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Do you avoid the news? You’re in growing company

• rapnie 3y ago
  https://archive.is/Xuy8c https://archive.is/Xuy8c
  • jacknobody 3y ago
    All news is bad, because human beings find happy stories to be uninteresting. Many stories told for entertainment describe tension and release, but very few describe paradise. The difference might be, that the news lately has been all about increasing tension, and nothing much about the release, or resolution, of that tension. We need good news, especially about topics like Fukushima,and the war in Ukraine, for examples. Good news on other topics can't cancel that lack of good news.
• sylens 3y ago
  I was recently listening to a podcast recapping a television show set in the early 2000s, where a current college aged student basically said "I wish I had the experience of being a teenager in that time period - it seemed much simpler as you weren't aware of every bad thing that was happening around the world" And that's really the way it used to be. It was even better before 24 hour news networks, as your evening news would give you the stories of the day, and then you would buy the next morning's newspaper if you wanted to read about it more in depth. Sometimes multiple newspapers if it's a topic you really wanted to sink your teeth into. There was no need to follow the result of every individual rocket volley in the Ukraine or each individual comment from a politician. As more people turn away from the news, it seems that they rely on their own smaller, informal communities to filter and signal boost the topics they really should pay attention to. Articles that get shared in a Discord catch my attention more than anything on Drudge or even Hacker News.
  • starttoaster 3y ago
    > There was no need to follow the result of every individual rocket volley in the Ukraine or each individual comment from a politician. This is really it. Who has the time or the emotional bandwidth to spare for following all of this? I was talking to somebody about the overturning of affirmative action, and their response to me was basically "if you haven't read the Supreme Court opinions on this matter, we can't have a real conversation about this." That opinions pdf on supremecourt.gov is 237 pages long. I need to read multiple news articles and then a novel just to have an opinion on something now? That's cool, I just won't then.
    • barbazoo 3y ago
      I wonder if they meant that you need a deeper understanding to have a meaningful conversation. Talking about what "the news" presents to you only scratches the surface and only covers what "the news" wants you to pay attention to. In that sense, only consuming "the news" could be considered a waste of time.
    • tekla 3y ago
      > That opinions pdf on supremecourt.gov is 237 pages long. I need to read multiple news articles and then a novel just to have an opinion on something now? That's cool, I just won't then. It's incredibly hard to have a conversation on a complex legal document if you do not read the legal document.
      • JimtheCoder 3y ago
        "It's incredibly hard to have a conversation on a complex legal document if you do not read the legal document." On HN, not only is it easy, it's standard operating procedure... /s, but not really...
        • gnarlynarwhal42 3y ago
          "nuance" and "exactness" may be decreased, but the ideas remain true
      • starttoaster 3y ago
  • JimtheCoder 3y ago
    "I was recently listening to a podcast recapping a television show set in the early 2000s, where a current college aged student basically said "I wish I had the experience of being a teenager in that time period - it seemed much simpler as you weren't aware of every bad thing that was happening around the world" I'm sad that kids these days did not get to experience things like the Sopranos, otherwise known as the best TV series ever. One hour. Once per week. No binge watching.
  • awelxtr 3y ago
    This is the reason I receive every morning a notification with a link to the pdf version of a newspaper: to get an abridged recap of news like in the old times. Sometimes to keep your sanity you need help from others.
  • tgv 3y ago
    > it seemed much simpler as you weren't aware of every bad thing that was happening around the world I strongly disagree with that. I wasn't exactly a teenager back then (past 30 already), but in the 80s and 90s, news papers over here informed you about happenings in the entire world, and social developments in my own country, and neighboring countries (what you exactly got depended on the news paper, as they ranged from populist-conservative to communist; news could be rather biased). I sometimes read the NY Times in that period as well, and it had a huge coverage of world events. Their Saturday edition was no joke, so it wasn't just a European thing. However, what you didn't read was: American boy assaults someone, twitter is outraged. American celebrity did/said something stupid 10 years ago, twitter explodes! American police officer hurts poor person, twitter has a stroke!! And that 10 times per day. All that online clickbait was missing, and rightly so. I don't care what some idiot does 6000km far from my home. If they start forming a threatening political movement, then I'd like to be informed. The quality of journalism has degraded considerably since then. There is too much attention to personal stories, either sobbing or ecstatic, never in between, and almost always with an implicit political agenda. Some of that is good, because it makes the abstract policies and distant wars relatable, but it has overtaken the hard news. Even national politics has largely disappeared from the news paper. Only when some politician is accused of intimidating behavior it gets back in the limelight. And that's why I am ignoring the news more and more. Not because it informs you too much about the bad in the world, but because it informs you about trivia, and lacks the things that really matter. Journalism has made itself irrelevant.
    • tracker1 3y ago
      That assumes you even read the newspaper... when I was a kid, I had a paper route for a couple years. Only about 1/3 of houses got the paper, and not everyone even read it every day. Often only a couple cover articles, and maybe the 5pm or 10/11pm news. It was a relatively narrow window into only the most pressing issues of a given day. Today, you look at twitter and see a massive range of news from populist minutia of what a celebrity said/wore, or every single military engagement in Ukraine. The gulf war in Iraq was probably the first 24/7 news cycle engagement in human history for any significant number of people. I also agree on quality degradation. There is both more editorialization and lower quality writing all around. In addition to personal narratives all around.
