4 ms·

What's wrong with being uninformed, especially when it comes to "news"?

u2077 4y ago
I agree, very rarely do I actually need to know so-called “news” when you turn off the TV, the sky is no longer falling and the world is (mostly) fine. Everyone has a bias and skews stories, also, creating fear probably increases viewership. If the media always said everything is fine, less people would watch IMO.
- jeromegv 4y ago
  Most news is local. If it doesn't impact YOU, then it's always fine, the world is fine. I'm sure that if you are in Ukraine, turning off the TV doesn't mean that the world is fine when you look outside and see bombs falling on the building next door. I understand the sentiment, and I'm also careful about how much news I consume, but there's a fine line between this and being privileged to be able to afford to skip news because those suffering aren't your family. In a less extreme example, if a big project came into your neighborhood to destroy all the houses on your street to build a highway, I'm sure that suddenly this news would make you want to get involved politically to advocate against the destruction of it. But when that happened in the other neighborhood and you didn't care to even write an email to your local politician to oppose it because you didn't know about it, other families suffered. It's a fine line.. I've seen my parents watch news 3 times a day (lunch, dinner, and late-evening news) and it was definitely not healthy and did not make them better citizen either. I don't have a perfect answer.
  - brimble 4y ago
    > I understand the sentiment, and I'm also careful about how much news I consume, but there's a fine line between this and being privileged to be able to afford to skip news because those suffering aren't your family. I don't think there's any obligation to keep up with events on the other side of the world (or the other side of your country) if you're not also able and willing to do something about it. I dunno about applying the "privilege" label to that—in fact, the fewer resources you have, the less point there is in it.
    - ModernMech 4y ago
      > I don't think there's any obligation to keep up with events on the other side of the world Things that happen across the world affect us here too. Maybe your friends have family in Ukraine or are from there. I have students who are Ukrainian. Currently Ukrainians are leaving their homeland as refugees and resettling all around the world. They could be moving in down the street and will be your neighbors! Knowing what's happening around the world allows one to be empathetic to the situations of others.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - brimble 4y ago
        How much time does one need to spend on distant news to know enough of it for that purpose, though? If you've got a whole lot of refugees heading to your city, local news will cover it. Otherwise, knowing the basics seems like plenty to me, unless you're just interested in it for entertainment's sake.
    - philistine 4y ago
      I feel that is so privileged of you to say that. You have a duty to know what is happening on the other side of the world when you're American, because the federal politicians you elect decide policy affecting the whole globe, and have done so unopposed by any equal force for over 30 years. Being an American is like being a Roman citizen; you have to run the whole empire.
      - brimble 4y ago
        How much time do you need to do that, though? Is keeping up with all the minutia, checking in on how Ukraine's doing every single day (even multiple times), really helping anyone? I do keep up with the news, and especially international news, but I'm under no illusion that it's a valuable use of time. Past very low-levels of engagement, it's a hobby, or a pastime. Like knitting or watching soap operas. Again, I think that end would also be better served if a high proportion of news media consumption were shifted to citizenship-relevant books (and maybe very high-quality, low-frequency periodicals), probably starting with textbooks and classics in political science, history, and economics (I doubt anyone who's mined those well already, needs any help picking their next high-value read).
  - BaculumMeumEst 4y ago
    > there's a fine line between this and being privileged to be able to afford to skip news because those suffering aren't your family. Watching the news is not helping these people.
  - u2077 4y ago
    > there's a fine line between this and being privileged to be able to afford to skip news because those suffering aren't your family. Hence why I said most. I definitely agree that being exposed to outside events can be important for sympathizing with those affected (and possible helping them), but at the same time, one does not need to be aware of everything going on in the world.
  - Lammy 4y ago
    It's interesting how you choose "highway" and not "railway" even though the eminent domain would be the same.
layer8 4y ago
If you never follow news (or haven’t for a decade or longer), it’s difficult to get a read on what is going on in the world or in your country, politically. That isn’t necessarily wrong, but it means you don’t really understand the environment you live in. Getting a better understanding is my main motivation for following the news. Mind you, I’m not in the US and for the most part don’t follow US news outlets.
- adamdusty 4y ago
  I don't watch or read news, and I feel pretty knowledgeable about my environment. I feel that if I actually engage in my community I am much more plugged in to my environment than if I try to read about it on the news.
  - layer8 4y ago
    By “environment” I don’t mean the local community, but the general social, political and economic mechanics on the nation scale and planet scale. I.e. how the human world you’re living in works and evolves, which in turn has local repercussions.
    - adamdusty 4y ago
      > By “environment” I don’t mean the local community Neither do I. If you think you're learning about social, political, and economic mechanics on a global scale from the news, then I implore you to keep consuming. I've never learned anything from the news that I couldn't have learned talking to someone else who watched it instead.
      - layer8 4y ago
        Ah, so you actually do follow the news! I wasn’t particular about the medium.
Lendal 4y ago
The benefit of living in a non-democracy is that you don't need to be informed. You can spend all your time on making money and spending money, and that's your life. No worries. But if you live in a democracy, you have to spend some of your time being informed about things so you know how to vote. Think of it as a democracy tax. If you didn't live in a democracy, you wouldn't have this tax on your time. Freedom isn't free, eh? Of course, this democracy tax is totally voluntary. You're only obligated by your own morality. You may choose to opt out of democracy entirely. Not voting or being informed is your choice, if you wish to live your life off the backs of others. No one will make you feel guilty about it at all. Right? ;)
- SllX 4y ago
  > But if you live in a democracy, you have to spend some of your time being informed about things so you know how to vote. I don’t think you fairly addressed his question at all in this comment, and the reason lies right in that vague word: “things”. People who live anywhere will always take an interest in information which directly affects them, or that they can profit off of, or which might cause them to incur losses. Generally there are multiple means of attaining this information and the “news” in the mass media sense is just one of them. I don’t for example pay close attention to all legal news, so when I need legal advice which tends to be situational in nature I hire people who do rather than proceeding on my own partially-informed opinions from what I gleaned out of a newspaper which probably missed important details and which is usually written from a biased perspective. This is true for any number of domains I don’t specialize in (almost all of them), and in seeking counsel I gain information along the way that can shape my future actions. So lets come back to that word, “things”, which things should people be informed of that you get from the news media but are unlikely to receive from anywhere else?
diogenescynic 4y ago
That's my point. The "news" is now Maddow or Hannity or Tucker or some other equally wrong talking head. I've stopped watching news altogether and noticed I don't feel like I've missed out on anything.

