3 ms·

Almost 10 years ago, I conducted an experiment. I watched an hour of CNN's every night but it was never that night's coverage. It was from exactly two weeks ag

Almost 10 years ago, I conducted an experiment. I watched an hour of CNN's every night but it was never that night's coverage. It was from exactly two weeks ago. It was amazing how much "breaking news!" was irrelevant or just outright wrong, how many large trend predictions were wrong, and how many "[person] will do X" were wrong. While the predictions could have been portrayed as opinions, they were presented as facts and the obvious next steps or conclusions. I realized pretty quickly that avoiding CNN kept out the blatantly wrong information so even if I didn't replace it with anything, I was net ahead. A few years ago, I discovered this and realized that some portion of it was probably on purpose: https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-alters-our-thoughts https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-...

asdff 7y ago
That's the news cycle for you, it's just another time sink to monetize your nonworking hours. There are maybe only a handful of truly significant stories a year, the rest is niche interest stories and stuff that's not very relevant or practical at all in your personal life. Therefore, to keep the lights on, CNN has to keep you on the edge of your seat. They know very well no one will remember yesterdays gaffe. Personally, I skim the nyt newsletter over cereal and basically only thoroughly read local news articles from the paper of record here and some decent local magazines. Reading local stories gets you out of the little cultural bubble you've formed around your lifestyle. I've learned my city is an onion, a thousand cities at once. National news, on the other hand, is designed to polarize and monetize.