  • AtlasBarfed 3y ago
    The issue is that political aspects of the news are simply too entrenched at this point. My mechanism for changing it used to be my single vote (that's useless), but the other was expressing views with people I knew to change how they think on things. But nobody listens, or it's drowned out, or I don't even get to talk to people with other views, or nobody is undecided anymore. I'll try to avoid being political here with Trump. Trump was a deconstruction of old guard media and the illusions they put up with the political process. He reduced political campaigning to almost pure media events and games, with almost no substance for the right or the left (except outrage or adulation). As part of that, old media like CNN that tries to keep the trappings of authoritative news delivery have been thoroughly "pantsed". Everyone knows you are stupid if you accept what newspeople tell you at face value (unless they are telling you things you already agree with emotionally). I'd like to note, I view myself primarily as a environmentalist, and the corollary to that is I feel I have no political party. The right is outright hostile to it, the left is duplicitous and non-supportive of it. Social media has corralled everyone into echo chambers, and then added a massive amount of cacophony to drown out any real conversation. But practically everyone is dealing with this for whatever they care about. Social media has highlighted how little we can do, yet amped up the education about a lot of shadow stuff that used to be completely hidden. Anyway, now I watch sports "news" and let the social stuff bleed in. The real question is if the internet has made people smarter as a whole. I believe the internet of the last 30 years has made almost everyone smarter. What will the next 30 years look like? But it took 30 years for non-internet corporations and governments/politicians to "figure out" the internet on a fundamental level. IMO the Trump election was the first example of that. Control and corralling of information with echo chambers has changed things.
  • linster 3y ago
    In summary: life was better in the 90s because you were unaware. Cue oddly specific example of “The Ukraine” and “rocket volley”. Next, the highlight that informal communities that make their own echo chambers are more popular as distrust in established media is sown. Finally, a personal anecdote that echo chambers curate more attention-getting articles. Nothing in this post is especially truthy or falsey, yet it serves up mild “distrust the media” nihilism.
    • shortcake27 3y ago
      Yes, my elderly mother can’t stop complaining about how much crime there is “these days”. Despite the fact crime per-capita has decreased, the news reports the absolute value. This in turn tricks people into believing something that is quite literally opposite from what is really happening.
      • dragonwriter 3y ago
        > Yes, my elderly mother can’t stop complaining about how much crime there is “these days”. Despite the fact crime per-capita has decreased, the news reports the absolute value. This in turn tricks people into believing something that is quite literally opposite from what is really happening. This has been true consistently since the major drop in crime rates in the 1990s. (And it was true for particular kinds of crime that were declining well before that.) This isn’t a new effect of todays news that differs from decades past: “if it bleeds, it leads” and the effect that has is much older.
        • s1artibartfast 3y ago
          I haven't seen a good analysis that includes urbanization and human migration. It can be simultaneously true that Urban crime rates have declined while average crime experienced by people has increased. If Grandma grew up in a rural setting with a low property crime rate, and I was in a big city with a higher crime rate, the crime in their environment has gone up even if the city's crime rate is going down. The same may be true for the average American due to the net increase in urbanization.
  • bcoates 3y ago
    Uh, early 2000s? There was very much 24/7 news media back then. Mature internet news, immature social media, multiple 24/7 national news channels for most major countries and languages... I daresay most teens in the early 2000s were aware of such minor news events as Sept. 11 and the subsequent decade of global war. Your stereotypical Millennial news junkie that the Wapo is crying about moving on with their lives was minted in this era of hyper-pervasive media. Note that the actual non-news media of the early 2000s, and the period pieces that remake it, mostly ignore this reality and are culturally set a decade or more earlier. This is a sort of 'the Simpsons' effect where creators in their 30s and 40s who don't realize how much the world has changed produce media about their childhood set in the present.
    • sylens 3y ago
      I recognize there was 24/7 news media then, but it was still better than now. And before there was 24/7 news media was even better than the early 2000s
      • wildrhythms 3y ago
        Kindly define 'better'. News in the early 2000s, the 1990s, the 1980s, ... was all just as commercialized, propagandized, and partisan as it is today. I think the difference that in the early 2000s the breadth of 'news' didn't include all of the micro niches and pointless internet celebrity drama that seems to infect everything everywhere today. Also in the early 2000s there wasn't the hyper addictive social networks demanding your attention on 'news' that is ultimately manufactured for views and clicks that we have today.
        • bombcar 3y ago
          When people yearn for the yesteryear of mass market propaganda it just means they yearn for when they didn’t know it was propaganda, and didn’t realize that a world where their side does everything right is a world that only exists in the propagandist’s mind.
        • sylens 3y ago
• avalys 3y ago
  The single biggest problem with America today is the presentation and consumption of national news, political commentary and public policy as entertainment. The media has figured out that America is the ultimate reality TV show and they present it as such. Cable TV and the internet are to blame for this. I don't know what could be done about it. But we'd be way better off if "the news" was something you could watch from 7 PM - 8 PM if you were interested, or something you could read in a printed newspaper if you were really interested, and otherwise the general public could ignore it. Instead we talk about the direction of the country and indeed, humanity itself, with the same care and thoughtfulness that goes into rooting for your favorite NFL team, or voting people off the island on Survivor.
  • barbazoo 3y ago
    > 7 PM - 8 PM Back in my day and in Germany, "news" was from 20:00 to 20:15 with the last 5 or so minutes of that were dedicated to the Bundesliga :)
    • Izkata 3y ago
      Where I was the US, 7pm - 9pm was prime entertainment time, and the news would start at 9pm or 10pm depending on the channel (which I think was partially so TV would become boring to kids right around when they should go to bed). Don't remember how long it ran, though my guess would be an hour before the late-night shows would begin.
      • barbazoo 3y ago
        Interesting how it's different everywhere. Even today, most movies start at 20:15 it seems: https://www.tvtoday.de/tv-programm/ https://www.tvtoday.de/tv-programm/
        • mikub 3y ago
          As far as I'm aware the 20:15 thing here in germany is because nobody want's to compete with the "Tagesschau". In other countrys where I lived all the channels would start their movies whenever they want(7pm, 9pm or such strange times), as a german I found that pretty irritating, who could live like that? It's pure anarchy. :)
• ArekDymalski 3y ago
  The moment you realize that news is just another form of entertainment, not a source of knowledge you're obligated to follow, you free to stop wasting your time on it.
