32 ms·

No news is good news

209 points by vitabenes 5y ago

LeroyRaz 5y ago
To me this is speaking to the echo chamber. I am so used to seeing this type of message, along with "Politics is the mind kill" and I nearly always see both blithely accepted, perpetuated, and unchallenged. It also seems a ridiculously strong stance to take, 'going cold turkey on news.' A naunced point about how low quality discussion or sensational takes do more harm than good is reasonable, but this is not that. They themselves are neither long form, or considered and this website linking to their post is titled "Hacker News." It's ironic, to truly heed their advice we should ignore them.
lobocinza 5y ago
Recently I have been reading a lot of news and IMO they are mostly useless and misinform more than inform. A few sources can provide valuable insight about things happening right now but still it's mostly pointless, even for active investing. The market is more efficient than the news industry and stock prices are mostly uncorrelated from world events on the short term.
magic_hamster 5y ago
Personally, I've found that minimizing exposure to news is helpful to my wellbeing, makes me no less informed of crucial events taking place, and helps me keep my mind on things I actually care about, or can influence. One thing to keep in mind is that news is a business. News outlets are honed and designed a certain way to maximize profit. I had a lot (a lot) of criticism for the way news work right now, what counts as "journalism", etc., which was one factor in why I just gave up on it, and now I have one less reason to be angry with something I can do nothing about. Another factor which lead me to give up on news reporting was politics, or more specifically, politicians. I've attended an interesting class in Uni where we were introduced to Machiavelli. The similarities between Machiavelli's "strategy" and today's real world politicians simply could not be ignored. I can't overstate how awakening it was, as if I could suddenly see the game being played, how painfully predictable it all was, and how incredibly stupid they must think the public is. It was insulting. That, combined with my perception that most things in politics work for personal gain through leverage, made me quit on politics as well. I realized not a single actor in politics can be trusted, all and any communication from a politician is carefully crafted to gain leverage regardless of the what their actual intent is. I've been called jaded for saying this, but I can't put the genie back in the bottle: once you see it, it cannot be un-seen. If you still think politicians are candid actors, maybe you do have a reason to give them the time of day. It's not for everyone, but for me, quitting news and most of politics was a huge improvement in my life. It's your choice not be enticed, used for leverage, your emotions exploited for power or profit. Peace and quiet is something you can claim for yourself. The world is going to be 100% the same whether you give the News your time and mental dedication or not.
deleted 5y ago
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1270018080 5y ago
I have: - Deleted facebook - Unfollowed any news accounts and use Ublock to block suggested content on Twitter - Unsubscribed from any news subreddits - Of course never check news sites And honestly feel better overall and less stressed. Sure you can claim being apathetic/ignorant towards global current events makes me a bad person, but I do not care. To me, no human is designed to handle as much information input as we experience today.
- Pasorrijer 5y ago
  100% agree. I think the 24hr news cycle is a huge contributor to negative mental health. When we travelled to the in-laws over the most recent holidays, the news was always on, and always talked about and my wife and I both commented afterwards it felt like an oppressive blanket of stress was laid over everything while we were there.
- watwut 5y ago
  > And honestly feel better overall and less stressed. Sure you can claim being apathetic/ignorant towards global current events makes me a bad person, but I do not care. I would not say so. But, I would expect you to NOT be outspoken and confident when someone else starts to speak about stuff related to current issues. And I would expect you to check yourself especially when it seems like the other person is saying something you intuitively disagree with, because chance that they are simply better informed is high. It is quite possible you do it, I don't want to imply that. But, I have met quite a few people who don't follow news (proudly) but then are full of opinions about issues they don't follow.
  - vinyl7 5y ago
    That's the second part of de-stressing. First, stop watching news. Second, stop having an opinion on everything because at the end of the day nobody's opinion matters.
    - IHLayman 5y ago
      “Stop having an opinion on everything because at the end of the day nobody’s opinion matters.” …don’t you see how nihilist this sounds? And also unrealistic. You will have opinions, everyone has opinions and beliefs and feelings or else they wouldn’t be able to function on a day to day basis. There is a scale to beliefs and opinions, based on how informed those beliefs and opinions are, and how well they mesh with conditions in your everyday life. It’s important to inform your opinions and beliefs; the news, however flawed in its current state, forms at least one source of that information. I think that taking all of this as one absolute or another is unnecessarily polarizing this debate. It is very easy to argue that them news media economy is quite poisonous, but that doesn’t mean that all of the information is useless. For example: I need to prepare for a storm that is approaching the area, I need to know if a COVID wave is nearing so I know to be more careful, I need to know if parking rules change or trash day is being moved. These immediate events affect my actions directly and so I must pay attention, sifting through the other crap as necessary. But even beyond that, this resignation to political nihilism is societally destructive. Like it or not, we are all connected in a society. Our actions affect others. We have shared infrastructure and services we all contribute to and benefit from. Part of that responsibility is a participation in politics. Is it currently toxic and despairing? Certainly. But sticking your head in the sand isn’t an option, as we depend on cooperation in order to preserve a society on any level and that requires coordination. Should we reduce our news consumption? Of course. But we also shouldn’t eschew all outside information and live in a self-imposed bubble. Maybe skip the entertainment section and focus on stuff that impacts you directly. If there is something that is shallowly followed by the news that sounds important, of course dig into longer-form articles until you understand it in full or discard it if it is important. Discretion matters.
inanutshellus 5y ago
I'll come out of my shell a few times a week and won't understand what's going on. News sites just tell me the last 18 hours' worth of updates... So... I either disengage entirely and can't carry on a conversation or I stay engaged and worry about events I cannot affect. I'd like a "I haven't checked the news in [7] days and some guy at work mentioned [Ukraine talking to the UN], what's that all about?" website. I guess it'd be 7 days worth of news synopses for the topic. [7 days ago this city fell, Joe said stern words about it, and the Sauds started selling oil in Yuan because it didn't want China to get all its oil from Russia.] [6 days ago that city was retaken, and everyone was surprised.] [5 days ago Joe said more stern words but had no effect.] etc.
- alexmingoia 5y ago
  This is why https://sumi.news https://sumi.news is grouped/filtered by day. I like to browse by day once or twice a week.
- ljlolel 5y ago
  Can just read the Economist weekly. Their articles are very brief but well written summaries.
  - airstrike 5y ago
    Also heavily editorialized with a sharp left / European bias
    - groby_b 5y ago
      The Economist is many things, but "sharp left" it is only to a certain subset of people. The rest of the world would mostly call it "left-leaning", or maybe "radical centrist".
      - jazzyk 5y ago
        Perhaps more like globalist/corporatist, which reflects their recent ownership? In 2015, Pearson - a publishing company - sold its controlling stake to a bunch of corporate owners, like the Agnellis (43%) and the Rotschilds (21%), among others. The change in their editorial direction was immediately visible (I had been a subscriber/reader for 35+ years until 2016) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Group
h2odragon 5y ago
Far away problems are so much more interesting than those nearby. You needn't really do anything about them, and its much easier to assign your own valuation to anything you do. Your successes can be trumpeted as much as you like and your failures need never be known to anyone but you.
- decebalus1 5y ago
  > Far away problems are so much more interesting than those nearby. However, as the world gets more and more connected, far away problems have a tendency to become nearby problems real fast.
- georgeecollins 5y ago
  Yes! And unlike nearby problems you know you can't really do anything about them. How many people in the US would read a national story about crime or education without knowing who the police chief is of their city, or who is on the school board, or even who is on their city council..
- lordnacho 5y ago
  This is true, there's an inner kibitzer inside all of us who needs material. This is the real source of entertainment that the article mentions. Every section of the paper caters to this: what would you do about the war, would you have given poor people better benefits, would you have slapped Chris Rock, what would you have worn to the awards, would you go out with that guy, how should your team have set up their defense? The only actionable section is the weather report, you can decide shorts or umbrella. The piece is utterly right. News in the constantly-coming format is junk food. Almost no context is given, even thought nothing at all makes sense if you just watched the news. What is NATO, what is a central bank? Why are the same teams at the top of the league? All of these things need some basic explanation that is never in the news, but always in any basic long-form piece.
- vikaveri 5y ago
  International and national news are often important, but rarely immediate. By not immediate I mean that you can't affect it, it won't affect you and you don't have to do anything about it. Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe? Interesting, but nothing to do with me really. Ship stuck sideways in a canal? That might cause problems at work later and maybe I should get that bike I was planning on now rather than later, but I'll be fine. War between nearby countries that produce oil and food... I better check my emergency stocks are in good shape and that full electric car sounds good right about now? And so on, important and some of them will affect you, but usually with a delay or in a roundabout way. Local on the other hand. Very immediate, but often not that important, at least outside your local area. Sometimes you can even affect things and if it's something that can affect you and requires action, it might be a matter of hours. Water main breaks, you won't have running water for three days? Fill up buckets, head to the store, right now! But that's a minor inconvenience compared to international news, if they end up affecting you.
time_to_smile 5y ago
