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Why would I pay for something that is actively working against my interests? I'm with Bryan Caplan's position that most of the news can be safely eliminated fro

Why would I pay for something that is actively working against my interests? I'm with Bryan Caplan's position that most of the news can be safely eliminated from one's consumption with zero loss to one's quality of life: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/03/the_case_agains_6.html https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/03/the_case_agains_6.h... Of course there is still a question of how one would support quality investigative journalism and someone to hold the powers that be accountable, although one wonders how much the news have been truly doing that in the recent years, as opposed to being a mere extension of a political party.

maldusiecle 2y ago
Which do you think is cheaper to produce, agitprop or deep investigative reporting? If no one pays for news, which do you think will grow in proportion to the other?
- ok123456 2y ago
  What is passed off as "deep investigative reporting" is actually agitprop, especially when reporters interface with and are concerned with maintaining access to the national security apparatus. Yet, at the same time, the same journalists think they're "defending democracy from darkness." I have no interest in funding that mind poison.
  - Aunche 2y ago
    I hate that propaganda has become a thought-terminating cliche. First of all, it's not necessarily a bad thing. "Agitprop" is literally what brought the deeply isolationist Americans to finally act in World War II. Also, just because you suspect that some journalism from a publication is propaganda doesn't invalidate the usefulness of all journalism from that publication like the Washington Post's opioid database.
    - ok123456 2y ago
      > "Agitprop" is literally what brought the deeply isolationist Americans to finally act in World War II. I thought it was Pearl Harbor. >just because you suspect that some journalism from a publication is propaganda doesn't invalidate the usefulness of all journalism Usefulness for whom? If by useful you mean to manufacture consent to do whatever businesses and governments would have done if it weren't for the pesky public getting in their way, then yes, sure. We wouldn't have had the second Iraq war, or the first for that matter, if it weren't for the hard work of the journalists at the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
      - Aunche 2y ago
        > I thought it was Pearl Harbor. Japan wasn't stupid enough to rouse a sleepy giant for no reason. It's no coincidence that the majority America's western fleet was docked on tiny islands thousands of miles away from any then states. The US had also implemented an embargo and provided significant aid to the Allies through Lend Lease. If they didn't attack America during Pearl Harbor, they would attack a ship that's blockading critical oil shipments. Propaganda played a huge role in American's acceptance into these escalations [1]. > We wouldn't have had the second Iraq war Yes, I knew you were alluding to this, which is why I brought up WWII as a counterexample. My point is that just because you think their geopolitical reporting was counterproductive doesn't change the value of their opioid coverage [2] which lead to multi-billion dollar lawsuits against CVS and Walgreens. [1] https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/great-debate https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/great-debate [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2019/07/20/opioid-files/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2019/07/20/opioid-fi...
        ok123456 2y ago
        I understand your desire to connect the propaganda industry with the "last just cause"—83 years ago—but lying to the public is not virtuous. Was it virtuous or justifiable for Jeffrey Gettleman at the New York Times to fabricate, out of whole cloth, stories of rape [1] to soft-shoe the genocidal policies of a foreign government? Who benefits? [1] https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/new-york-times-intercept-hamas-rape/ https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/new-york-times-int...
- nh23423fefe 2y ago
  This reads like a poor attempt at moralizing. Why would i imagine news revenue is directed morally? Why is the relative size relevant?
  - stavros 2y ago
    I think the point is "if you aren't paying, you're getting the cheaper of the two".
    - cryptonector 2y ago
      Not sure that paying would make things better anyways. If everyone was paying then there would be enough revenue for the news to produce the real/biased reporting/agitprop that their customers demand.
    - Spivak 2y ago
      But if you aren't consuming news at all then it doesn't matter and you're free.
- barryrandall 2y ago
  If people subscribed to a publication expecting it to be mostly news and got mostly sensationalism, do you expect them to keep paying?
chiffre01 2y ago
How exactly is news working against your interests?
- agumonkey 2y ago
  Influence, anxiety, noise. That's how I interpret his comment.
  - SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
    How about the obvious and shameless propaganda? Oh wait, most people here agree the with ends, so the means must be Ok.
coldpie 2y ago