• JohnFen 3y ago
  I don't avoid the news, but I'm pretty selective about my news sources. I do mostly avoid discussions about the news, though.
• whycome 3y ago
  The definition of what "the news" is has become blurry... Are the articles I read on HN considered 'news'? (I mean, it's right there in the title!) Is this article 'news'? The article talks about 'traditional' sources of newspapers, NPR, MSNBC -- is there a certain type of 'news' that people are starting to avoid?
  • networkchad 3y ago
    [dead]
  • proleisuretour 3y ago
    Most folks can't even access the article because it a pay wall. So by design, the pay wall creates avoidance.
• peoplearepeople 3y ago
  I'd watch a 5 minute segment of factual-only news. Not an hour of filler junk
• brushfoot 3y ago
  I not only avoid it, I've added news sites that I used to read to my hosts list, redirecting to localhost so I can't compulsively check them in the middle of the day anymore. Personally, I think Aaron Swartz was right [1]: I feel better off, emotionally and mentally, reading a monthly magazine or an annual book than trying to absorb every tidbit of clickbait dished out by the view-driven media. Monthly content is generally more nuanced and often more actionable, and whatever social media furor accompanied each small part of it, as it developed, is omitted for being the tempest in a teapot that it was. [1]: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews
  • landemva 3y ago
    > more actionable Beyond not watching news shows and not having a TV, this is how I filter. What action can I take? It has drawn me closer to local issues where I can do something. Maybe I can clean up the beaches in Australia, but I'm not there. Becoming enraged about politics 1,000 miles away shows a lack of humility and lack of understanding my sphere of influence.
• bowsamic 3y ago
  [flagged]
• webscout 3y ago
  [dead]
• mywacaday 3y ago
  24 hour news stations should be banned along with on the hour news. The constant feed of content edited to poke our serotonin receptors serve no real benefit. News 3 or 4 times a day should be plenty, very very few news stories require blow by blow coverage. The news has just turned into another thing to buy/sell our limited attention for profit.
• jcfrei 3y ago
  The problem is that people don't just ignore the mainstream news media. A lot of them also turn to fringe channels that peddle an alternative view of the world that's more affirmative of their own worldview - without being more truthful. It's going to be a huge challenge to every democracy because people will fundamentally disagree about basic facts.
  • spookthesunset 3y ago
    If anything the concept of “facts” or “the truth” is up for grabs. You can find any quasi-legit looking source that supports just about any version of “the truth” you want. And your favorite content aggregator will pick up on that and suck you into the vortex. It’s echo chambers all the way down! Considering that even “The Experts” who many claim hold “The Truth” are subject to the same echo chambers and powerful tribal allegiances that everybody else is… you cannot really trust them either. Many will be more than happy to bend things to suit their political affiliations or sometimes even lie to you face if it promotes their narrative. The most important skill, I believe, is question everything you hear. Only you can determine what is true and isn’t. Outsourcing critical thinking to others is setting yourself up for manipulation. It’s sounds ridiculous, but based on the events over the last three years I believe that is as good as it gets in modern times. There is no such thing as “The Expert”. It’s your brain against the endless tide of information and only you get to decide what makes sense and what doesn’t.
  • draw_down 3y ago
    It’s interesting that the people so concerned with the survival of democracy or whatever, also seem deeply skeptical of actual democratic outcomes. You guys gotta decide if you like democracy or not. Is it still acceptable when the results are tainted by voters watching watching the wrong, untruthful, bad, fringe news instead of the good, right, truthful, mainstream kind?
  • Auracle 3y ago
    The problem is that it’s no longer contained to Fox News and MSNBC. NPR now incredibly biased, CNN was but is trying to backtrack (?), and the various top newspapers have all gradually slid more and more to biased viewpoints. There isn’t a major news source out there for me. I don’t want my own political beliefs confirmed and be told how bad the other side is so I can feel superior. I want facts, and not just those I agree with. That largely doesn’t exist anymore.
• AmericanOP 3y ago
  It is a remarkable phenomenon that all three cable news channels in America have dedicated themselves entirely to the individual of Donald Trump, all the way from 2016 to 2024 and beyond. It defies a certain logic that audiences can tire of Marvel movies that come out a couple times a year, but daily coverage of such an asinine topic for nearly a decade is supported by the market? Certainly this has to be culturally damaging, but everyone sort of pretends it's normal for the country to focus on the antics and tribulations of one person. TV runs the country for now but I am optimistic their vapidity will drive the next generations to the internet. There appears to me a growing number of young people growing up online.
  • blakesterz 3y ago
    Seems like we're already there. I can't say it's due to vapidity, but regular tv news stuff largely watched by older people. https://www.statista.com/statistics/742225/frequency-of-watching-cable-news-in-the-us-age/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/742225/frequency-of-watc... This one puts the average age at about 60 for all primetime viewers. https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/the-cw-age-average-viewer-broadcast-1235342962/ https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/the-cw-age-average-viewer-b...
  • AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    It's no better on the internet. Can I have a news aggregator not give me 20 stories a day about what Trump said? I don't care how prolific he is on whatever off-brand Twitter he's on, I still don't care about what breathless all-caps rant he's delivered this hour.
• nitwit005 3y ago
  The product is just worse. The number of reporters has plummeted, and you often can't get local news anymore.
• jcpham2 3y ago
  I'm about two decades removed by mainstream media news/cable tv programming. I'm an American but I don't consume any news or television programming I watch netflix sometimes? Reddit/HN? Whenever we cut the cord many ideas left our household with the cable TV box.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• chmod600 3y ago
  Conservative news sources insult your intellect. Liberal news sources flatter your intellect. Both have a payload they are trying to deliver.