> News makes you scared of highly dramatic and highly unlikely events (plane crashes, shark attacks, terrorism etc) while also being oblivious to insidious and creeping risks that are low-key and hard to make dramatic and visual (say antibiotic resistance or indeed chronic stress caused by being in a news-induced perpetual state of physiological arousal). This is perhaps one of the most important points in this post that's buried pretty deep in the article. The author here is not advocating for "head-in-the-sand" avoidance of reality. Often when I see real, systemic issues brought up on HN or elsewhere: climate, the overshoot of industrial society, resource depletion etc. These concerns are often dismissed as "the media just wants you anxious!". But, by and large, the real scary pieces of information about these topics are not published by major media. The media wants you anxious, but not so concerned that you seriously question our mainstream mode of life. You should worry about nuclear war with Russia, but not about the war for natural gas that's really going on. You should be anxious about climate change, but only enough to make you recycle, not so much that you question the economic system that is fundamentally unstable.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  The media is owned by powerful corporations and individuals, but at the same time it's profitable to keep people in heightened emotional states. So on one hand they want to induce fear and anxiety, but at the same time they don't want to give anyone real concerns about the world we live in that might cause them to want to disempower the media's owners.
mdb31 5y ago
Yeah, well, no. You can't really function in society these days without following 'The News' to at least some extent. That doesn't mean you should buy into the '24h News Cycle' or the 'Extremism-inducing-filter-bubble', though. Myself, I don't pay any attention to 'The News', except as delivered on paper once-a-week via The Economist(1), and daily via their 'The World in Brief' email. So, this morning, I learned that 'At one point an actor slapped a comedian, sending the internet into a frenzy' -- which is, like, all I needed to know, right? Footnotes: (1) Yes, which is a relatively right-wing, centrist if you will, publication. I love it, especially disagreeing with it...
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  In what way can you not function in society? Is that just in the sense that the news creates common cultural touchpoints for people to chat about around the water cooler? If so, as you say you don't really need to be that engaged to know the gist of what's going on. An occasional glance at a reputable, less-doomscrolly news source like the Econ, BBC, NYT or something like that should suffice.
  - mdb31 5y ago
    I'm not sure we disagree? If you read The Economist weekly, you should be fine (although you can still be caught out not knowing about, say, today's Oscar's <tm, now go away> scandal. But completely disconnecting from 'The News'? That won't work at all these days, I'm afraid. I quite vividly experienced this a while ago when I returned from living in the US to my native Netherlands: I was completely unaware of some extremely-popular local hit songs. So, when people quoted these to me, I just didn't get the reference, like, at all. This caused quite some awkward moments. Now, magnify that experience to the world stage...
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      oh yeah I wasn't disagreeing with you, just trying to think about what you meant. I agree, you probably want to know the basic pop-cultural and international goings-on in order to not be left out of conversations.
glitchc 5y ago
Articles that engender good feelings, either by revealing a positive story or reporting a positive event, do not receive nearly the same level of engagement. Anger sells. Outrage sells. Media companies have known it since the dawn of the newspaper. Bad news generates anger and outrage, hence all news is bad news. It's a natural consequence of the human condition.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  Today I discovered a video of someone who walks into a forest in winter and builds an overnight shelter out of pine trees, lights a fire and sleeps the night in -25C/-9F temperatures with just a woolen blanket. There is no talking. His channel has about 380k subscribers. The video has TEN MILLION views. So many of the comments are of the form "this is the most beautiful/relaxing/wonderful thing I've seen in years". Things that engender good feelings do propagate.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    I like stuff like that. A similar (but warmer) channel I subscribe to is “Primitive Technology” [0], and most of my subscriptions are about what is good in the world rather than what is bad. Exceptions on my subscription list are Kurzgesagt (self-described as “Optimistic nihilism”) and the maker of the machinima “Freeman’s Mind” [1](voicing the silent protagonist as an antihero). Thing is, I’m not normal. If my nature was the modal average of humanity, the horror genre and tabloids and spectator sports and celebrity gossip wouldn’t exist. [0] https://youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA https://youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA [1] https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6PNZBb6b9LvDWpI-5CPYUxG1Rnm-vr9V https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6PNZBb6b9LvDWpI-5CPYUxG1...
- _moof 5y ago
  There's even a news industry adage about this: "If it bleeds, it leads."
horse90 5y ago
Yes. I'd also recommend abstaining from forums and anything bearing even a resemblance to scroll-down variety.
rootusrootus 5y ago
IMO news comes in two flavors, one of which should be avoided like the plague it is, and one which you should pay somewhat close attention to (relatively). The first, national and international news. And the second being local news. We should embrace the local journalists who shine light on local politics.
redleggedfrog 5y ago
I would have commented on this post except I didn't see it.
ppalata 5y ago
I would really like to follow this advice and stop reading news completely. But I like talking to people and generally, news is among the most commonly discussed topics. Furthermore, it helps me evaluate if I have similar opinions to the person I'm talking to (and thus the conversation is likely to continue someday). The article doesn't mention how to fulfil this need and it seems that I would become isolated if I decided to really follow it. I agree with the assessment but I don't know how to fix the problem I've mentioned.
beamatronic 5y ago
I spent my life trying to be a well-informed investor. It turns out that all you have to do is buy real assets when you are young and just hold them forever. And don’t ever sell anything. That’s it. As long as the world is relatively peaceful you will get rich.
subsubzero 5y ago
I generally think news(a majority of it) is shameless drivel with extreme bias to certain perspectives. That being said with the pandemic and all the changing laws/issues surrounding it, not to mention covid community case counts were invaluable to understand. I would completely abandon the news in a heartbeat but I trade stocks and need to understand world news along with business dealings for me to make intelligent trading decisions.
kn0where 5y ago
Looks like the author reached a very similar conclusion as Aaron Swartz: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews
gumby 5y ago
I have been a very strong adherent of this philosophy for over 30 years. There’s an adage, “there’s nothing as worthless as yesterday’s news”. Which led me to wonder, “was it even worth knowing yesterday?” I realized the solution was a low pass filter. I first switched to a seven-page newspaper (CSM) delivered through the mail. I realised the editors had to figure out whether it would still be interesting by the time it arrived and important enough to take up space in the paper. I soon switched to a weekly newspaper (The Economist) and monthlies. I haven’t looked back. The nice thing about a paper like the economist is remained relatively small (few pages) so had to make the same class of decision as the CSM, rather than expand the paper. I also have an RSS list of trade journals and such that I skim once a week, reading the odd title that looks interesting. Most of the time it’s only a handful of articles. As for the high frequency stuff and stuff outside my bubble: I still talk to people and so I hear about stray stories. I do find it interesting that I have yet to have anyone bring up the Ukraine situation. At all.
- verisimi 5y ago
  What Ukraine situation? :)
  - verisimi 5y ago
    It was just a bad joke! :'( ...maybe it was that bad and it deserves all the downvotes, but given the context of the previous comment, I didn't think it was so awful...
- coffeefirst 5y ago
  What's interesting about this is you picked: 1. Extremely high quality publications. 2. In a controlled manner. That's not "no news" at all, it's a healthy relationship to quality news.
  - gumby 5y ago
    Good point. I interpret “nothing as worthless” to mean “extremely low worth, but not necessarily nil” and indeed instead of “worth” I could say “worth in aggregate” Clearly there things worth knowing and not all of them were by Aristotle, Bach, Newton or Wittgenstein:-). The low pass filter screens put the froth; the selection of sources, the dross. Not that I even read every article in The Economist, but I do read about things I wouldn’t notice or bother to were I reading from the firehose. Side point: great thing about HN is that someone can say “here’s a clarification or contradiction in what you said” and have it often not be hairsplitting, so can spark a conversation rather than shut one down.
arubania2 5y ago
I tend to agree; I don’t really follow news myself. If there’s anything big going on, I’d know anyway. But IMO there are two blind spots in that philosophy: - If everybody did that, even the big things would not propagate. You’d only know there is a war going on if you heard the bombs. - Voting becomes a problem. Since everything you hear is from people around you, it is most likely an opinion, which you will then echo. Also you might miss stuff which would affect your opinion, but which your friends didn’t care for.
hardware2win 5y ago
I dont read news except cs related because they have no direct impact on my life meanwhile big stuff like covid is big enough that i will eventually hear about it All that negative stuff you have to go thru when reading news makes it being bad deal
grandanthem 5y ago
ddoran 5y ago
> Fake news is a term to describe news that is merely untrue In my experience it is more commonly used to describe news which the speaker does not like.
- kilroy123 5y ago
  I feel like it's increasingly both and the lines are becoming more and more blurred.
  - Forgeties79 5y ago
    That ship sailed 6 years ago if we’re being honest.
    - JasonFruit 5y ago
      As far as the terminology goes, maybe. As far as people choosing to believe what is convenient, profitable, or flattering about the world around them, that's been the case as far back as anyone can recall. I think we like to imagine that technology both makes us immune to the problems of our ancestors and makes our problems immune to historically-informed solutions.
      - Forgeties79 5y ago
        Oh most definitely - I'm talking about the meaning of "fake news." It used to be a very specific phenomenon: sites/articles designed to spread misinformation, usually by cloning actual news outlets in order to make it more convincing. These weren't just "overly-spun" opinions or something, it was stuff like "Ilhan Omar doesn't want you to see these photos of her training at an Al Qaeda camp" featuring doctored photos or just grainy photos of some woman with a gun (actually saw that posted by a cousin) and "Obama signs bill opening 100 abortion factories." Just absolutely ridiculous, completely fabricated stuff, designed to spread like wildfire for ad dollars by capitalizing on "just reading the headlines and sharing what looks right" culture. NPR did a great interview with a "fake news creator" back in 2016: https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503146770/npr-finds-the-head-of-a-covert-fake-news-operation-in-the-suburbs https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/50...
t0bia_s 5y ago