> I'm with Bryan Caplan's position that most of the news can be safely eliminated from one's consumption with zero loss to one's quality of life I follow one or two very local news sources[1], who post about three to five stories a week. I find those valuable: new restaurants opening, construction going on, what's going on with local organizations & politicians, some local history. It's up to ten minutes a day. And, I choose to pay a subscription to support each of these. Outside that, I 100% agree with you. National news? Complete waste of time. World news? Somehow an even bigger waste. Reading random vomit on Twitter? Good lord, taking up smoking is a better use of your life than that. No way in hell I'm wasting my life or money on any of that junk. It's despairing to see so many people I know spending hours every day reading national news junk to absolutely no purpose. You can know everything you need to know about the world in ten minutes a day. More than that is just throwing your time down the garbage. [1] An example: https://racketmn.com https://racketmn.com
- levkk 2y ago
  > No way in hell I'm wasting my life or money on any of that junk. It's despairing to see so many people I know spending hours every day reading national news junk to absolutely no purpose. Now imagine you don't have access to those anymore. Overconsumption of news clearly is a problem, but shutting yourself off to the what's happening in the world is somehow worse.
  - coldpie 2y ago
    > but shutting yourself off to the what's happening in the world is somehow worse How? Russia's doing something stupid in Ukraine. People in the middle east are killing each other again. The Olympics just happened in France. Republicans are running nutjobs for office again. Sweet, I'm up to date in 15 seconds. I can go back to reading a book or playing guitar or cooking dinner or weeding my garden or arguing on HN. How is this worse than spending 2 hours reading into all the details of the stuff I just mentioned, and then not having any time left over to do the things that actually make my life worth living?
    - 2y ago
blablabla123 2y ago
Yeah sometimes people advocate for it but might end up making problematic decisions when it comes to voting. Many people may vote after all but if it's not based on news it can be problematic. Solely relying on Wikipedia or History might not give full context and could overly rationalize the decision making. After all, people want their policy makers to make their inhabitants happy (irrational) and not just optimize a (simplified yet rational) metric. I don't think though there is unbiased news. Generally a classic recommendation has been to read across multiple sources.
troyvit 2y ago
One metric for investigative journalism, in my opinion, is to look at how many journalists are in jail: https://www.statista.com/chart/16414/jailed-journalists-timeline/ https://www.statista.com/chart/16414/jailed-journalists-time... This is only one data point and doesn't include journalists who were railroad out of their jobs, disappeared, murdered, etc.
stavros 2y ago
> there is still a question of how one would support quality investigative journalism and someone to hold the powers that be accountable I don't think there is: You pay for it, since it's in your best interests to. I'd pay for that. Unfortunately, in my country, there aren't any outlets like that that I know of, everything is government propaganda.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  You mind namedropping the country? It seems like the common setup is pro-elite but pro or anti government seems like a tossup.
  - stavros 2y ago
    It's Greece, but you're right, government is pretty much the elites.
- jack_pp 2y ago
  In Romania we have YouTube channels that do only investigative reporting and people fund them through YouTube membership, super tips and Patreon. Can look up recorder Romania if you are curious
strangattractor 2y ago
Old enough to remember Cronkite or MacNeil Lehrer - there was a time with more facts less ideology. Ever since the news became a profit center it just isn't as useful. One literally has to follow double digit numbers of outlets to get a reasonable picture of reality. It is simply too costly. The News rooms have become their own undoing.
- netbioserror 2y ago
  Old school news anchors were NOT neutral. The stories they chose and the language they used shaped perceptions just as much as now, only they had precious little competition back then. They so completely shaped the population's perception of that era that retroactive analyses using better evidence to reach new conclusions about the events of that time are reflexively rejected by most people, demonstrating incuriosity and close-mindedness out of loyalty to established narratives. That is ideology.
  - strangattractor 2y ago
    I am not making a "those were the good ole days" argument - the News "business" changed in a fundamental way. The objective became to "make money" as opposed to "deliver news". The profit motive changes everything - taking that thinking to a logical conclusion you end up with 2 minute videos that are chosen specifically to punch your buttons so you will keep watching. The way in which people consume their news now is simply chaos. https://niemanreports.org/articles/the-transformation-of-network-news/ https://niemanreports.org/articles/the-transformation-of-net...
    - netbioserror 2y ago
      Forgive my cynicism, but I do not believe you, and I do not believe the linked article. Profit is not the only incentive to deceive. Power, legacy, and prestige (which the article claims was the ultimate goal) are all incentives to deceive, mislead, or otherwise engage in narrative craft.
      - 2y ago
8f2ab37a-ed6c 2y ago
More from Caplan here on this: https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/bryan-caplan-stop-reading-the-news/ https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/bryan-caplan-stop-re...
soulofmischief 2y ago
The quality of our lives is too entwined with foreign politics for us to maintain ethical ignorance of what happens in the world around us.