• ineptech 3y ago
  I feel like the news used to focus on things we didn't know, and has shifted to telling us what we enjoy hearing. A great deal of it is in the form "<person you dislike> did <exactly what you'd think they'd do>", and what the reader gains is not information but a fresh opportunity to disapprove of their outgroup.
• notquitehuman 3y ago
  I don’t find the oligarchy to be a reputable source of information about the oligarchy.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• ChicagoDave 3y ago
  Even the best news has a profit-based incentive system. Headlines are almost always clickbait. Even so, I read the Post, Atlantic, BBC, and Al Jazeera. Sometimes listen to NPR, but they seem to have been infiltrated by the Koch brothers schemes. I also try to have deep discussions with a diverse, educated, well-traveled set of acquaintances. All of this leads to, I hope, a well informed perspective.
• jader201 3y ago
  The problem with consuming most sources of “news” is that it’s not actually factual news. It’s heavily filtered and spun stories from a small group of heavily biased and like-minded individuals. This is true of mainstream media, social media*, and even small circles of friends. It’s hard to find single sources of unbiased news where there isn’t bias or an agenda. *Yes, this includes HN, but I believe (hopefully) to a lesser extent, or I wouldn’t be here either.
• thinkingemote 3y ago
  I don't avoid the news. If it's important to me it will reach me one way or the other. Friends, family, neighbours or someone posting here! I'm okay with the unavoidable news.
• rubicon33 3y ago
  Let's call it for what it is. News media has had completely dissolved all sense of morality in reporting. They've killed the goose looking for golden eggs.
• rlawson 3y ago
  Yeah, covid got me addicted to the news - altho I was always into politics. Have really made an effort to read less news and am much happier.
• gnarlynarwhal42 3y ago
  I am of two minds on this subject. I was very politically aware from ~12ish to probably 25 or so, and I had very strongly held beliefs and I was more than happy to evangelize. At some point I realized that most people really didn't care to live or be inconvenienced in furtherance of their beliefs (if they even got far enough to have articulable beliefs/standards) I just resigned myself to the reality that my sphere of influence is extremely small unless I dedicated more time than I was willing to activism/evangelism/whateverism and my time would be better spent improving myself educationally and professionally so that I didn't end up looking back on my lonely life, having not changed anything. At the same time, if collectively "we" want something to change, "we" need to be informed from primary sources that haven't been focused through some self-serving lens, which takes time and effort away from immediate needs. And then further effort needs to be expended to turn "we" into "us" but there is a(n) (to some extent) artificial standard of living that a person (believes or has been indoctrinated to believe that they) need(s) to uphold that precludes effectively anyone from gathering enough of a common cause to effect change. The people that make the real decisions have absolutely unfathomable amounts of resources/power/influence. The power comes from influence, and the influence comes from having the resources (money/destructive power) to create a situation of the carrot and the stick (blackmail or "bribes") for anyone with ambitions of upsetting the status quo. Hence the hubbub about epstein/soros or BigCorp, depending on your side. "The News" is just another top-down adverstisement for one side or the other of the same effective outcome. Sometimes I hate feeling like I "gave up" but the^Wmy reality is that I realized I have zero control or influence over the broader situation, so for a good long time I have been focusing my energy on improving my own situation, living my beliefs and hopefully passively inspiring others to do the same. I think Carlin (PBUH) said it best - "It's a big club, and you ain't in it" teal deer: news is bullshit, everything that you haven't explicitly searched out and verified from first principles is an attempt at hypnotic suggestion and the only thing over which you have power is within driving distance. thank you for coming to my ted talk.
• srhtftw 3y ago
  I spend too much time on HN to read or watch the news but when I do I generally limit myself to a quick skim of these sites https://theconversation.com https://theconversation.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://text.npr.org https://text.npr.org https://www.newsminimalist.com https://www.newsminimalist.com https://ground.news https://ground.news https://sumi.news https://sumi.news https://www.freshnews.org https://www.freshnews.org
• speak_plainly 3y ago
  The current state of media seems to be mired in several alarming trends that are undermining its integrity and value to the public. First and foremost, there appears to be a conspicuous lack of innovation, with many outlets relying on reprinting or repackaging press releases, tweets, or even direct government propaganda rather than delivering original content. This absence of creativity is closely tied to a perceived decline in quality, with some journalism bordering on mere repetition rather than insightful analysis. Furthermore, there is a troubling lack of serious investigation and critical thought by reporters, which is essential for a functioning democracy. Lastly, some media figures seem to be increasingly out of touch with the real issues, sometimes even bordering on activism rather than unbiased reporting. The reluctance of traditional media companies to fully embrace the opportunities provided by the internet has led to significant consequences. By failing to innovate and adapt to the digital landscape, they lost out on revenue streams such as job postings and classifieds. More than that, their continued reliance on outdated business models has resulted in products that often resemble mere copy-paste versions of their former selves. This lack of adaptation has left a vacuum in the market, allowing platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and others to fill the gaps. It's going to take a major shift in thinking for the news media to make up for 30 years of lost time in terms of innovation and survive as social media matures as a service.
• alberth 3y ago
  I've completely cut out watching/reading news, with 1 exception. https://www.newsminimalist.com https://www.newsminimalist.com I stumbled across it on HN sometime back. Someone created an AI model to consume daily, thousands of news sources, scores the articles and lists what it's highest scored for the day. --- Ironically, APNews use to work this way. They provide a "relevance score" for every news article they published/reported so that other outlets could use that score as a signal on what they should report on. Problem is, all other news outlet are disparate for eyeballs, so everything becomes "breaking news" regardless of the news relevance score.
  • r053bud 3y ago
    Nice recommendation. I also really like http://68k.news http://68k.news which claims to be: "Basic HTML Google News for vintage computers"
    • vidanay 3y ago
      IDK if using a minimalist aggregator actually solves anything. The links all go back to the same crappy sources.
