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If it ever feels like the news is getting you down, I strongly recommend substituting your normal news habit for watching old news bulletins on YouTube. Try it

If it ever feels like the news is getting you down, I strongly recommend substituting your normal news habit for watching old news bulletins on YouTube. Try it for a week or two - if you feel the urge to check the news, go and watch an NBC news bulletin from 1988 or a BBC news bulletin from 1991 instead. Lots of people have uploaded complete bulletins, which I'd recommend over isolated clips. I found it to be a revelatory experience. The news, ultimately, is just stories. It's not a definitive or objective account of what's happening in the world, it's just industrialized gossip with a veneer of legitimacy. Without the sense of urgency that comes with newness, it's often remarkably dull. The news shows you the variance, but not the trend; someone who caught up on current events only once a year would probably have a better sense of where the world is headed than someone who checks the news every day. Some stories that were huge dramas at the time are now long forgotten; some stories that barely registered at the time eventually turned out to be part of a crucial change in society. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4-_85x5k3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4-_85x5k3s

darkerside 8y ago
News in the early 90s had not yet been fully transformed into an entertainment business; now it has.
TaylorAlexander 8y ago
I get a lot of flak for it, but this is why I stopped following the daily news. So much of it is noise. People are flabbergasted that I am not following the latest turn in some months long drama, but it is precisely because it is months long that I don’t need to follow the daily changes. My hope is that it leaves me better able to filter the noise. I couldn’t say if it is working, but it feels like it is.
freedomben 8y ago
Thank you, there is much wisdom in your comment. I'll totally try this.
MichaelMoser123 8y ago
> The news, ultimately, is just stories. It's not a definitive or objective account of what's happening in the world, it's just industrialized gossip with a veneer of legitimacy Or it may be that people have a hard time to figure out what matters at any given moment in time - you never quite know how a news item will play out - will it become part of History or will it turn out to be just another detail? go figure when it is happening... Maybe grandparent is just right: when it is all happening people may be more honest than after the fact, when positions are clear and everyone has to justify his own stake in the grand puzzle.
- jdietrich 8y ago
  >Or it may be that people have a hard time to figure out what matters at any given moment in time It's called "the news", not "the importants". Unusual, shocking and lurid stories are much more likely to be newsworthy, but by definition they aren't representative of what is actually happening in the world. Our perception of the world is much more strongly influenced by emotive anecdotes than cold hard facts. Violent crime rates in the western world have been significantly declining for decades, but most people believe that the opposite is true; multiple studies have found a correlation between news consumption and the perception of high crime. It's very difficult for the news media to usefully communicate important but gradual trends - rising incomes across the developing world, wage stagnation in the developed world, the impact of climate change, demographic shifts, the erosion of civil society etc. I think that most journalists are well-intentioned and genuinely believe that they are seekers of truth, but they operate in a system that reflects our innate perceptual biases, our acquired cultural biases and the commercial exigencies of media organisations. Another useful experiment is to exclusively consume another country's news media for a week or two, preferably a country you know very little about. A week of reading a Ugandan or Nigerian newspaper provides a very different perspective on world events.

darkerside 8y ago

News in the early 90s had not yet been fully transformed into an entertainment business; now it has.

TaylorAlexander 8y ago

I get a lot of flak for it, but this is why I stopped following the daily news. So much of it is noise. People are flabbergasted that I am not following the latest turn in some months long drama, but it is precisely because it is months long that I don’t need to follow the daily changes. My hope is that it leaves me better able to filter the noise. I couldn’t say if it is working, but it feels like it is.

freedomben 8y ago

Thank you, there is much wisdom in your comment. I'll totally try this.

MichaelMoser123 8y ago

> The news, ultimately, is just stories. It's not a definitive or objective account of what's happening in the world, it's just industrialized gossip with a veneer of legitimacy Or it may be that people have a hard time to figure out what matters at any given moment in time - you never quite know how a news item will play out - will it become part of History or will it turn out to be just another detail? go figure when it is happening... Maybe grandparent is just right: when it is all happening people may be more honest than after the fact, when positions are clear and everyone has to justify his own stake in the grand puzzle.

jdietrich 8y ago
>Or it may be that people have a hard time to figure out what matters at any given moment in time It's called "the news", not "the importants". Unusual, shocking and lurid stories are much more likely to be newsworthy, but by definition they aren't representative of what is actually happening in the world. Our perception of the world is much more strongly influenced by emotive anecdotes than cold hard facts. Violent crime rates in the western world have been significantly declining for decades, but most people believe that the opposite is true; multiple studies have found a correlation between news consumption and the perception of high crime. It's very difficult for the news media to usefully communicate important but gradual trends - rising incomes across the developing world, wage stagnation in the developed world, the impact of climate change, demographic shifts, the erosion of civil society etc. I think that most journalists are well-intentioned and genuinely believe that they are seekers of truth, but they operate in a system that reflects our innate perceptual biases, our acquired cultural biases and the commercial exigencies of media organisations. Another useful experiment is to exclusively consume another country's news media for a week or two, preferably a country you know very little about. A week of reading a Ugandan or Nigerian newspaper provides a very different perspective on world events.