Oh yes, I agree. I have decided to create one tailor-made also for me. During few weeks without the information overload I discovered that: • Having the overview and discussing the current affairs personally as an unbiased listener is more liberating than analysing the text alone behind the screens. • The categorization of received news reveals those which simply interpret the source and those which really generate the original information. • Working on a computer presents a risk of being distracted by reading various articles and clicking on random links. Their reduction increases my productivity and I am able to be more focused on my tasks, without temptation of countless distractions. • Ignorance is bliss. It eliminates the prejudices, teaches us not to be opinionated nor to ask the right question. • Any form of “decentralization” of receiving information eliminates the manipulation of thinking. We are being indoctrinated by a fear agenda to excessively consume media, television and radio. Let’s not forget that a frightened mind can be easily manipulated, which is used by both political power and corporates. Few of the wealthiest IT companies with a monopoly set the global opinions. They decide which information we receive; thus, they have boundless power. Because we don’t care. We consider the freedom of speech as a right without any duties and responsibilities and meanwhile it slips through our fingers. - https://tobiaskucera.art/the-silent-march https://tobiaskucera.art/the-silent-march
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allemagne 5y ago
I think this is a great and useful perspective. The most salient point being that "fake news" and "bias" and "balance" is a red herring to the much bigger problem of "news" in general. The near-universal acceptance that one can and should have firm opinions about complex ongoing events, some constant stream of incomprehensible information that is most likely completely unrelated to you, is the actual problem. I think the author is basically spot on here. Where I think it breaks down is the prescription that everyone can necessarily separate themselves from "news". I think this is increasingly infeasible. Even if you, personally, don't buy a subscription or scroll twitter, I don't think it's too outlandish to expect that people around you in your family or community might take action based on some national or international news that is admittedly basically pointless. Are you supposed to righteously shut down every news-related conversation about that you're a part of? More broadly this also runs into the absurdity of trying to define arbitrary boundaries around "news". You're just begging your unconscious mind to label subjects you are personally uncomfortable with as "news" and therefore not worthy of considering. So removing "news" from your life as much as possible, or at least separating if from yourself and your ego to some significant extent, can really only be part of the answer and is also by definition an endless uphill battle. I don't think there's any getting away from the need for a broader media literacy. Also: >And perhaps there is something to that, given that my online avatar is a pixelated rendering of Stanczyk the Court Jester. But jesters are kept around because they say what needs to be said. And they express these unpopular messages with enough wit and entertainment that the kings let them keep their heads and indeed value their council. This faux-humility disclaimer made me cringe. I thought this was a good piece overall, but this made me almost close the tab. Don't do this. They already opened the blog post, don't desperately plead with your reader that you promise that your thoughts are worth reading.
groby_b 5y ago
Ah yes. Reading the news is useless in the sense that reading the mainstream news is useless. It's both deliberately (pushing a narrative) and by incompetence (Gell Mann Amnesia) wrong more often than not. That doesn't mean cutting yourself off from the world is wrong. Large outlier events often cast shadows (Covid, Ukraine war) and if you're in the path of the outlier events, knowing early pays off. The hard question is, how do you see the large shadows without having to twitch at every small event. The answer to this is, to some extent, mentioned in the article - expensive, subscription-based newsletters. It's still not the full answer. There are too many areas to pay attention to. Best answer I've found so far is having a group of friends & contacts with wide-ranging interests.
telesilla 5y ago
How important news is too you depends on your relationship to where the news is coming from. In times of disaster, we pay greater attention to those places we are most familiar with, or emotionally attached to. Before email was so prevalent, my mother said the same thing when me and my siblings went travelling overseas for months at a time without calling. Now, she's in contact with us a few times a week and acting as the central news source for us all. So of course: if one of us was in a country that was having some "news" she'd pay extra attention and reach out to share what's going on with us and the entire family.
louissan 5y ago
"Pour vivre heureux vivons cachés"
sixstringtheory 5y ago
I agree with much of what the author states. However I find it hard to completely quit cold turkey. I’ve settled into three subscriptions: the local paper (which also carries syndicated inter/national stories that I ignore completely–I’m looking for local politics and economy, and especially the special interest pieces in the Sunday edition and the monthly community-events inserts, not the crime report type stuff); The Economist, in which I ignore all the leader articles and merely try to find at least one or two interesting articles to read each week; and The Atlantic, with mostly the same strategy as that for The Economist. I recently let my IEEE membership lapse but did the same with their Spectrum magazine. I try to do the rest of my reading in books and not social media–HN excluded, of course! I still have this teetering idea that I should cancel The Economist, it often seems like a gossip rag dressed up in sophisticated verbiage. But every now and then I do find interesting, if not useful, articles. Maybe I’ll switch out The Economist and go back to IEEE Spectrum or something similar. I usually enjoy the long featured pieces in The Atlantic.
- bacon_waffle 5y ago
  I'm an IEEE member mostly for Spectrum, and have noticed that some recent issues seem slimmed down a little bit. My assumption is that they just haven't had as much content to publish lately, and I'm glad they have made the decision to shrink the magazine rather than pad it out with filler. Aside from "Numbers Don't Lie", I'm continually impressed by their staff, and the submitted articles are often pretty good too.
spansoa 5y ago
“If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.” Which is a hard problem. Personally though, I do a quick skim of the news each morning just so that I know we haven't nuked each other to death or that a new pandemic-like world event hasn't happened. I enjoy Reuters, Associated Press, and a local news feed for my area. Sumi.news[0] is great too if you want to essentially scan & skim the whole Internet in one fell swoop. [0] https://sumi.news/ https://sumi.news/
- gnicholas 5y ago
  Ironically, though not surprisingly, that Mark Twain quote appears to be apocryphal: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/12/03/misinformed/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/12/03/misinformed/
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    Most of them are.
paulpauper 5y ago
If you were a Jew in early 1930s Germany, following the news would have been very important, but this is an extreme outlier. most news can be ignored.
- throwaway684936 5y ago
  If you're LGBT, following the news is incredibly important. It's essential to track legislation such as the Idaho anti-trans bill that jails parents, or Florida anti-LGBT bill that just passed, especially if you're an LGBT teenager or a parent of one.
palidanx 5y ago
On kind of a random tangent, during the early pandemic I began reading a ton of cookbooks. I found it interesting how the quality of recipes and techniques was so vastly better than anything I found online. I think a similar item is happening with news. Online news is rather superficial where really long form things like books can give you the reflection to think.
- escapedmoose 5y ago
  I was given a fantastic cookbook (Joy of Cooking) around the start of the pandemic. I used to loathe cooking. Now I’m hoarding cookbooks and look forward to trying new recipes. Turns out my problem the whole time was relying on garbage-tier internet recipes. Maybe it’s extreme, but I now refuse to make any recipe from the internet. It’s not worth it.
  - palidanx 5y ago
    Sending you here to a rabbit hole: https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/good-food/favorite-cookbooks-pasta-southern-baking-best-restaurants/celia-sack-omnviore-books-gift-recommendations https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/good-food/favorite-cookbo... (unfortunately there isn't a good food filter) https://www.kcrw.com/categories/books https://www.kcrw.com/categories/books Store just with cookbooks only in SF https://omnivorebooks.myshopify.com/ https://omnivorebooks.myshopify.com/
akselmo 5y ago
I mostly read tech news and im very picky with them too. Anything important i will hear from friends. Dont see the point clicking all the useless clickbait articles anyway.
mdoms 5y ago
I'm sorry but this is just total nonsense. The author argues very that being informed is an unimportant article of faith. I can name a number of recent examples where being uninformed of the news would have had significant impacts on my life. For example, 1. New Zealand is still under various Covid restrictions and they are in constant flux. These impact real-world decisions I need to make like should I plan to attend a particular event, should I plan a trip for the winter or even go to the office next week. If I don't stay on top of the news I will be helpless. Even the event organisers and shop owners use phrases like "Red Light Phase 2" which must be gleaned from the news - Red Light today doesn't mean the same thing it did 2 weeks ago. 2. The Ukraine crisis. Even if you don't think it's important to be aware of such a monumental ongoing geopolitical event for its own sake, if I ignored the news I would have no idea why so many people on my island on the other side of the world are carrying blue and yellow flags, changing their avatars and vocalising their support for an Eastern European country they have never even mentioned before. You can argue it's not important to be informed about this kind of event but that assertion is no less an article of faith than the claim that it IS important. And quite frankly if it became obvious someone I was talking to wasn't aware of the Ukraine conflict it would sharply diminish my respect for them. 3. We had an ongoing weeks-long protest in my city recently which blocked several important streets and caused a lot of chaos. Is it in my interests to not be aware of road closures and massive police operations in my area? Even if I don't care about the protestors, their cause etc, it's still directly impactful for me to know where I can, can't and shouldn't drive my car.
- EsperHugh 5y ago
  Why are you conflating being informed or following one particular event with being obsessed with the news? If Covid restrictions are so malleable in your city then you should find avenues that keep you updated, but once it's over you should also quit with the updates. Knowing what happens in Ukraine every single minute is useless. If you see all those hints around you about a conflict you are unaware of, why can't you just ask around or at most read a recap article or two? Why would this event entail being glued to your screen 24/7? Just like with other people in this discussion it feels as though exceptional events somehow justify the constant consumption of the news.
anonymousiam 5y ago