    • hospitalJail 3y ago
      Oof I saw sports as the 4th thing on the list. I consider that a failure.
    • hinkley 3y ago
      Wish it looked better on my phone. No reader mode :/
  • TySchultz 3y ago
    Thanks for sharing newsminimalist. I've unknowingly built nearly the same thing but more visual with additions like maps and images. Similar to Yahoo News Digest from years back. I like the "relevance score", it would be interesting to implement something similar to that. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/quill-news-digest/id1669557131 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/quill-news-digest/id1669557131
• omgJustTest 3y ago
  When "breaking news" breaks the news.
• rickstanley 3y ago
  I tend to avoid most of the United States related news, to me it is like a reality show or something. I'd rather read about the US from another source, in tagesschau (https://www.tagesschau.de/ https://www.tagesschau.de/), for instance.
  • yieldcrv 3y ago
    Any time there’s been an Israel Palestine flair-up in the past 20 years I’ve had to VPN to another country and read about it from publications in countries with less skin in the game The US news was so unreliable on that topic, no room to learn anything or have any perspective aside from what was presented verbatim and then that expanded to more topics and politics, and then “everything is political” so its just useless I just read macroeconomic news and trade sometimes. I feel like richer people have been doing that and immune to any geo/political outcome for hundreds of years
• robotnikman 3y ago
  Yeah I've been trying, it has never been good for my mental health seeing all the negativity. Even sticking here to HN trying to only stay on top of tech related news, I still run into problems stumbling over news of negative things which I have no control over
• djoldman 3y ago
  It's interesting to me that many threads here seem to imply that lower news consumption by Americans is bad and that the fault lies with the news industry. Ignoring whether it's bad or not, if Americans want mostly unbiased news, they have easy access to it on the web: https://www.reuters.com/ https://www.reuters.com/ https://apnews.com/ https://apnews.com/ Americans choose other sources for news... they're not forced to consume it. The "blame" lies with the people. Edit: Notice above that I wrote "mostly unbiased" not "totally unbiased." If you want to order all news sources by least bias, AP and Reuters are usually toward the top [0][1]. [0] https://adfontesmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/MBC-Jan-23-flag-2048x1620.jpg https://adfontesmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/MBC-Jan... [1] https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart
  • milkytron 3y ago
    > Ignoring whether it's bad or not, if Americans want mostly unbiased news, they have easy access to it on the web: I don't think any news is truly unbiased. There is always some form of bias and it's up to the consumer to be able to determine what that bias is and the impact of it and seek altering sources. It's a skill on its own, but there is always bias.
  • tivert 3y ago
    > Ignoring whether it's bad or not, if Americans want mostly unbiased news, they have easy access to it on the web: Those might be better than, say, the New York Times or Fox News, but they're hardly unbiased.
  • nathanaldensr 3y ago
    Thinking that Reuters and AP are unbiased is laughable. They just happen to agree with your own biases and don't make you uncomfortable. That's not evidence of a lack of bias.
  • ecshafer 3y ago
    All news has a bias inherently. The news choosing to publish or Not publish is itself a bias. There is a difference though between having a bias and intentionally pushing a specific viewpoint, which is the norm of the day. But this might be an overly pedantic point.
• jackpt 3y ago
  I run a cybersecurity newsletter so i find myself searching through rubbish for ages, from both a mix of mainstream media and people's personal blogs. Most of my issues lie with mainstream media which either not have enough expertise to write the story or signigicantly dumb it down so they can be applicable to a much wider audience.
• seydor 3y ago
  But isnt this news?
• glonq 3y ago
  In 2016 (for likely obvious reasons) I broke the habit of watching the evening news, and I'm much happier for it. And I'm still well-informed. I peek at TV news occasionally, and glimpse at online news too. But I avoid editorials and sources that add a lot of spin. Give me the as-raw-as-possible news so that I can decide if/how I feel about it on my own.
  • nathanaldensr 3y ago
    Is there such a thing nowadays? There's too much incentive to post polarizing, rage-inducing content. I'd love to see what sites you're getting information from.
    • glonq 3y ago
      I don't visit fringe news sites or echo chambers. I mostly just eyeball the headlines of various news orgs and then try to deduce "what really happened if you strip away the clickbait, sensationalism, and fearmongering". apnews.com is pretty good. I'll even visit bullshit places like foxnews, not to find actualy news or facts but instead to see what is currently being planted into the smooth mushy brains of many Americans.
• gretch 3y ago
  I avoid the news because it’s often wrong (and I don’t necessarily blame them, because they are reporting with incomplete information as it appears). I find that it’s much more productive to just ask “what happened 2 weeks ago?”. All the unverified trash gets filtered out at that point. All the outrage bait has simmered down.
  • schemescape 3y ago
    Does such an “after the fact” news outlet exist?
    • gretch 3y ago
      2 weeks later is actually very hard to apply IRL because you're right that such resources don't really exist. Actually I do more like quarter in review or year in review. For example, I know Obama and Bill Gates do yearly reviews on big things that happened. For events like Jan 6, I tend to stay away from the coverage and what for the official hearing where it's laid out structurally. As long as the info comes before the next election, it's fast enough.
      • dragonwriter 3y ago
        The Jan. 6 hearings overlapped the next (Congressional) elections, they didn’t come before them. (And, of course, the information was laid out structurally, but one might reasonably be concerned with potential insertion of bias by the people setting the structure and filtering the information–which I don’t particularly think was a problem in that case, but it certainly would be something to be reasonably concerned about—a problem that can be mitigated somewhat if one does not rely on that presentation as the sole source of information on the event.)
• deleted 3y ago
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• jameslk 3y ago
  The irony of Hacker News commenters saying they avoid the news on a site called Hacker News...