u2077 4y ago

I agree, very rarely do I actually need to know so-called “news” when you turn off the TV, the sky is no longer falling and the world is (mostly) fine. Everyone has a bias and skews stories, also, creating fear probably increases viewership. If the media always said everything is fine, less people would watch IMO.

jeromegv 4y ago
Most news is local. If it doesn't impact YOU, then it's always fine, the world is fine. I'm sure that if you are in Ukraine, turning off the TV doesn't mean that the world is fine when you look outside and see bombs falling on the building next door. I understand the sentiment, and I'm also careful about how much news I consume, but there's a fine line between this and being privileged to be able to afford to skip news because those suffering aren't your family. In a less extreme example, if a big project came into your neighborhood to destroy all the houses on your street to build a highway, I'm sure that suddenly this news would make you want to get involved politically to advocate against the destruction of it. But when that happened in the other neighborhood and you didn't care to even write an email to your local politician to oppose it because you didn't know about it, other families suffered. It's a fine line.. I've seen my parents watch news 3 times a day (lunch, dinner, and late-evening news) and it was definitely not healthy and did not make them better citizen either. I don't have a perfect answer.
- brimble 4y ago
  > I understand the sentiment, and I'm also careful about how much news I consume, but there's a fine line between this and being privileged to be able to afford to skip news because those suffering aren't your family. I don't think there's any obligation to keep up with events on the other side of the world (or the other side of your country) if you're not also able and willing to do something about it. I dunno about applying the "privilege" label to that—in fact, the fewer resources you have, the less point there is in it.
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    > I don't think there's any obligation to keep up with events on the other side of the world Things that happen across the world affect us here too. Maybe your friends have family in Ukraine or are from there. I have students who are Ukrainian. Currently Ukrainians are leaving their homeland as refugees and resettling all around the world. They could be moving in down the street and will be your neighbors! Knowing what's happening around the world allows one to be empathetic to the situations of others.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - brimble 4y ago
      How much time does one need to spend on distant news to know enough of it for that purpose, though? If you've got a whole lot of refugees heading to your city, local news will cover it. Otherwise, knowing the basics seems like plenty to me, unless you're just interested in it for entertainment's sake.
  - philistine 4y ago
    I feel that is so privileged of you to say that. You have a duty to know what is happening on the other side of the world when you're American, because the federal politicians you elect decide policy affecting the whole globe, and have done so unopposed by any equal force for over 30 years. Being an American is like being a Roman citizen; you have to run the whole empire.
    - brimble 4y ago
      How much time do you need to do that, though? Is keeping up with all the minutia, checking in on how Ukraine's doing every single day (even multiple times), really helping anyone? I do keep up with the news, and especially international news, but I'm under no illusion that it's a valuable use of time. Past very low-levels of engagement, it's a hobby, or a pastime. Like knitting or watching soap operas. Again, I think that end would also be better served if a high proportion of news media consumption were shifted to citizenship-relevant books (and maybe very high-quality, low-frequency periodicals), probably starting with textbooks and classics in political science, history, and economics (I doubt anyone who's mined those well already, needs any help picking their next high-value read).
- BaculumMeumEst 4y ago
  > there's a fine line between this and being privileged to be able to afford to skip news because those suffering aren't your family. Watching the news is not helping these people.
- u2077 4y ago
  > there's a fine line between this and being privileged to be able to afford to skip news because those suffering aren't your family. Hence why I said most. I definitely agree that being exposed to outside events can be important for sympathizing with those affected (and possible helping them), but at the same time, one does not need to be aware of everything going on in the world.
- Lammy 4y ago
  It's interesting how you choose "highway" and not "railway" even though the eminent domain would be the same.