This reminds me of the ancient "no news" joke: https://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/92q4/badnews.html https://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/92q4/badnews.html
allturtles 5y ago
I agree with some of the premises of this article, that much of the news is actually of negative value, but I have some problems with this part: > If an event is actually important to your real life, you will find out about it. Such news will find you. > Well, from my experience you ignore all of the things you cannot control and that have little bearing on your life (again, if there is some news that will actually effect your life you’ll hear about it) Here is the crux. There are actually important things we need to know about (e.g. a nearby natural disaster that may threaten your area; an upcoming local election with important consequences; a worldwide pandemic). How do we find out about about them? This article assumes they will somehow reach you anyway even if you ignore all news - how? IME, the way this happens, is that your relatives/friends/neighbors, who are following the news, tell you about it. In other words, this advice appears to me to rely on parasitism - a minority can ignore all news without harm because they can still rely on the majority who follow the news to provide really important information. As a moral position it fails the categorical imperative.
- dwaltrip 5y ago
  Maybe the reverse is possible? The majority can ignore the news until the few who are watching the skies notice something important enough for people to break their no-news policy.
- jsharpe 5y ago
  Those relatives/friends/neighbors may very well have a healthier relationship with the news than you do. For a certain set of people (me included), news is addictive and destructive to my life, but for others, it's something they can peruse once a day. Besides which, it's not like a majority of people will ever quit the news. You alone doing it is not doing anyone else a hardship. It's not like anyone is thinking, "Ugh, I have to keep scrolling twitter so that I can keep my news-less friend in the loop."
- bombcar 5y ago
  Weather alerts come through my phone (a notification for a watch, a buzzing for a warning, and some siren like thing for an active tornado).
cambaceres 5y ago
I agree with you, but this text is unnecessarily long for the points you are making. Please try to be more concise, otherwise you will not reach those which I assume is your main target - the ones addicted to short sensational news.
- ultramegachurch 5y ago
  Agreed. Introductory paragraphs like the one below always bug me. I know what news is, I wouldn't have clicked if I didn't. "So what is the news anyway? In its simplest and most universal definition news is information about recent events or happenings. That’s it. And so the news has always existed in some form since the advent of language and civilisations. It was transported by messengers whether it be by Hermes, the herald of the gods in Greek mythology or by some mortal messenger who was quite often murdered due to the contents of the message in spite of the saying warning the recipient against such actions. We know we shouldn’t shoot the messenger, but alas."
Arainach 5y ago
The idea that only local news affects me is simply wrong, because the world is connected and things are influential. I do not live in Texas, but the Texas legislature restricting access to healthcare and allowing citizens to sue providers affects because certain political parties will treat that as a template for laws across the country, including in my area. The Florida legislature trying to ban books and discussion of topics once again sets precedent that will become attempted law in my area. People need to be aware of these efforts to know what to look for in their community and to prepare to counter such efforts. Information spreads and strategies are organized. Waiting until something is in my local area before trying to respond is guaranteed to lose. Even on a large scale, knowing about international conflict made me aware that I should stockpile Baltic Birch plywood before its price skyrocketed. Reading the news saved me hundreds of dollars. Fundamentally, ignoring the news is a luxury afforded to those who benefit from the current power structure. If you are well off and white, yes, you can probably ignore the news. If a subset of the government is constantly trying to find ways to harass you, deny you the right to vote or get healthcare, you have to be aware of things to prepare for and effectively counter them.
- ipiz0618 5y ago
  Agree with this so much. A lot of people take pride in being naive about the news. That's a privilege if you live in a reasonable environment, when others take care of reading the news, defending you from unreasonable legislations, policies, etc. It's not something to recommend to others, though. Imagine living under an oppressive government (this is surprisingly common) that invents laws every day just to arrest you for saying the wrong thing - knowing how to minimize your chance of getting arrested randomly is critical.
- lobocinza 5y ago
  Why follow local news? In my case it can be summarized to violence and petty politics. The day something important and out of ordinary happens I will probably know about it from family and friends before it became news.
- 88913527 5y ago
  Conversely, you could follow the news, buy a home because you think you'd be permanently priced out due to investors, and end up underwater in a few years. Because you read the news, you'll choose to make financial decisions, some might be wins, but not all are guaranteed to be wins.
krisoft 5y ago
Ridiculous. There is one reason I read news, and it is stronger now than ever. I started reading news when I was about 14 and this was my reasoning: "There were Jews in nazi germany who could have escaped the horrors but didn't. Some, not all, but some had the resources to emigrate, to run, but they either didn't see the danger coming, or didn't believe it will get as bad as it got, or had too deep roots to move themselves. I will want to be like the Jews who escaped, who kept their eyes open and realised what is coming and went and saved their life and their loved ones life." And that's why I started reading news. In case there are people thinking about killing me and mine I can bolt. Now excuse my 14 year old self's naive understanding of history. It is never as easy as just that. But certainly there are dangers in life. I want to avoid those dangers. I want my loved ones to avoid those dangers. And here I don't mean the dangers of idk toxins in this and that normal foodstuff, or the dangers of strange man hiding in the dark. Those are catchy images, but statistically speaking they are not worth worrying about. So what kind of dangers do I mean then? Normally I just say "i will know when I see it", but sadly we have a very clear and present example. I heard about the possibility of the Russian invasion first thing last November. I did recognise that it has the potential of being very bad and if I would have had family and loved ones in Ukraine I would have tried to make them move to a safer place. And increasingly as the signal grew I would have exerted more effort to make that happen. I hope that if I would have had family in Ukraine they would not be there by the start of the invasion. (And I know this also has a component of not just being well informed, but also having resources. I recognise my privilege.) So that's why I'm reading news. To gather the temperature of the pot I'm swimming in with my loved ones. And I also understand that this makes me prone to overreact, and that is fine. I would rather be the pigeon who nervously flitters about than the pigeon who got eaten by the cat.
- pdonis 5y ago
  Did the Jews who escaped Nazi Germany know to do that because of what they were reading in the news? I get that we all want to avoid dangers and that knowing about them in advance helps. I just question whether reading the news is a good way to do that.
  - krisoft 5y ago
black_puppydog 5y ago
Humm... reading the news saved me from entering into an expensive and hard-to-reverse lease in a teeny-tiny Paris apartment just weeks before the lockdowns. I'd have gone nuts there. More topical still, reading the (right kind of) news got people to evacuate their folks from Ukraine just in time before it became really dangerous. Sure, those may be once-in-a-lifetime events, but still. I'll happily accept that I'm reading too much (way too much) news though.
sammalloy 5y ago
I used to start my day listening to the thirty minute, BBC global news podcast, which often has three updated podcasts per day during the work week, and one per day on the weekend. Then, sometime around 2015, maybe 2016, I began to notice major changes to the BBC podcast as well as other sister news outlets. Suddenly, there were more ads, less investigative stories, and more filler about the latest consumer trends. Over time, I began to gravitate in the opposite direction, away from international news coverage and more towards hyperlocal news unique to my area. Other problems become apparent with the local coverage, mostly a highly skewed and partisan bias by the owners who apparently flirted with political power and connections. I’m still looking for the perfect balance between hyperlocal and international, and I would love to see a media outlet who links the two together and shows the connections between the two. As far as I know, that’s never been done.
- ThalesX 5y ago
  I build for myself a little frontend over Google Trends, that fetches news items, translates them for me and kinda gives me daily / weekly top news from around the world, also with the option of checking local stuff. It gives me a pretty good overview of what people are interested in. I can choose my country, and it's going to show me globally relevant news first but published in my country, then a good chunk of news from most of the political spectrum, and then a good 75% of it entertainment and soccer. Some takeaways: India has a lot of stuff happening all the time. Soccer is pretty much the king of global traffic. I swear, it's crazy just how big soccer is globally.
nitwit005 5y ago
If I insisted reading history was damaging, I suspect many people would object. The news is just history playing out; a daily dose of non-fiction with my coffee. There are, of course, a lot of terrible news sources. Many of which seem more aimed at creating outrage than anything else. Consumption of those may indeed be an issue.
somishere 5y ago
I enjoyed reading this and I largely agree with the sentiment. However I don't believe in binaries ... reality implies nuance. Sure, if you look at the vast majority of commercial news outlets, the firehose, it's easy to make broad generalisations around worth, trust, etc. But there exist many news sources that don't fall neatly into this category. News may be piecemeal, but the outcome of taking on the tidbits, these seemingly disparate but (for many of us) carefully collected and ultimately connected pieces of information, shouldn't be underestimated. Having people -- not all, but some -- informed beyond your local neighbourhood, beyond a local sphere of knowledge, is critical in making informed decisions about your own life and your contribution for further generations. If this is your way. Without it we're just leaves in the wind of greed and corruption.
KarlKemp 5y ago
The sum of "news" that you consume is close to the totally of the information you base your decisions at the ballot box on. In a world without news, democracy cannot function, because the link between action and reaction (such as reelection) is lost. It's like an AC being told the temperature you want, but without access to the feed of temperature measurements.
jdauriemma 5y ago
There’s a lot of virtue to be found between complete abstinence from the news and drinking from the firehose.
raz32dust 5y ago
Lot of people in the comments are recommending the Economist for a monthly/weekly digest. Any complimentary journals or magazines that can provide a slightly different perspective?
- mejutoco 5y ago
  I have heard le monde diplomatique is good.