  • shortcrct 3y ago
    I get your point, but let's not sit here and convince ourselves that the front page of HN is the same as the front page of CNN, Fox, or WaPo.
    • jameslk 3y ago
      This is HN right? I believe I'm justified in my pedantry /s Jokes aside, I think it is partially disingenuous for others to claim they avoid news on this site. It might not be the front page of a major news site, but there's plenty of politics and doom here too. Perhaps it feels less like news to others since it better fits the beliefs/expectations of the in-group.
  • friend_and_foe 3y ago
    Yeah but this site isn't about "the news"... Honestly I click maybe less than 10% of all articles I see on this site. Usually I like to read the ones that are about interesting new studies or computation breakthroughs, and I do like to chime in on some controversial topics from time to time when they pop up and I think my input could be beneficial to someone reading it.
• Hoasi 3y ago
  Already avoided the news for some years, the Covid era put the nail in that coffin for good.
• cempaka 3y ago
  At my last job, maybe a good fifth of the company or so seemed to have emotional states which careened from one end of the spectrum to the other based upon whether some new COVID variant had just been announced, or new developments in the will-they/won't-they arrest Donald Trump theater, or whatever. They would occasionally be completely unable to do work based on these news items which, while sometimes of reasonably high importance, had effectively zero chance to change their daily lives in any meaningful way whatsoever. It was really quite something to watch.
• TySchultz 3y ago
  I've been able to cut out the news for the most part with a small side project. It combines hundreds of sources and thousands of articles every day to make a concise digest. In about 5 minutes I can get caught up without doom scrolling. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/quill-news-digest/id1669557131 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/quill-news-digest/id1669557131
• MarcScott 3y ago
  The time I take reading the news each day (BBC news and The Guardian) is the time it takes me to use the toilet each morning. I scan headlines, and only read articles of interest. I spend way more time each week on this site, than I do reading traditional mainstream news, and usually skip articles with paywalls and just come to the comments section to get a synopsis. I used to be an avid receiver of traditional news media. I listened to BBC Radio 4 for about three hours a day, particularly Today on my commute into work and PM on my commute home. Then Any Questions on Saturday, and often The World at One at lunch. I'm done with it all TBH. This site tends to surface most things that I find important or have an effect on my life. I honestly don't need to know what is happening on day X of the invasion of Ukraine. I much prefer reading about what's the latest going on with reproducibility studies of LK-99 than the political machinations of random ministers in parliment.
• friend_and_foe 3y ago
  I avoid the news, I don't follow any news. Not a TV channel, a publication, my preferred talking head, the dude on twitter or a guy who does commentary on YouTube. Big or small, I don't care about the news. It's not because it's all negative. It's because it's all bullshit. Almost all of it is someone who has an interest in changing my worldview so that I behave in ways that are beneficial to them. Often enough its a thinly veiled business funnel. Sometimes it's not like that, it's just noise that is inconsequential to me. But in every single case it isn't worth actively following; if something is important enough you'll hear about it from a person in your life. And probably you'll hear about unimportant things too, everyone knows at least one person who won't shut up about Trump this Biden that. I'd say my life is better. I see these news addicts and theyre all just bitter, anxious basket cases constantly chewing their nails to a nub about some shit that their life would not change one bit if they didn't even know about, besides the anxiety they get from knowing about it of course.
• rdtsc 3y ago
  > Part of the problem, he says, is that publishers are in hot pursuit of news consumers who are willing to pay for news — subscription buyers, in other words — and shape their offerings around the perceived needs and interests of customers who are relatively affluent, educated and “politically interested.” I wonder what the next trick might be. Manufacture the news! Someone goes out at night and spray paints some obscenities on the main street intersection, then in the morning they report on it "everyone get angry, look at what just happened". I am joking, of course... To be serious though, they reap what the saw. And I guess found out that selecting on what to report and how is not too far from "manufacturing" the news. They found in the short term getting people enraged/engaged (there is only one letter difference!) with and divisively selected headlines was great for business. In the long term, people become disillusioned because they see through the dishonesty, hostility and bias after a while.
• cafard 3y ago
  The Washington Post is itself showing signs of news aversion. Their local news is pretty scant these days.
• EatingWithForks 3y ago
  I wish I had local news. For example if there's a crazy mom trying to get on the school board. Or my local towing company is owned by a person undergoing felony indictment. New businesses opening that could really use my dollars. My local shop had a 4 for 5$ sale for kombucha and I nearly missed out on it due to a lack of local news. I really don't want to know what is happening to youth in a country that is very far from me as often.
  • xormapmap 3y ago
    Hate to say it but it just sounds like you're looking for the neighbourhood Facebook group.
• UberFly 3y ago
  Count me as one of them. I touch an overview of what's new once a day and the rest of the time I'm listening to sports radio. It's entertaining and means nothing ultimately.
• zer0zzz 3y ago
  As per usual the news people writing news articles blaming their own failure on phones and the internet. At some point can we just get one honest article where the writers and news people that work at these organizations own up to their hyper sensationalization of content and overdoing these constant news alerts and “breaking” headlines.
• macinjosh 3y ago
  The news is no longer a singular source of information and when it was, it really wasn't that great anyway. Sure, the information sent out was reliably reliable, the problem lied in the stories that weren't reported and the inconvenient facts that were left in the dust bin. Today, the news is a battlefield for information warfare. Treat it like the adversarial environment that it is. Understand the leanings, biases, and agendas of the publications you read (these can change over time). One of the most important parts to consider is what is left out? Which questions aren't asked? Which stories are ignored by one publication but not another? Only once you understand all that, can you get an idea of what is going on in the news landscape. After all that still take with a grain of salt.