maldusiecle 2y ago

Which do you think is cheaper to produce, agitprop or deep investigative reporting? If no one pays for news, which do you think will grow in proportion to the other?

ok123456 2y ago
What is passed off as "deep investigative reporting" is actually agitprop, especially when reporters interface with and are concerned with maintaining access to the national security apparatus. Yet, at the same time, the same journalists think they're "defending democracy from darkness." I have no interest in funding that mind poison.
- Aunche 2y ago
  I hate that propaganda has become a thought-terminating cliche. First of all, it's not necessarily a bad thing. "Agitprop" is literally what brought the deeply isolationist Americans to finally act in World War II. Also, just because you suspect that some journalism from a publication is propaganda doesn't invalidate the usefulness of all journalism from that publication like the Washington Post's opioid database.
  - ok123456 2y ago
    > "Agitprop" is literally what brought the deeply isolationist Americans to finally act in World War II. I thought it was Pearl Harbor. >just because you suspect that some journalism from a publication is propaganda doesn't invalidate the usefulness of all journalism Usefulness for whom? If by useful you mean to manufacture consent to do whatever businesses and governments would have done if it weren't for the pesky public getting in their way, then yes, sure. We wouldn't have had the second Iraq war, or the first for that matter, if it weren't for the hard work of the journalists at the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
    - Aunche 2y ago
      > I thought it was Pearl Harbor. Japan wasn't stupid enough to rouse a sleepy giant for no reason. It's no coincidence that the majority America's western fleet was docked on tiny islands thousands of miles away from any then states. The US had also implemented an embargo and provided significant aid to the Allies through Lend Lease. If they didn't attack America during Pearl Harbor, they would attack a ship that's blockading critical oil shipments. Propaganda played a huge role in American's acceptance into these escalations [1]. > We wouldn't have had the second Iraq war Yes, I knew you were alluding to this, which is why I brought up WWII as a counterexample. My point is that just because you think their geopolitical reporting was counterproductive doesn't change the value of their opioid coverage [2] which lead to multi-billion dollar lawsuits against CVS and Walgreens. [1] https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/great-debate https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/great-debate [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2019/07/20/opioid-files/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2019/07/20/opioid-fi...
      - ok123456 2y ago
        I understand your desire to connect the propaganda industry with the "last just cause"—83 years ago—but lying to the public is not virtuous. Was it virtuous or justifiable for Jeffrey Gettleman at the New York Times to fabricate, out of whole cloth, stories of rape [1] to soft-shoe the genocidal policies of a foreign government? Who benefits? [1] https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/new-york-times-intercept-hamas-rape/ https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/new-york-times-int...
nh23423fefe 2y ago
This reads like a poor attempt at moralizing. Why would i imagine news revenue is directed morally? Why is the relative size relevant?
- stavros 2y ago
  I think the point is "if you aren't paying, you're getting the cheaper of the two".
  - cryptonector 2y ago
    Not sure that paying would make things better anyways. If everyone was paying then there would be enough revenue for the news to produce the real/biased reporting/agitprop that their customers demand.
  - Spivak 2y ago
    But if you aren't consuming news at all then it doesn't matter and you're free.
barryrandall 2y ago
If people subscribed to a publication expecting it to be mostly news and got mostly sensationalism, do you expect them to keep paying?

chiffre01 2y ago

How exactly is news working against your interests?

agumonkey 2y ago
Influence, anxiety, noise. That's how I interpret his comment.
- SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
  How about the obvious and shameless propaganda? Oh wait, most people here agree the with ends, so the means must be Ok.