209 points by vitabenes 5y ago

To me this is speaking to the echo chamber. I am so used to seeing this type of message, along with "Politics is the mind kill" and I nearly always see both blithely accepted, perpetuated, and unchallenged. It also seems a ridiculously strong stance to take, 'going cold turkey on news.' A naunced point about how low quality discussion or sensational takes do more harm than good is reasonable, but this is not that. They themselves are neither long form, or considered and this website linking to their post is titled "Hacker News." It's ironic, to truly heed their advice we should ignore them.

lobocinza 5y ago

Recently I have been reading a lot of news and IMO they are mostly useless and misinform more than inform. A few sources can provide valuable insight about things happening right now but still it's mostly pointless, even for active investing. The market is more efficient than the news industry and stock prices are mostly uncorrelated from world events on the short term.

magic_hamster 5y ago

Personally, I've found that minimizing exposure to news is helpful to my wellbeing, makes me no less informed of crucial events taking place, and helps me keep my mind on things I actually care about, or can influence. One thing to keep in mind is that news is a business. News outlets are honed and designed a certain way to maximize profit. I had a lot (a lot) of criticism for the way news work right now, what counts as "journalism", etc., which was one factor in why I just gave up on it, and now I have one less reason to be angry with something I can do nothing about. Another factor which lead me to give up on news reporting was politics, or more specifically, politicians. I've attended an interesting class in Uni where we were introduced to Machiavelli. The similarities between Machiavelli's "strategy" and today's real world politicians simply could not be ignored. I can't overstate how awakening it was, as if I could suddenly see the game being played, how painfully predictable it all was, and how incredibly stupid they must think the public is. It was insulting. That, combined with my perception that most things in politics work for personal gain through leverage, made me quit on politics as well. I realized not a single actor in politics can be trusted, all and any communication from a politician is carefully crafted to gain leverage regardless of the what their actual intent is. I've been called jaded for saying this, but I can't put the genie back in the bottle: once you see it, it cannot be un-seen. If you still think politicians are candid actors, maybe you do have a reason to give them the time of day. It's not for everyone, but for me, quitting news and most of politics was a huge improvement in my life. It's your choice not be enticed, used for leverage, your emotions exploited for power or profit. Peace and quiet is something you can claim for yourself. The world is going to be 100% the same whether you give the News your time and mental dedication or not.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

1270018080 5y ago

I have: - Deleted facebook - Unfollowed any news accounts and use Ublock to block suggested content on Twitter - Unsubscribed from any news subreddits - Of course never check news sites And honestly feel better overall and less stressed. Sure you can claim being apathetic/ignorant towards global current events makes me a bad person, but I do not care. To me, no human is designed to handle as much information input as we experience today.

Pasorrijer 5y ago
100% agree. I think the 24hr news cycle is a huge contributor to negative mental health. When we travelled to the in-laws over the most recent holidays, the news was always on, and always talked about and my wife and I both commented afterwards it felt like an oppressive blanket of stress was laid over everything while we were there.
watwut 5y ago
> And honestly feel better overall and less stressed. Sure you can claim being apathetic/ignorant towards global current events makes me a bad person, but I do not care. I would not say so. But, I would expect you to NOT be outspoken and confident when someone else starts to speak about stuff related to current issues. And I would expect you to check yourself especially when it seems like the other person is saying something you intuitively disagree with, because chance that they are simply better informed is high. It is quite possible you do it, I don't want to imply that. But, I have met quite a few people who don't follow news (proudly) but then are full of opinions about issues they don't follow.
- vinyl7 5y ago
  That's the second part of de-stressing. First, stop watching news. Second, stop having an opinion on everything because at the end of the day nobody's opinion matters.
  - IHLayman 5y ago
    “Stop having an opinion on everything because at the end of the day nobody’s opinion matters.” …don’t you see how nihilist this sounds? And also unrealistic. You will have opinions, everyone has opinions and beliefs and feelings or else they wouldn’t be able to function on a day to day basis. There is a scale to beliefs and opinions, based on how informed those beliefs and opinions are, and how well they mesh with conditions in your everyday life. It’s important to inform your opinions and beliefs; the news, however flawed in its current state, forms at least one source of that information. I think that taking all of this as one absolute or another is unnecessarily polarizing this debate. It is very easy to argue that them news media economy is quite poisonous, but that doesn’t mean that all of the information is useless. For example: I need to prepare for a storm that is approaching the area, I need to know if a COVID wave is nearing so I know to be more careful, I need to know if parking rules change or trash day is being moved. These immediate events affect my actions directly and so I must pay attention, sifting through the other crap as necessary. But even beyond that, this resignation to political nihilism is societally destructive. Like it or not, we are all connected in a society. Our actions affect others. We have shared infrastructure and services we all contribute to and benefit from. Part of that responsibility is a participation in politics. Is it currently toxic and despairing? Certainly. But sticking your head in the sand isn’t an option, as we depend on cooperation in order to preserve a society on any level and that requires coordination. Should we reduce our news consumption? Of course. But we also shouldn’t eschew all outside information and live in a self-imposed bubble. Maybe skip the entertainment section and focus on stuff that impacts you directly. If there is something that is shallowly followed by the news that sounds important, of course dig into longer-form articles until you understand it in full or discard it if it is important. Discretion matters.

inanutshellus 5y ago

I'll come out of my shell a few times a week and won't understand what's going on. News sites just tell me the last 18 hours' worth of updates... So... I either disengage entirely and can't carry on a conversation or I stay engaged and worry about events I cannot affect. I'd like a "I haven't checked the news in [7] days and some guy at work mentioned [Ukraine talking to the UN], what's that all about?" website. I guess it'd be 7 days worth of news synopses for the topic. [7 days ago this city fell, Joe said stern words about it, and the Sauds started selling oil in Yuan because it didn't want China to get all its oil from Russia.] [6 days ago that city was retaken, and everyone was surprised.] [5 days ago Joe said more stern words but had no effect.] etc.

alexmingoia 5y ago
This is why https://sumi.news https://sumi.news is grouped/filtered by day. I like to browse by day once or twice a week.
ljlolel 5y ago
Can just read the Economist weekly. Their articles are very brief but well written summaries.
- airstrike 5y ago
  Also heavily editorialized with a sharp left / European bias
  - groby_b 5y ago
    The Economist is many things, but "sharp left" it is only to a certain subset of people. The rest of the world would mostly call it "left-leaning", or maybe "radical centrist".
    - jazzyk 5y ago
      Perhaps more like globalist/corporatist, which reflects their recent ownership? In 2015, Pearson - a publishing company - sold its controlling stake to a bunch of corporate owners, like the Agnellis (43%) and the Rotschilds (21%), among others. The change in their editorial direction was immediately visible (I had been a subscriber/reader for 35+ years until 2016) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Group

h2odragon 5y ago

Far away problems are so much more interesting than those nearby. You needn't really do anything about them, and its much easier to assign your own valuation to anything you do. Your successes can be trumpeted as much as you like and your failures need never be known to anyone but you.

decebalus1 5y ago
> Far away problems are so much more interesting than those nearby. However, as the world gets more and more connected, far away problems have a tendency to become nearby problems real fast.
georgeecollins 5y ago
Yes! And unlike nearby problems you know you can't really do anything about them. How many people in the US would read a national story about crime or education without knowing who the police chief is of their city, or who is on the school board, or even who is on their city council..
lordnacho 5y ago
This is true, there's an inner kibitzer inside all of us who needs material. This is the real source of entertainment that the article mentions. Every section of the paper caters to this: what would you do about the war, would you have given poor people better benefits, would you have slapped Chris Rock, what would you have worn to the awards, would you go out with that guy, how should your team have set up their defense? The only actionable section is the weather report, you can decide shorts or umbrella. The piece is utterly right. News in the constantly-coming format is junk food. Almost no context is given, even thought nothing at all makes sense if you just watched the news. What is NATO, what is a central bank? Why are the same teams at the top of the league? All of these things need some basic explanation that is never in the news, but always in any basic long-form piece.
vikaveri 5y ago
International and national news are often important, but rarely immediate. By not immediate I mean that you can't affect it, it won't affect you and you don't have to do anything about it. Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe? Interesting, but nothing to do with me really. Ship stuck sideways in a canal? That might cause problems at work later and maybe I should get that bike I was planning on now rather than later, but I'll be fine. War between nearby countries that produce oil and food... I better check my emergency stocks are in good shape and that full electric car sounds good right about now? And so on, important and some of them will affect you, but usually with a delay or in a roundabout way. Local on the other hand. Very immediate, but often not that important, at least outside your local area. Sometimes you can even affect things and if it's something that can affect you and requires action, it might be a matter of hours. Water main breaks, you won't have running water for three days? Fill up buckets, head to the store, right now! But that's a minor inconvenience compared to international news, if they end up affecting you.

time_to_smile 5y ago

> News makes you scared of highly dramatic and highly unlikely events (plane crashes, shark attacks, terrorism etc) while also being oblivious to insidious and creeping risks that are low-key and hard to make dramatic and visual (say antibiotic resistance or indeed chronic stress caused by being in a news-induced perpetual state of physiological arousal). This is perhaps one of the most important points in this post that's buried pretty deep in the article. The author here is not advocating for "head-in-the-sand" avoidance of reality. Often when I see real, systemic issues brought up on HN or elsewhere: climate, the overshoot of industrial society, resource depletion etc. These concerns are often dismissed as "the media just wants you anxious!". But, by and large, the real scary pieces of information about these topics are not published by major media. The media wants you anxious, but not so concerned that you seriously question our mainstream mode of life. You should worry about nuclear war with Russia, but not about the war for natural gas that's really going on. You should be anxious about climate change, but only enough to make you recycle, not so much that you question the economic system that is fundamentally unstable.