• dougmwne 3y ago
  Me too. And I think it’s entirely rational. The newsroom budgets at all news organizations have been slashed to the bone. There’s nearly no well researched journalism being produced today. This news content is nearly information free and contains either the most basic facts, someone’s agenda or blatant misinformation. And on top of that, it’s emotional nuclear warfare out there, just constant rage bait or fear bait. So yeah, I dropped out. What of it?
• karaterobot 3y ago
  I don't avoid reading news, I just avoid reading it continuously. If there is an ongoing story I am interested in (like the war in Ukraine) I check in on it once every couple of days, via sources I have some trust in. Eventually, I read a long-form article about it, but those take a few weeks or months to be written. What I don't do is check social media every 15 minutes, or watch 24/7 cable news. I think obsession is the delivery mechanism for problems like anxiety, depression, or radicalization, not the news itself.
• yboris 3y ago
  Stop Reading the News: A Manifesto for a Happier, Calmer and Wiser Life book: https://www.amazon.com/Stop-Reading-News-information-overload/dp/1529342686 https://www.amazon.com/Stop-Reading-News-information-overloa... TL;DR: a PDF: https://gwern.net/doc/culture/2010-dobelli.pdf https://gwern.net/doc/culture/2010-dobelli.pdf Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21430337 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21430337
• zerof1l 3y ago
  Yep, I can relate. I also started to avoid reading the news. In the past, I would read the news first thing in the morning. Now I do it only in the afternoon. I also unsubscribed from a newspaper and one Youtube new channel which had too many negative news. Overall I feel better, less depressed and anxious. And my productivity had improved.
• eestrada 3y ago
  Thomas Jefferson said "...the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors." Disenchantment with the news is not a new thing. More people are figuring out how useless it is and are disconnecting.
• jrh3 3y ago
  "I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this any more!" - Network https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwMVMbmQBug https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwMVMbmQBug
• ChrisArchitect 3y ago
  This head-in-sand attitude is not a good thing either. It just furthers the rampant individualism that plagues all levels of society as everyone focuses on themselves only. They are "the main character" and why should they care what's going on with anyone else near or far? The effects of that selfishness are detrimental whenever anything collective is required from the pandemic to just helping each other out in a local community.
• standardly 3y ago
  I cleansed myself of social media and news about 10 years ago and I have no regrets whatsoever. I stay informed via ambient snippets of information that are unavoidable just by using the internet every day, or from conversations at work, and when I want to know more about a thing I specifically search out information from different sources on that thing.
• harshalizee 3y ago
  Any recommendations for a good weekly or monthly magazine that covers the week/month's news well. Bonus for printed editions, and one that doesn't involving the most kafka-esque unsubscribe process.
• rabbits_2002 3y ago
  If I try to read the front page of any news website (as opposed to an aggregator like this website) I get the feeling like someone is trying to sell me a product or convince me of something. I think it is the commanding tone of headlines these days. I am probably just crazy.
• tacker2000 3y ago
  Its just the oversaturation that we have at this point. You are bombarded every minute by something “new”. People are getting tired, and so am I. I used to check my local and intl news sites a few times every hour but its just a waste of time to be honest. The same news will be available at a later stage, if its important enough. I have just blocked the news sites on my work pc for good and it has really helped me.
• ljsocal 3y ago
  Consumption is elective whether it’s “news”, electricity or potato chips. Exercise discipline about what news you consume the same way you walk down the chips aisle with blinders on. You do, don’t you?!
• xtagon 3y ago
  I want news as an RSS/atom feed with properly consistent tags to filter by. That way I can opt in to just what I want to know, get it when it happens, and ignore everything else by default. But there isn't business value in news outlets providing this.
• pneill 3y ago
  I'm a reformed news junkie. At one point, in addition to consuming local, national, and cable TV news daily, I also read three newspapers a day (I was young and hand more time on my hands back then) and listened to NPR. But my confidence in the news was shattered long ago. It started with the OJ Simpson trial. Back then I was between jobs and had time on my hands so I could watch the actual trial, which was televised on CourtTV. Day after day, the prosecution would lay out their case and then the defense would destroy it. OJ really got his money's worth with that defense team. At night I would then watch the news coverage, which only told the prosecution story. I kept say, "did we watch the same trial?" Long before the glove didn't fit, I was 100% confidence he would be acquitted. But the world was shocked when jury came back with the not guilty verdict because they only knew one side of the story. After that I started to consume news with a more critical eye. Another story I remember was on NPR and the narrative they wanted to tell was that streaming music services were screwing the independent musicians. The example they gave was how a radio station might play an artist song and get some sum of money per play, but a much, much lower payment on a streaming service - of course they completely forgot to mention that a radio station is a broadcast where a single play could be heard by millions, but a single play on a streaming service was only heard by a single person. At a certain point, after you catch a few of these stories, you start to wonder what other stories aren't true that you're not catching. And you lose all faith in the institution (it's super depressing) The question I like to ask folks who excuse the news is this - if a close friend of yours lied about something important to you and you caught them, how many times would you have to catch them lying to you before if you'd stop trusting them all up? It's not many 1 maybe 2 times. The news has done this to us all over and over. What's the solution? Like it or not, we really need journalism in this country. I tell folks that the collapse of the news industry is one of the greatest problems in this country that nobody is trying to fix. The only solution I've been able to dream up is this. Create a tax on digital advertising and cloud computing (these are arguably one of the biggest causes of the decline in journalism). Then use that money to create 3 quasi governmental news organizations (like the post office or amtrak). Make it pay journalists like software engineers, with the expectation that they waive their voting rights for life. (note that Bob Woodward once said he doesn't vote to mitigate bias). Then set up an system where each news agency is incentivized to monitor the other news agencies for accuracy. If they think they're misrepresenting the facts, they can present that to collection of ombudsman* to judge. If it's deemed that they misrepresented the facts, they lose budget. Do it enough, and they're out of business and and the money is used to form a new news agency. *Note ombudsman, once a mainstream in the news, seem to have all but vanished. Anyway, that's my story and my idea. What's yours?