layer8 4y ago

If you never follow news (or haven’t for a decade or longer), it’s difficult to get a read on what is going on in the world or in your country, politically. That isn’t necessarily wrong, but it means you don’t really understand the environment you live in. Getting a better understanding is my main motivation for following the news. Mind you, I’m not in the US and for the most part don’t follow US news outlets.

adamdusty 4y ago
I don't watch or read news, and I feel pretty knowledgeable about my environment. I feel that if I actually engage in my community I am much more plugged in to my environment than if I try to read about it on the news.
- layer8 4y ago
  By “environment” I don’t mean the local community, but the general social, political and economic mechanics on the nation scale and planet scale. I.e. how the human world you’re living in works and evolves, which in turn has local repercussions.
  - adamdusty 4y ago
    > By “environment” I don’t mean the local community Neither do I. If you think you're learning about social, political, and economic mechanics on a global scale from the news, then I implore you to keep consuming. I've never learned anything from the news that I couldn't have learned talking to someone else who watched it instead.
    - layer8 4y ago
      Ah, so you actually do follow the news! I wasn’t particular about the medium.

Lendal 4y ago

The benefit of living in a non-democracy is that you don't need to be informed. You can spend all your time on making money and spending money, and that's your life. No worries. But if you live in a democracy, you have to spend some of your time being informed about things so you know how to vote. Think of it as a democracy tax. If you didn't live in a democracy, you wouldn't have this tax on your time. Freedom isn't free, eh? Of course, this democracy tax is totally voluntary. You're only obligated by your own morality. You may choose to opt out of democracy entirely. Not voting or being informed is your choice, if you wish to live your life off the backs of others. No one will make you feel guilty about it at all. Right? ;)

SllX 4y ago
> But if you live in a democracy, you have to spend some of your time being informed about things so you know how to vote. I don’t think you fairly addressed his question at all in this comment, and the reason lies right in that vague word: “things”. People who live anywhere will always take an interest in information which directly affects them, or that they can profit off of, or which might cause them to incur losses. Generally there are multiple means of attaining this information and the “news” in the mass media sense is just one of them. I don’t for example pay close attention to all legal news, so when I need legal advice which tends to be situational in nature I hire people who do rather than proceeding on my own partially-informed opinions from what I gleaned out of a newspaper which probably missed important details and which is usually written from a biased perspective. This is true for any number of domains I don’t specialize in (almost all of them), and in seeking counsel I gain information along the way that can shape my future actions. So lets come back to that word, “things”, which things should people be informed of that you get from the news media but are unlikely to receive from anywhere else?

diogenescynic 4y ago

That's my point. The "news" is now Maddow or Hannity or Tucker or some other equally wrong talking head. I've stopped watching news altogether and noticed I don't feel like I've missed out on anything.