beaconstudios 5y ago
The media is owned by powerful corporations and individuals, but at the same time it's profitable to keep people in heightened emotional states. So on one hand they want to induce fear and anxiety, but at the same time they don't want to give anyone real concerns about the world we live in that might cause them to want to disempower the media's owners.

mdb31 5y ago

Yeah, well, no. You can't really function in society these days without following 'The News' to at least some extent. That doesn't mean you should buy into the '24h News Cycle' or the 'Extremism-inducing-filter-bubble', though. Myself, I don't pay any attention to 'The News', except as delivered on paper once-a-week via The Economist(1), and daily via their 'The World in Brief' email. So, this morning, I learned that 'At one point an actor slapped a comedian, sending the internet into a frenzy' -- which is, like, all I needed to know, right? Footnotes: (1) Yes, which is a relatively right-wing, centrist if you will, publication. I love it, especially disagreeing with it...

beaconstudios 5y ago
In what way can you not function in society? Is that just in the sense that the news creates common cultural touchpoints for people to chat about around the water cooler? If so, as you say you don't really need to be that engaged to know the gist of what's going on. An occasional glance at a reputable, less-doomscrolly news source like the Econ, BBC, NYT or something like that should suffice.
- mdb31 5y ago
  I'm not sure we disagree? If you read The Economist weekly, you should be fine (although you can still be caught out not knowing about, say, today's Oscar's <tm, now go away> scandal. But completely disconnecting from 'The News'? That won't work at all these days, I'm afraid. I quite vividly experienced this a while ago when I returned from living in the US to my native Netherlands: I was completely unaware of some extremely-popular local hit songs. So, when people quoted these to me, I just didn't get the reference, like, at all. This caused quite some awkward moments. Now, magnify that experience to the world stage...
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    oh yeah I wasn't disagreeing with you, just trying to think about what you meant. I agree, you probably want to know the basic pop-cultural and international goings-on in order to not be left out of conversations.

glitchc 5y ago

Articles that engender good feelings, either by revealing a positive story or reporting a positive event, do not receive nearly the same level of engagement. Anger sells. Outrage sells. Media companies have known it since the dawn of the newspaper. Bad news generates anger and outrage, hence all news is bad news. It's a natural consequence of the human condition.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
Today I discovered a video of someone who walks into a forest in winter and builds an overnight shelter out of pine trees, lights a fire and sleeps the night in -25C/-9F temperatures with just a woolen blanket. There is no talking. His channel has about 380k subscribers. The video has TEN MILLION views. So many of the comments are of the form "this is the most beautiful/relaxing/wonderful thing I've seen in years". Things that engender good feelings do propagate.
- ben_w 5y ago
  I like stuff like that. A similar (but warmer) channel I subscribe to is “Primitive Technology” [0], and most of my subscriptions are about what is good in the world rather than what is bad. Exceptions on my subscription list are Kurzgesagt (self-described as “Optimistic nihilism”) and the maker of the machinima “Freeman’s Mind” [1](voicing the silent protagonist as an antihero). Thing is, I’m not normal. If my nature was the modal average of humanity, the horror genre and tabloids and spectator sports and celebrity gossip wouldn’t exist. [0] https://youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA https://youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA [1] https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6PNZBb6b9LvDWpI-5CPYUxG1Rnm-vr9V https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6PNZBb6b9LvDWpI-5CPYUxG1...
_moof 5y ago
There's even a news industry adage about this: "If it bleeds, it leads."

horse90 5y ago

Yes. I'd also recommend abstaining from forums and anything bearing even a resemblance to scroll-down variety.

rootusrootus 5y ago

IMO news comes in two flavors, one of which should be avoided like the plague it is, and one which you should pay somewhat close attention to (relatively). The first, national and international news. And the second being local news. We should embrace the local journalists who shine light on local politics.

redleggedfrog 5y ago

I would have commented on this post except I didn't see it.

ppalata 5y ago

I would really like to follow this advice and stop reading news completely. But I like talking to people and generally, news is among the most commonly discussed topics. Furthermore, it helps me evaluate if I have similar opinions to the person I'm talking to (and thus the conversation is likely to continue someday). The article doesn't mention how to fulfil this need and it seems that I would become isolated if I decided to really follow it. I agree with the assessment but I don't know how to fix the problem I've mentioned.

beamatronic 5y ago

I spent my life trying to be a well-informed investor. It turns out that all you have to do is buy real assets when you are young and just hold them forever. And don’t ever sell anything. That’s it. As long as the world is relatively peaceful you will get rich.

subsubzero 5y ago

I generally think news(a majority of it) is shameless drivel with extreme bias to certain perspectives. That being said with the pandemic and all the changing laws/issues surrounding it, not to mention covid community case counts were invaluable to understand. I would completely abandon the news in a heartbeat but I trade stocks and need to understand world news along with business dealings for me to make intelligent trading decisions.

kn0where 5y ago

Looks like the author reached a very similar conclusion as Aaron Swartz: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews

gumby 5y ago

I have been a very strong adherent of this philosophy for over 30 years. There’s an adage, “there’s nothing as worthless as yesterday’s news”. Which led me to wonder, “was it even worth knowing yesterday?” I realized the solution was a low pass filter. I first switched to a seven-page newspaper (CSM) delivered through the mail. I realised the editors had to figure out whether it would still be interesting by the time it arrived and important enough to take up space in the paper. I soon switched to a weekly newspaper (The Economist) and monthlies. I haven’t looked back. The nice thing about a paper like the economist is remained relatively small (few pages) so had to make the same class of decision as the CSM, rather than expand the paper. I also have an RSS list of trade journals and such that I skim once a week, reading the odd title that looks interesting. Most of the time it’s only a handful of articles. As for the high frequency stuff and stuff outside my bubble: I still talk to people and so I hear about stray stories. I do find it interesting that I have yet to have anyone bring up the Ukraine situation. At all.

verisimi 5y ago
What Ukraine situation? :)
- verisimi 5y ago
  It was just a bad joke! :'( ...maybe it was that bad and it deserves all the downvotes, but given the context of the previous comment, I didn't think it was so awful...
coffeefirst 5y ago
What's interesting about this is you picked: 1. Extremely high quality publications. 2. In a controlled manner. That's not "no news" at all, it's a healthy relationship to quality news.
- gumby 5y ago
  Good point. I interpret “nothing as worthless” to mean “extremely low worth, but not necessarily nil” and indeed instead of “worth” I could say “worth in aggregate” Clearly there things worth knowing and not all of them were by Aristotle, Bach, Newton or Wittgenstein:-). The low pass filter screens put the froth; the selection of sources, the dross. Not that I even read every article in The Economist, but I do read about things I wouldn’t notice or bother to were I reading from the firehose. Side point: great thing about HN is that someone can say “here’s a clarification or contradiction in what you said” and have it often not be hairsplitting, so can spark a conversation rather than shut one down.

arubania2 5y ago

I tend to agree; I don’t really follow news myself. If there’s anything big going on, I’d know anyway. But IMO there are two blind spots in that philosophy: - If everybody did that, even the big things would not propagate. You’d only know there is a war going on if you heard the bombs. - Voting becomes a problem. Since everything you hear is from people around you, it is most likely an opinion, which you will then echo. Also you might miss stuff which would affect your opinion, but which your friends didn’t care for.

hardware2win 5y ago

I dont read news except cs related because they have no direct impact on my life meanwhile big stuff like covid is big enough that i will eventually hear about it All that negative stuff you have to go thru when reading news makes it being bad deal

grandanthem 5y ago

ddoran 5y ago

> Fake news is a term to describe news that is merely untrue In my experience it is more commonly used to describe news which the speaker does not like.

kilroy123 5y ago
I feel like it's increasingly both and the lines are becoming more and more blurred.
- Forgeties79 5y ago
  That ship sailed 6 years ago if we’re being honest.
  - JasonFruit 5y ago
    As far as the terminology goes, maybe. As far as people choosing to believe what is convenient, profitable, or flattering about the world around them, that's been the case as far back as anyone can recall. I think we like to imagine that technology both makes us immune to the problems of our ancestors and makes our problems immune to historically-informed solutions.
    - Forgeties79 5y ago
      Oh most definitely - I'm talking about the meaning of "fake news." It used to be a very specific phenomenon: sites/articles designed to spread misinformation, usually by cloning actual news outlets in order to make it more convincing. These weren't just "overly-spun" opinions or something, it was stuff like "Ilhan Omar doesn't want you to see these photos of her training at an Al Qaeda camp" featuring doctored photos or just grainy photos of some woman with a gun (actually saw that posted by a cousin) and "Obama signs bill opening 100 abortion factories." Just absolutely ridiculous, completely fabricated stuff, designed to spread like wildfire for ad dollars by capitalizing on "just reading the headlines and sharing what looks right" culture. NPR did a great interview with a "fake news creator" back in 2016: https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503146770/npr-finds-the-head-of-a-covert-fake-news-operation-in-the-suburbs https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/50...

