio is too low in the news in general. I've spent the whole last year reading speculation about Clinton's emails, Trump's cabinet picks, and shocking news from "anonymous sources" that turned out to be 99% noise when the final draft of the news came out. Why did I waste so many hours reading baseless speculation masquerading as authoritative information? I'm not wasting my time on noise anymore.
  • rudolf0 10y ago
    I check the news roughly once a day just to get a feel for the headlines. I check the left-leaning sources and right-leaning sources and don't read any of the articles. I don't get sucked in, and also just get an idea of what people think is important that day/week. Usually it is just noise but it can be at least helpful to know when things have happened. The headlines are enough for me.
    • lintiness 10y ago
      amazing what kind of bias exists in headlines alone. when you filter down, it becomes so much more obvious.
• miobrien 10y ago
  I agree with some of the points in the article. The "news" has become a hydra-headed monster - the media has turned everything into news. And it has also merged news with entertainment. However, I don't think refraining from the news will solve these issues. I think you don't need to read the news every day. I think each person needs to diversify its consumption. IMO you can rely on any single source anymore. I'm not saying you need 100 different sources. But I think you should be actively jumping around to see what other outlets are saying. Finally, although people should have opinions about a wide range of subjects, I think people need to realize that - a lot of the time - they just shouldn't have an opinion on an issue because they're not qualified to really make an informed one. In sum, opinions are cheap; be more open-minded.
• habosa 10y ago
  A few summers ago I went three weeks without any news at all. No TV, no internet, and even avoiding physical newspapers. At the end of the three weeks I was excited to go online and see what I had missed. I found that I had not missed a single thing worth knowing about in the long term. All the energy I would have spent on the news in that time would have been for nothing. I am back to being a daily news consumer but I wonder how much time I am wasting.
• wu-ikkyu 10y ago
  >nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. the real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time: whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables. general facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will &c &c. but no details can be relied on. I will add that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. he who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false. -From Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 11 June 1807 http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-5737 http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-57...
  • Haul4ss 10y ago
    To be fair, in Jefferson's time newspapers were overt instruments of a political faction. You started a newspaper to spread your point of view. We have at least a veneer of nonpartisan purpose to the major newspapers of today, although you can argue they still have a bias. Online news/blogs/etc. are more analogous to the newspapers of the early Republic.
    • DonaldFoss 10y ago
      Those biases were on full display this year, not even bothering with the normal veneer.
    • rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
      There is no such thing as no-bias reporting. For every topic reported on by any given publication, several others are ignored, simply because there is not enough time in the day nor is there advertising revenue to report absolutely everything, and we haven't even started on article lengths or story placement.
• UhUhUhUh 10y ago
  I grew up in a world where the "news" were streaming through teletypes from "agencies", themselves connected to field "reporters", to newspapers and radio or TV outlets. These were Reuters, AFP, UP, AP, Stass, etc. These news were the kernels from which outlets would develop their own interpretations. This kind of news still is, I contend, the only one worthy of the term, stimulates interest and does not provide any answer to the questions/problems they may raise. That's my job. My daily ration is composed of sources that are as close as possible to such format. Mostly scientific news, HN, and France24. Re. the OP, I think anyone could at least agree that not watching the "infoshows", as I think it is appropriate to call them, results in an improvement in one's mood.
• athenot 10y ago
  I stopped watching TV news about 15 years ago. But I was an avid consummer of news on the Web until about 2 years ago and severely curbed it to preserve time and mental bandwidth. But I realized that I would still read articles based on whatever was in my social media feed, and that tended to gravitate towards the affect-driven news that I fled when I stopped watching TV news. So recently I subscribed to a good old-fashioned newspaper (NYTimes). It kills trees, it's not real-time, it gets wet outside. But I get to read news in a different mind-set: - I found I'm now reading news to understand, not to prepare a witty reply/comment. - I enjoy the dryness of the paper medium as it further decreases the emotional appeal. - Op-Eds/columns are clearly marked as such; I find the distinction more obvious than online where the context of "today's paper" doesn't really exist. I still read them but I'm placing their contents in a better context. - Reading the news has become more efficient. Instead of using news as a time-filler between holes in my day (and invariably getting distracted), it's a one-time review that takes just a few minutes depending on how much I want to read. It's counter-intuitive but the by-product is that now I'm happy to ignore news articles when they come across my feed online (unless it's some specialty topic). That ends up being a time-saver.