• slackfan 3y ago
  Eastern Europeans have had it right for over a century, all news is inherently bullshit. Yes, all of it. No exceptions.
• RickJWagner 3y ago
  [flagged]
• arunc 3y ago
  Glad to see this on HN. I stopped watching/listening/reading news in 2011 due to constant negativity and fear mongering. I don't miss it.
• t0bia_s 3y ago
  As long as you understand that news agencies are about business, not about bringing facts at first, than you realise, why emotions, sensations and tabloid style is presented here. News, without making money, are boring. Consumers are trained to obtain news in entertainment.
• matthewfelgate 3y ago
  The problem comes from our upbringing, where we were told that the news was important. But, news today is not the bulletin headlines and long-read newspaper investigations we knew news to be in the 1980s and 1990s. News has now morphed into an amalgamation of the worst elements of social media and reality television. By reading a publication such as The Economist once a month, you can attain a more comprehensive understanding of global affairs than you would by watching daily news broadcasts.
  • dragonwriter 3y ago
    > But news today isn’t what news was in the 1980s and 1990s. Other than the fact that its not anymore from a mostly-uniform set of corporate owners with mostly-uniform biases imposed on it, yes, actually, it is (and that had actually started to break down in the 1990s, anyway.) (There are qualitative differences by specific outlet and medium, sure, but that was true in the 1980s and 1990s, too, with studies then showing, IIRC, quantity of radio and TV news consumption – unlike newspapers and newsmagazine consumption – inversely correlated with knowledge of current events.)
• tim333 3y ago
  I like news but avoid the mainstream party A says party B is rubbish and visa versa and some mucked up crime happened some place you've never heard of which will be shown repeatedly for ages. Some is interesting though - it's good to be selective.
• wkat4242 3y ago
  Not in America but yes I avoid the news. I only read headlines once a day or so, without pictures. I found this page from the National news agency that leaves out the picture fluff and makes it a bit like HN: https://nos.nl/nieuws/archief https://nos.nl/nieuws/archief It's just what I wanted! There was a commercial site too that was mostly headlines (nu.nl) but those idiots now require an account to read most articles.
• d4rkp4ttern 3y ago
  Nice to know I am not alone. No TV at home since 11 years. About 6 months ago stopped going on Twitter and google news or any internet news. In terms of my daily “diet” it is exclusively HN and Reddit/ML for up to an hour in the morning, plus a few select tech newsletters I subscribe to. Core problem with Twitter or LinkedIn — almost everything is calculated to self-promote the authors. Granted there are many “interesting” things that pop on Twitter. However that is also a problem — things are often too interesting, and if you’re a builder you’ll never build anything if you follow every rabbit hole.
• incomingpain 3y ago
  I avoid the 'news' from disreputable papers because it's obvious they are regularly lying intentionally to boost a specific political group. OP is washington post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/04/06/clinton-questions-whether-sanders-is-qualified-to-be-president/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/04... or https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/04/07/sanderss-incorrect-claim-that-clinton-called-him-not-qualified-for-the-presidency/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/04/... These are not possible to reconcile, obviously Bernie Sanders was not the liar. The swamp beat Bernie.
• taylodl 3y ago
  Do I avoid the news? No, of course not. What I avoid is commentary masquerading as news. If I'm going to get an opinion from someone, it's going to be someone who's demonstrated critical thinking skills. You're not going to find that on the TV news channels or on social media. They're all simply a waste of time.
• gdubs 3y ago
  I tried to explain to my kids lately the trouble with news. You want to be an informed citizen, so that you have some perspective on what's happening in the world and why. But that's rarely what 'news' is. Instead, it's a constant informational warfare environment. Rarely is a piece of news simply reporting on events – it's almost always trying to shape your opinion. The New York Times Daily podcast ends with "Here's what else you need to know today." So I've started to teach my kids instead how to read news critically. To spot logical fallacies and the signs of manipulation. To understand when someone is sharing an opinion rather than a fact, and to be aware that a lot of the information buzzing around the world is usually directed towards convincing you of something more than it is about educating you. There's still solid journalism out there, and I think a lot of people enter into the field with a desire to serve a public good. But sadly I think the majority of news has become like food from a vending machine. The signage might say Food™ but its got the nutritional value of a plastic toy. It's junk, filler, an extension of some corporate PR department.
• chankstein38 3y ago
  The reality is "being informed" is not all it's told to be. What am I going to do about 90% of the stuff? Nothing. So why stress myself out about it?
• tpoacher 3y ago
  I don't avoid "news". I avoid so-called "mainstream" conglomerate-driven media. Subtle difference.
• lee101 3y ago
  [dead]
• HocusLocus 3y ago
  I don't avoid the news, I just avoid news sites unless I am following a specific text link with interest. Every couple of days I run a perl script that loads 15 html pages from 11 sites (the first 5 pages of zerohedge) and they are all aggregation sites so there can be 1500 unique links per page. The script looks at <A HREF=...>text</A> links only and checks each URL against an already-seen database (currently 56,089 entries) to show me only unique new ones. It sorts the new links by rank as they appear across their respective sources, so if it is near the top of any page it will be near the top on my result page. The already-seen logic casts out recurring links and site navigation and I don't add sources often. The result page is very simple html that I customize to a larger easy to read font with no visual clutter except the source abbreviations and a bold sequence number. It is presented in a single long scrolling paragraph without whitespace, and I will typically keep the tab open and skim and through it over one or two days. An example of a recent page is here ( https://ia902708.us.archive.org/2/items/news-aggregation-demo/news-aggregation-demo.html https://ia902708.us.archive.org/2/items/news-aggregation-dem... )