t0bia_s 5y ago

Oh yes, I agree. I have decided to create one tailor-made also for me. During few weeks without the information overload I discovered that: • Having the overview and discussing the current affairs personally as an unbiased listener is more liberating than analysing the text alone behind the screens. • The categorization of received news reveals those which simply interpret the source and those which really generate the original information. • Working on a computer presents a risk of being distracted by reading various articles and clicking on random links. Their reduction increases my productivity and I am able to be more focused on my tasks, without temptation of countless distractions. • Ignorance is bliss. It eliminates the prejudices, teaches us not to be opinionated nor to ask the right question. • Any form of “decentralization” of receiving information eliminates the manipulation of thinking. We are being indoctrinated by a fear agenda to excessively consume media, television and radio. Let’s not forget that a frightened mind can be easily manipulated, which is used by both political power and corporates. Few of the wealthiest IT companies with a monopoly set the global opinions. They decide which information we receive; thus, they have boundless power. Because we don’t care. We consider the freedom of speech as a right without any duties and responsibilities and meanwhile it slips through our fingers. - https://tobiaskucera.art/the-silent-march https://tobiaskucera.art/the-silent-march

deleted 5y ago

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allemagne 5y ago

I think this is a great and useful perspective. The most salient point being that "fake news" and "bias" and "balance" is a red herring to the much bigger problem of "news" in general. The near-universal acceptance that one can and should have firm opinions about complex ongoing events, some constant stream of incomprehensible information that is most likely completely unrelated to you, is the actual problem. I think the author is basically spot on here. Where I think it breaks down is the prescription that everyone can necessarily separate themselves from "news". I think this is increasingly infeasible. Even if you, personally, don't buy a subscription or scroll twitter, I don't think it's too outlandish to expect that people around you in your family or community might take action based on some national or international news that is admittedly basically pointless. Are you supposed to righteously shut down every news-related conversation about that you're a part of? More broadly this also runs into the absurdity of trying to define arbitrary boundaries around "news". You're just begging your unconscious mind to label subjects you are personally uncomfortable with as "news" and therefore not worthy of considering. So removing "news" from your life as much as possible, or at least separating if from yourself and your ego to some significant extent, can really only be part of the answer and is also by definition an endless uphill battle. I don't think there's any getting away from the need for a broader media literacy. Also: >And perhaps there is something to that, given that my online avatar is a pixelated rendering of Stanczyk the Court Jester. But jesters are kept around because they say what needs to be said. And they express these unpopular messages with enough wit and entertainment that the kings let them keep their heads and indeed value their council. This faux-humility disclaimer made me cringe. I thought this was a good piece overall, but this made me almost close the tab. Don't do this. They already opened the blog post, don't desperately plead with your reader that you promise that your thoughts are worth reading.

groby_b 5y ago

Ah yes. Reading the news is useless in the sense that reading the mainstream news is useless. It's both deliberately (pushing a narrative) and by incompetence (Gell Mann Amnesia) wrong more often than not. That doesn't mean cutting yourself off from the world is wrong. Large outlier events often cast shadows (Covid, Ukraine war) and if you're in the path of the outlier events, knowing early pays off. The hard question is, how do you see the large shadows without having to twitch at every small event. The answer to this is, to some extent, mentioned in the article - expensive, subscription-based newsletters. It's still not the full answer. There are too many areas to pay attention to. Best answer I've found so far is having a group of friends & contacts with wide-ranging interests.

telesilla 5y ago

How important news is too you depends on your relationship to where the news is coming from. In times of disaster, we pay greater attention to those places we are most familiar with, or emotionally attached to. Before email was so prevalent, my mother said the same thing when me and my siblings went travelling overseas for months at a time without calling. Now, she's in contact with us a few times a week and acting as the central news source for us all. So of course: if one of us was in a country that was having some "news" she'd pay extra attention and reach out to share what's going on with us and the entire family.

louissan 5y ago

"Pour vivre heureux vivons cachés"

sixstringtheory 5y ago

I agree with much of what the author states. However I find it hard to completely quit cold turkey. I’ve settled into three subscriptions: the local paper (which also carries syndicated inter/national stories that I ignore completely–I’m looking for local politics and economy, and especially the special interest pieces in the Sunday edition and the monthly community-events inserts, not the crime report type stuff); The Economist, in which I ignore all the leader articles and merely try to find at least one or two interesting articles to read each week; and The Atlantic, with mostly the same strategy as that for The Economist. I recently let my IEEE membership lapse but did the same with their Spectrum magazine. I try to do the rest of my reading in books and not social media–HN excluded, of course! I still have this teetering idea that I should cancel The Economist, it often seems like a gossip rag dressed up in sophisticated verbiage. But every now and then I do find interesting, if not useful, articles. Maybe I’ll switch out The Economist and go back to IEEE Spectrum or something similar. I usually enjoy the long featured pieces in The Atlantic.

bacon_waffle 5y ago
I'm an IEEE member mostly for Spectrum, and have noticed that some recent issues seem slimmed down a little bit. My assumption is that they just haven't had as much content to publish lately, and I'm glad they have made the decision to shrink the magazine rather than pad it out with filler. Aside from "Numbers Don't Lie", I'm continually impressed by their staff, and the submitted articles are often pretty good too.

spansoa 5y ago

“If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.” Which is a hard problem. Personally though, I do a quick skim of the news each morning just so that I know we haven't nuked each other to death or that a new pandemic-like world event hasn't happened. I enjoy Reuters, Associated Press, and a local news feed for my area. Sumi.news[0] is great too if you want to essentially scan & skim the whole Internet in one fell swoop. [0] https://sumi.news/ https://sumi.news/

gnicholas 5y ago
Ironically, though not surprisingly, that Mark Twain quote appears to be apocryphal: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/12/03/misinformed/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/12/03/misinformed/
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Most of them are.

paulpauper 5y ago

If you were a Jew in early 1930s Germany, following the news would have been very important, but this is an extreme outlier. most news can be ignored.

throwaway684936 5y ago
If you're LGBT, following the news is incredibly important. It's essential to track legislation such as the Idaho anti-trans bill that jails parents, or Florida anti-LGBT bill that just passed, especially if you're an LGBT teenager or a parent of one.

palidanx 5y ago

On kind of a random tangent, during the early pandemic I began reading a ton of cookbooks. I found it interesting how the quality of recipes and techniques was so vastly better than anything I found online. I think a similar item is happening with news. Online news is rather superficial where really long form things like books can give you the reflection to think.

escapedmoose 5y ago
I was given a fantastic cookbook (Joy of Cooking) around the start of the pandemic. I used to loathe cooking. Now I’m hoarding cookbooks and look forward to trying new recipes. Turns out my problem the whole time was relying on garbage-tier internet recipes. Maybe it’s extreme, but I now refuse to make any recipe from the internet. It’s not worth it.
- palidanx 5y ago
  Sending you here to a rabbit hole: https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/good-food/favorite-cookbooks-pasta-southern-baking-best-restaurants/celia-sack-omnviore-books-gift-recommendations https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/good-food/favorite-cookbo... (unfortunately there isn't a good food filter) https://www.kcrw.com/categories/books https://www.kcrw.com/categories/books Store just with cookbooks only in SF https://omnivorebooks.myshopify.com/ https://omnivorebooks.myshopify.com/

akselmo 5y ago

I mostly read tech news and im very picky with them too. Anything important i will hear from friends. Dont see the point clicking all the useless clickbait articles anyway.

mdoms 5y ago

I'm sorry but this is just total nonsense. The author argues very that being informed is an unimportant article of faith. I can name a number of recent examples where being uninformed of the news would have had significant impacts on my life. For example, 1. New Zealand is still under various Covid restrictions and they are in constant flux. These impact real-world decisions I need to make like should I plan to attend a particular event, should I plan a trip for the winter or even go to the office next week. If I don't stay on top of the news I will be helpless. Even the event organisers and shop owners use phrases like "Red Light Phase 2" which must be gleaned from the news - Red Light today doesn't mean the same thing it did 2 weeks ago. 2. The Ukraine crisis. Even if you don't think it's important to be aware of such a monumental ongoing geopolitical event for its own sake, if I ignored the news I would have no idea why so many people on my island on the other side of the world are carrying blue and yellow flags, changing their avatars and vocalising their support for an Eastern European country they have never even mentioned before. You can argue it's not important to be informed about this kind of event but that assertion is no less an article of faith than the claim that it IS important. And quite frankly if it became obvious someone I was talking to wasn't aware of the Ukraine conflict it would sharply diminish my respect for them. 3. We had an ongoing weeks-long protest in my city recently which blocked several important streets and caused a lot of chaos. Is it in my interests to not be aware of road closures and massive police operations in my area? Even if I don't care about the protestors, their cause etc, it's still directly impactful for me to know where I can, can't and shouldn't drive my car.