• norea-armozel 10y ago
  I really hate the news for lots of reasons. But the one thing that always got under my skin is the false sense of being informed. If I wanted to know trivia, I'll just read the histories of Muslim scholars or the finer points of knot theory. At least those give some context for the world we live in whereas the mainstream news outlets on both wings of the political spectrum just insult me with doom and gloom (unless it's global warming then it's really not that worrying IMO). I know that's a pretty crappy way to look at the news because I like to know what happens around me but if the delivery is crap then I'm not going to bother trying to digest it. I got plenty of other things to keep my interest. Pretending to care for what I can't fix or what really isn't an existential threat to me is just dumb.
• partycoder 10y ago
  This is selective ignorance, and all people do it to some extent. An extreme example would be when you eat a bacon sandwich, or when you walk through a street without stray animals. You don't want to know exactly how it happened, for the sake of your own mental well being. Now, what if everyone was selectively ignorant regarding news? Public opinion is a major deterrent for a lot of things. In great part net neutrality has been maintained thanks to pushback from the community. That is only one example, there are many many more.
• eutropia 10y ago
  I think the movie Nightcrawler(2014) really nailed that creepy feeling I get from TV News. There's an aura of desperation, of lowest-common-denominator, hits-you-in-the-amygdala kinds of coverage. " Nina: We find our viewers are more interested in urban crime creeping into the suburbs. What that means is a victim, or victims, preferably well off and white, injured at the hands of the poor or minority. Lou Bloom(Jake Gyllenhaal): Just crime? Nina: No, accidents play, cars, busses, trains, planes, fires Lou Bloom: But bloody Nina: Well, graphic, the best and clearest way that I can phrase it to you, Lou, to capture the spirit of what we air is think of our newscast as a screaming woman, running down the street with her throat cut. Lou Bloom: I understand. "
  • devopsproject 10y ago
    Also on display in Natural Born Killers (1994) which doesn't seem to carry the same weight it did back then.
• kelvin0 10y ago
  Here's my personal recipe: * Call cable company and cancel cable TV * Buy an Ouya (I was a kicktstarter supporter!) * Buy an older (non-smart) LCD flat screen TV * Download BBC documentaries Never have to watch news and ads again! And also you are getting to choose what you want to watch and when! And seriously, what beats watching "Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity -- Jim Al-Khalili BBC Horizon" and geek out!
• deleted 10y ago
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• secabeen 10y ago
  The thing about skipping the news completely is that it's dependent on you not being impacted by a black swan event that significantly and negatively impacts you. The White émigrés from Russian in the early 20th century and the Jewish refugees from Germany in the 30's show clearly the value of paying attention to the news. Not doing so can cost you your life.
• rdtsc 10y ago
  > “Being concerned” makes us feel like we’re doing something when we’re not Corollary: retweeting about being concerned also does nothing. That is, retweeting about climate change won't reduce emission. It might feel good but does nothing. Retweeting about homelessness and telling everyone to be concerned about it does nothing to clothe, provide shelter or food. The article mentions about a substitute effect and I think it is even strong when it comes to spreading concern via social media, there it feels even more like "doing something".
• randomsearch 10y ago
  Please don't quit watching the news. I think keeping up with current affairs is important. You need to understand the world in order to participate in it. Here's some reasons why you should follow current affairs: so you can be a more informed voter; so you can held safeguard the democracy you benefit from; so you can be aware of threats to your livelihood and social environment; so you can make informed decisions about how you live your life (are there particular charitable causes that need my time or money right now?); so you understand the politics of situations when you travel; etc etc. I think what most people mean when they say they don't like the news is that they can't stand 24 hour news, or find it too depressing, or too much of a distraction. But those things are artefacts of how you consume the news, not the concept of following world events itself. After following current affairs avidly since being a teenager, I would recommend subscribing to the Economist and also regularly reading a left-leaning outlet (I read the Guardian, it's better than most). I'd also recommend listening to a sophisticated radio station (Radio 4 in the UK; I believe NPR is good for the US, although I'm not an expert), and less frequently watching high-quality news coverage (Ch 4 news or the Andrew Marr show in the UK). Combine that with a general scan of other sites like the BBC, NYT, Al-Jazeera, etc. etc. to ensure you're not missing any major stories. Spend some time understanding the story of the world. Incidentally, one really nice consequence of staying informed is when you meet people from other countries. Just last night I met a bartender from Columbia and he was impressed with my understanding of the political situation, the FARC guerrillas, the referendum etc. ... it provided a good starting point, and then he gave me a more detailed insider's view.