7 ms·
As I've noted here a few times: Just over 10 years ago, I conducted an experiment. I watched an hour of CNN every night but it was never that night's coverage.
by caseysoftware 6y ago
As I've noted here a few times:
Just over 10 years ago, I conducted an experiment. I watched an hour of CNN 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 article 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-...
- hef19898 6y agoIt always surprises me to what degree US cable news, as opposed to print, seems to treat politics like entertainment and sports coverage. At least from an outsider's perspective. Maybe no surprise a reality TV star became President.
- bigbubba 6y agoCommercial television news is very manipulative and the intent of the manipulation is to keep eyeballs glued to the screen to sell ads. They use lots of elaborately animated transitions with bright colors, swooshing sound effects and musical cues to mesmerize viewers, just as slot machines in Vegas use such things to mesmerize gamblers. It's the same sort of graphical bullshit they pad out televized American football with. And the talking head personalities emotively reading from teleprompters are there for viewers to form parasocial relationships with, to keep viewers coming back to that channel. Before social media was invented, the term was created to describe the asymmetric relationships television viewers have with television personalities. The whole industry has manipulation down to a science and I think anybody would be better off reading newspapers instead. Public funded news channels may be better, I remember PBS's News Hour was okay. But is there any value in watching CNN instead of reading the NYTimes? I don't see any.
- runawaybottle 6y agoI wouldn’t even put it in the pedestal of psychological manipulation. It’s gossip, the same as teen magazines and tabloids. They just dress it up with authority. Standard low minded stuff. I tune in for some gossip from time to time, no harm no foul. But jesus, do it all the time and you might as well become this: https://youtu.be/XUT8ec24anM https://youtu.be/XUT8ec24anM
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y agoI disagree. In 'our' constitution there is the "Recht auf körperliche Unversehrtheit / Right to physical integrity(of your body)" as in it is forbidden to harm you. I'd extend that to a right to mental integrity, which that sort of shit is in continous violation of. And even if you don't directly consume it, the 'overspill' alone is toxic enough. In other words: mass media is one big superfund site.
- runawaybottle 6y agoI’ll concede to the fact that they are in a sense polluting our population (no different than carbon footprint). I don’t know, it’s all very odd given that big tech is banning misinformation now days, but big media has no such imperative. They will run with the most unsubstantiated stuff for however long it’s profitable (Russia-gate). Their modus operandi in terms of carving out markets is to do the opposite of another network/publication and claim that territory as their feeding ground. How do you even begin to treat waters like this? Kind of shows who is really powerful, Qanon or the rampant proliferation of party talking points. One of those is a legit 4chan meme, so do the math.
- 6510 6y agoIt actively writes the public narrative and fills the space in your head but the toxicity is in forcing out that what should have been there. The things that should have been there ideally are feedback loops. Their rewards and punishments encourage you to do your own practical goal oriented thinking. Your head is filled with the war effort therefore you didn't plant that first fruit tree, the other trees and bushes that should have followed didn't happen and you are not eating the fruit reminding you of what you did every year that followed. You in stead read about Chiquita murdering employees and want to buy a banana.
- bobthepanda 6y agoI mean, the current President of CNN was previously in charge of NBC's primetime programming when he lined up Trump for The Apprentice. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/20/business/media/jeff-zucker-helped-create-donald-trump-that-show-may-be-ending.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/20/business/media/jeff-zucke...
- dnhz 6y agoWritten news and commentary (mainly online) is not that different. When Trump caught covid, there were endless articles speculating about how severe his illness was or whether a second week with the virus would bring about more severe symptoms. Just a bunch of suppositions and hypotheticals to get you to click and spend a few minutes reading. The main loss from all this is not wasted time but that serious issues receive less discussion in favor of what's happening right now and what it could possibly mean.
- megablast 6y agoIt was a race to the bottom driven by ratings.
- dmingod666 6y agoI like to imagine, that if "oh my god the world is ending and its because gasp donald trump" had a physical manifestation, it would be CNN.