EsperHugh 5y ago
Why are you conflating being informed or following one particular event with being obsessed with the news? If Covid restrictions are so malleable in your city then you should find avenues that keep you updated, but once it's over you should also quit with the updates. Knowing what happens in Ukraine every single minute is useless. If you see all those hints around you about a conflict you are unaware of, why can't you just ask around or at most read a recap article or two? Why would this event entail being glued to your screen 24/7? Just like with other people in this discussion it feels as though exceptional events somehow justify the constant consumption of the news.

anonymousiam 5y ago

This reminds me of the ancient "no news" joke: https://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/92q4/badnews.html https://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/92q4/badnews.html

allturtles 5y ago

I agree with some of the premises of this article, that much of the news is actually of negative value, but I have some problems with this part: > If an event is actually important to your real life, you will find out about it. Such news will find you. > Well, from my experience you ignore all of the things you cannot control and that have little bearing on your life (again, if there is some news that will actually effect your life you’ll hear about it) Here is the crux. There are actually important things we need to know about (e.g. a nearby natural disaster that may threaten your area; an upcoming local election with important consequences; a worldwide pandemic). How do we find out about about them? This article assumes they will somehow reach you anyway even if you ignore all news - how? IME, the way this happens, is that your relatives/friends/neighbors, who are following the news, tell you about it. In other words, this advice appears to me to rely on parasitism - a minority can ignore all news without harm because they can still rely on the majority who follow the news to provide really important information. As a moral position it fails the categorical imperative.

dwaltrip 5y ago
Maybe the reverse is possible? The majority can ignore the news until the few who are watching the skies notice something important enough for people to break their no-news policy.
jsharpe 5y ago
Those relatives/friends/neighbors may very well have a healthier relationship with the news than you do. For a certain set of people (me included), news is addictive and destructive to my life, but for others, it's something they can peruse once a day. Besides which, it's not like a majority of people will ever quit the news. You alone doing it is not doing anyone else a hardship. It's not like anyone is thinking, "Ugh, I have to keep scrolling twitter so that I can keep my news-less friend in the loop."
bombcar 5y ago
Weather alerts come through my phone (a notification for a watch, a buzzing for a warning, and some siren like thing for an active tornado).

cambaceres 5y ago

I agree with you, but this text is unnecessarily long for the points you are making. Please try to be more concise, otherwise you will not reach those which I assume is your main target - the ones addicted to short sensational news.

ultramegachurch 5y ago
Agreed. Introductory paragraphs like the one below always bug me. I know what news is, I wouldn't have clicked if I didn't. "So what is the news anyway? In its simplest and most universal definition news is information about recent events or happenings. That’s it. And so the news has always existed in some form since the advent of language and civilisations. It was transported by messengers whether it be by Hermes, the herald of the gods in Greek mythology or by some mortal messenger who was quite often murdered due to the contents of the message in spite of the saying warning the recipient against such actions. We know we shouldn’t shoot the messenger, but alas."

Arainach 5y ago

The idea that only local news affects me is simply wrong, because the world is connected and things are influential. I do not live in Texas, but the Texas legislature restricting access to healthcare and allowing citizens to sue providers affects because certain political parties will treat that as a template for laws across the country, including in my area. The Florida legislature trying to ban books and discussion of topics once again sets precedent that will become attempted law in my area. People need to be aware of these efforts to know what to look for in their community and to prepare to counter such efforts. Information spreads and strategies are organized. Waiting until something is in my local area before trying to respond is guaranteed to lose. Even on a large scale, knowing about international conflict made me aware that I should stockpile Baltic Birch plywood before its price skyrocketed. Reading the news saved me hundreds of dollars. Fundamentally, ignoring the news is a luxury afforded to those who benefit from the current power structure. If you are well off and white, yes, you can probably ignore the news. If a subset of the government is constantly trying to find ways to harass you, deny you the right to vote or get healthcare, you have to be aware of things to prepare for and effectively counter them.

ipiz0618 5y ago
Agree with this so much. A lot of people take pride in being naive about the news. That's a privilege if you live in a reasonable environment, when others take care of reading the news, defending you from unreasonable legislations, policies, etc. It's not something to recommend to others, though. Imagine living under an oppressive government (this is surprisingly common) that invents laws every day just to arrest you for saying the wrong thing - knowing how to minimize your chance of getting arrested randomly is critical.
lobocinza 5y ago
Why follow local news? In my case it can be summarized to violence and petty politics. The day something important and out of ordinary happens I will probably know about it from family and friends before it became news.
88913527 5y ago
Conversely, you could follow the news, buy a home because you think you'd be permanently priced out due to investors, and end up underwater in a few years. Because you read the news, you'll choose to make financial decisions, some might be wins, but not all are guaranteed to be wins.

krisoft 5y ago

Ridiculous. There is one reason I read news, and it is stronger now than ever. I started reading news when I was about 14 and this was my reasoning: "There were Jews in nazi germany who could have escaped the horrors but didn't. Some, not all, but some had the resources to emigrate, to run, but they either didn't see the danger coming, or didn't believe it will get as bad as it got, or had too deep roots to move themselves. I will want to be like the Jews who escaped, who kept their eyes open and realised what is coming and went and saved their life and their loved ones life." And that's why I started reading news. In case there are people thinking about killing me and mine I can bolt. Now excuse my 14 year old self's naive understanding of history. It is never as easy as just that. But certainly there are dangers in life. I want to avoid those dangers. I want my loved ones to avoid those dangers. And here I don't mean the dangers of idk toxins in this and that normal foodstuff, or the dangers of strange man hiding in the dark. Those are catchy images, but statistically speaking they are not worth worrying about. So what kind of dangers do I mean then? Normally I just say "i will know when I see it", but sadly we have a very clear and present example. I heard about the possibility of the Russian invasion first thing last November. I did recognise that it has the potential of being very bad and if I would have had family and loved ones in Ukraine I would have tried to make them move to a safer place. And increasingly as the signal grew I would have exerted more effort to make that happen. I hope that if I would have had family in Ukraine they would not be there by the start of the invasion. (And I know this also has a component of not just being well informed, but also having resources. I recognise my privilege.) So that's why I'm reading news. To gather the temperature of the pot I'm swimming in with my loved ones. And I also understand that this makes me prone to overreact, and that is fine. I would rather be the pigeon who nervously flitters about than the pigeon who got eaten by the cat.

pdonis 5y ago
Did the Jews who escaped Nazi Germany know to do that because of what they were reading in the news? I get that we all want to avoid dangers and that knowing about them in advance helps. I just question whether reading the news is a good way to do that.
- krisoft 5y ago

black_puppydog 5y ago

Humm... reading the news saved me from entering into an expensive and hard-to-reverse lease in a teeny-tiny Paris apartment just weeks before the lockdowns. I'd have gone nuts there. More topical still, reading the (right kind of) news got people to evacuate their folks from Ukraine just in time before it became really dangerous. Sure, those may be once-in-a-lifetime events, but still. I'll happily accept that I'm reading too much (way too much) news though.

sammalloy 5y ago

I used to start my day listening to the thirty minute, BBC global news podcast, which often has three updated podcasts per day during the work week, and one per day on the weekend. Then, sometime around 2015, maybe 2016, I began to notice major changes to the BBC podcast as well as other sister news outlets. Suddenly, there were more ads, less investigative stories, and more filler about the latest consumer trends. Over time, I began to gravitate in the opposite direction, away from international news coverage and more towards hyperlocal news unique to my area. Other problems become apparent with the local coverage, mostly a highly skewed and partisan bias by the owners who apparently flirted with political power and connections. I’m still looking for the perfect balance between hyperlocal and international, and I would love to see a media outlet who links the two together and shows the connections between the two. As far as I know, that’s never been done.

ThalesX 5y ago
I build for myself a little frontend over Google Trends, that fetches news items, translates them for me and kinda gives me daily / weekly top news from around the world, also with the option of checking local stuff. It gives me a pretty good overview of what people are interested in. I can choose my country, and it's going to show me globally relevant news first but published in my country, then a good chunk of news from most of the political spectrum, and then a good 75% of it entertainment and soccer. Some takeaways: India has a lot of stuff happening all the time. Soccer is pretty much the king of global traffic. I swear, it's crazy just how big soccer is globally.

nitwit005 5y ago

If I insisted reading history was damaging, I suspect many people would object. The news is just history playing out; a daily dose of non-fiction with my coffee. There are, of course, a lot of terrible news sources. Many of which seem more aimed at creating outrage than anything else. Consumption of those may indeed be an issue.

somishere 5y ago

I enjoyed reading this and I largely agree with the sentiment. However I don't believe in binaries ... reality implies nuance. Sure, if you look at the vast majority of commercial news outlets, the firehose, it's easy to make broad generalisations around worth, trust, etc. But there exist many news sources that don't fall neatly into this category. News may be piecemeal, but the outcome of taking on the tidbits, these seemingly disparate but (for many of us) carefully collected and ultimately connected pieces of information, shouldn't be underestimated. Having people -- not all, but some -- informed beyond your local neighbourhood, beyond a local sphere of knowledge, is critical in making informed decisions about your own life and your contribution for further generations. If this is your way. Without it we're just leaves in the wind of greed and corruption.

KarlKemp 5y ago

The sum of "news" that you consume is close to the totally of the information you base your decisions at the ballot box on. In a world without news, democracy cannot function, because the link between action and reaction (such as reelection) is lost. It's like an AC being told the temperature you want, but without access to the feed of temperature measurements.

jdauriemma 5y ago

There’s a lot of virtue to be found between complete abstinence from the news and drinking from the firehose.

raz32dust 5y ago

Lot of people in the comments are recommending the Economist for a monthly/weekly digest. Any complimentary journals or magazines that can provide a slightly different perspective?

mejutoco 5y ago
I have heard le monde diplomatique is good.