coldpie 2y ago

> I'm with Bryan Caplan's position that most of the news can be safely eliminated from one's consumption with zero loss to one's quality of life I follow one or two very local news sources[1], who post about three to five stories a week. I find those valuable: new restaurants opening, construction going on, what's going on with local organizations & politicians, some local history. It's up to ten minutes a day. And, I choose to pay a subscription to support each of these. Outside that, I 100% agree with you. National news? Complete waste of time. World news? Somehow an even bigger waste. Reading random vomit on Twitter? Good lord, taking up smoking is a better use of your life than that. No way in hell I'm wasting my life or money on any of that junk. It's despairing to see so many people I know spending hours every day reading national news junk to absolutely no purpose. You can know everything you need to know about the world in ten minutes a day. More than that is just throwing your time down the garbage. [1] An example: https://racketmn.com https://racketmn.com

levkk 2y ago
> No way in hell I'm wasting my life or money on any of that junk. It's despairing to see so many people I know spending hours every day reading national news junk to absolutely no purpose. Now imagine you don't have access to those anymore. Overconsumption of news clearly is a problem, but shutting yourself off to the what's happening in the world is somehow worse.
- coldpie 2y ago
  > but shutting yourself off to the what's happening in the world is somehow worse How? Russia's doing something stupid in Ukraine. People in the middle east are killing each other again. The Olympics just happened in France. Republicans are running nutjobs for office again. Sweet, I'm up to date in 15 seconds. I can go back to reading a book or playing guitar or cooking dinner or weeding my garden or arguing on HN. How is this worse than spending 2 hours reading into all the details of the stuff I just mentioned, and then not having any time left over to do the things that actually make my life worth living?
  - 2y ago

blablabla123 2y ago

Yeah sometimes people advocate for it but might end up making problematic decisions when it comes to voting. Many people may vote after all but if it's not based on news it can be problematic. Solely relying on Wikipedia or History might not give full context and could overly rationalize the decision making. After all, people want their policy makers to make their inhabitants happy (irrational) and not just optimize a (simplified yet rational) metric. I don't think though there is unbiased news. Generally a classic recommendation has been to read across multiple sources.

troyvit 2y ago

One metric for investigative journalism, in my opinion, is to look at how many journalists are in jail: https://www.statista.com/chart/16414/jailed-journalists-timeline/ https://www.statista.com/chart/16414/jailed-journalists-time... This is only one data point and doesn't include journalists who were railroad out of their jobs, disappeared, murdered, etc.

stavros 2y ago

> there is still a question of how one would support quality investigative journalism and someone to hold the powers that be accountable I don't think there is: You pay for it, since it's in your best interests to. I'd pay for that. Unfortunately, in my country, there aren't any outlets like that that I know of, everything is government propaganda.

rightbyte 2y ago
You mind namedropping the country? It seems like the common setup is pro-elite but pro or anti government seems like a tossup.
- stavros 2y ago
  It's Greece, but you're right, government is pretty much the elites.
jack_pp 2y ago
In Romania we have YouTube channels that do only investigative reporting and people fund them through YouTube membership, super tips and Patreon. Can look up recorder Romania if you are curious

strangattractor 2y ago

Old enough to remember Cronkite or MacNeil Lehrer - there was a time with more facts less ideology. Ever since the news became a profit center it just isn't as useful. One literally has to follow double digit numbers of outlets to get a reasonable picture of reality. It is simply too costly. The News rooms have become their own undoing.

netbioserror 2y ago
Old school news anchors were NOT neutral. The stories they chose and the language they used shaped perceptions just as much as now, only they had precious little competition back then. They so completely shaped the population's perception of that era that retroactive analyses using better evidence to reach new conclusions about the events of that time are reflexively rejected by most people, demonstrating incuriosity and close-mindedness out of loyalty to established narratives. That is ideology.
- strangattractor 2y ago
  I am not making a "those were the good ole days" argument - the News "business" changed in a fundamental way. The objective became to "make money" as opposed to "deliver news". The profit motive changes everything - taking that thinking to a logical conclusion you end up with 2 minute videos that are chosen specifically to punch your buttons so you will keep watching. The way in which people consume their news now is simply chaos. https://niemanreports.org/articles/the-transformation-of-network-news/ https://niemanreports.org/articles/the-transformation-of-net...
  - netbioserror 2y ago
    Forgive my cynicism, but I do not believe you, and I do not believe the linked article. Profit is not the only incentive to deceive. Power, legacy, and prestige (which the article claims was the ultimate goal) are all incentives to deceive, mislead, or otherwise engage in narrative craft.
    - 2y ago

8f2ab37a-ed6c 2y ago

More from Caplan here on this: https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/bryan-caplan-stop-reading-the-news/ https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/bryan-caplan-stop-re...

soulofmischief 2y ago

The quality of our lives is too entwined with foreign politics for us to maintain ethical ignorance of what happens in the world around us.