- kkotak 6y agoThis is exactly how I decide to watch or read something on the net. 1. Read the headline. 2. Ask - Is the topic likely to be relevant after 2-3 weeks? 3. If yes - Read/Watch it. 4. If no - Ignore.
- ajmurmann 6y agoThank you for sharing this great experiment! I'd love a news source that gives me relevant information at lower frequency and, water reading your description, with some delay. Maybe every two weeks and the content covers two weeks with a two week delay. So the oldest news would be over month old when I get it. Years ago someone on the a16z podcast claimed that more frequent news is more negative in its content than less frequent news. They proposed the thought experiment of a newspaper that only gets published ones a century. Yes you'd cover the world wars, but a lot of space would go to incredible medical discoveries, human rights advancements, improved living conditions for the vast majority of people, fewer famines, etc.
- im3w1l 6y agoFor better and worse, a low frequency publication will have the benefit of hindsight, which can lead to deeper thought but also a big bias in coverage. There is a tendency to create grand unified theories of the past, and pretend contrary stuff didn't exist. Reading a higher frequency publication with a delay will reveal how much ambiguity there really was.
- lytefm 6y agoA popular German speaking author made a similar case years ago: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-ro... Also published a book about that issue recently. Basically, you'll be much better informed and have better mental health by only reading a monthly publication and books instead of following daily news.
- amelius 6y agoAren't news outlets required to rectify information they got wrong?
- obscoth 6y agoGenuinely don’t know where you got that idea
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y agoYou could conduct the same experiment reading online predictions about computer/internet technology from years ago. This is one of the most dominant types of "breaking news" one will find on the internet. It is especially entertaining to look at the "tech" news in the years leading up to the dot-com bust. People who contribute "content" over the internet and those who consume it seem to have a love affair with trends and making predictions.
- ignoramous 6y agoI stopped religiously reading news after I stumbled upon Aaron Swartz's blog post on the topic [0] way back when! I'd say I have been insulated from the depressiveness of it all ever since but also that I've lost the ability to meaningfully participate or contribute to socio/economical/political discussions that seem to dominate any gathering of modest size [1]. [0] http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews [1] This quote particularly hits home: The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn’t hear, doesn’t speak, nor participates in the political events. He doesn’t know the cost of life, the price of the bean, of the fish, of the flour, of the rent, of the shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn’t know that, from his political ignorance is born the prostitute, the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician, corrupted and flunky of the national and multinational companies. --Bretolt Brecht (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/541442-the-worst-illiterate-is-the-political-illiterate-he-doesn-t-hear https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/541442-the-worst-illiterate...)
- bobthepanda 6y agoThere's a balance to be had. You probably shouldn't be waiting for CNN's push notifications with bated breath, but I find that weekly is a good enough cadence to follow along with what's happening without getting too stressed out. I also try not to read sensationalist news that is unlikely to move the needle on how I feel about something (e.g. the 9000th variation on "Trump said X")
- cynicalkane 6y ago[1] sounds like a good quote, but keep in mind that the author of that quote was a tacit supporter of Leininsm and Stalinism, and initially supported East Germany's murderous repression of union labor. In practice many people who "hate politics" are, I think, at least partially motivated by not desiring to get into conversations with people who would call them "illiterate" and "imbecile" for, yanno, not supporting evil authoritarianism and the nonsense pseudophilosophy that motivates it. I think many people would not "hate politics" were it not for the nature of the politically-motivated to look down on those who disagree.
- Mountain_Skies 6y agoI used to live near CNN Center and would go there frequently for lunch. As you'd expect, they had large screens in the atrium so you could watch CNN while you ate or shopped. It was a nice convenience. Over time the tone of what they presented changed drastically and I couldn't stand to listen to it even long enough to eat. Though the content also had declined in quality, it was the tone, the non-stop outrage and anger being presented that made me start eating at Peachtree Center instead. It really was vile and I can't see why anyone would want to pump that into their home and into their brains. It wasn't always that way.
- sleepysysadmin 6y agoI would posit that using CNN was a problem for that experiment. I would say that you at most confirmed CNN was illegitimate which is not much of a surprise.