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This is a rather ignorant stance to take. I know a lot of people don't like the doom & gloom of news. But it's needed. I recently discussed with someone who do

This is a rather ignorant stance to take. I know a lot of people don't like the doom & gloom of news. But it's needed. I recently discussed with someone who doesn't consume news about the NSA revelations. They were shocked. They said "why didn't anyone tell me?" Instead of blocking things out and being happy with our ignorance, we need to change how news is done. If you whine about something, change it. The Guardian can certainly make an attempt to change the dynamic.

RodericDay 13y ago
this may be a little facile, but the article reads like a "psychologists have found..." version of "ignorance is bliss"
dobbsbob 13y ago
I change cable news by not watching it. When nobody watches their propaganda tabloid trash anymore they will cease to exist and something better will replace them.
- admstockdale 13y ago
  Cable news is only a sliver of the news picture. We have yet to come up with a better alternative because we consume & we want it all for free. We cry about journalism yet we don't want to fund any. When good journalism is done, no one or very few people read it. The key to changing news will be finding a way to monetize online content. Without this, all we will get is link-baiting and stories that are sensational to get people to come to a website.
AlexandrB 13y ago
> I know a lot of people don't like the doom & gloom of news. But it's needed. I recently discussed with someone who doesn't consume news about the NSA revelations. They were shocked. They said "why didn't anyone tell me?" So I've been following the NSA news closely. But I'm not American! What actionable information has following the minute of the NSA revelations provided me? I can't influence the US government in any way. The most I got out of it was that I should move to non-US based service providers if possible - but this was clear when the first revelations hit. Did I really need to spend (I'm guessing) 10+ hours reading articles about the NSA's revelations? I could see a case for following local news - where local might mean relevant to your industry or to your community. The more local the news, the more actionable the information. Nightly newscasts rarely focus on this though - they're basically entertainment, real reality television.
- untog 13y ago
  What actionable information has following the minute of the NSA revelations provided me? Encrypt your data better, perhaps. But that's kind of besides the point - are you suggesting that there is no point knowing about things you have no control over?
  - aaronem 13y ago
    Are you suggesting there is some point? That there's real value, to oneself or to anyone else, in repeatedly dismaying oneself over things which one does not have, and cannot obtain, the power to affect?
    - untog 13y ago
      I suppose I just can't imagine being content at being ignorant of the world. By that principle surely it's also worthless to learn about world history?
      - jmagoon 13y ago
        It's probably hard to have a general rule about something like that. My take away from the article was that much of the current news that we consume isn't particularly useful to us--it doesn't improve the way we think or act, it just makes us sad and afraid. Like, say, watching a report about a kidnapped child. Or reading about the trial of a serial killer.
      - aaronem 13y ago
        Not in the slightest; the mistake there would lie not in studying the dead past, but rather in taking it personally enough to experience dismay. Taking sides in the past is pointless; one studies the past to take sides in the present. I also want to pick on the fallacy I find in your equation of largely ignoring journalism and being ignorant of the world. Having in early life studied journalism without reference to history, and then later studied history without reference to journalism, I found the former to leave me bewildered in a morass of facts with no useful means of assembling from them a coherent picture of the world, and the latter to furnish me with the cognitive mechanisms necessary to derive a coherent, if of course not perfectly accurate, model, into which to fit the facts I derive from review of what I am forced to conclude is the rather slapdash and careless journalistic profession.
aaronem 13y ago
The Guardian is the dynamic. Either it's working out well enough to suit them, or the institution has grown too sclerotic with age to behave other than how it does.
normloman 13y ago
I'm willing to wager many people who do consume news don't know about the NSA revelations, or don't care, because they're too busy reading about the tragic vehicular manslaughter of an attractive teenage white girl who lives 1000 miles away, or about this one weird old trick for increasing productivity at the office, or about the 10 new indie releases you should be listening to right now. Junk news can cause as much ignorance as no-news. And we have to concede that most of the news we read is junk, especially what you find on Hacker News. But I agree that a self-imposed news fast is silly. If we didn't get news, we'd be blind to the NSA's betrayal, among other things. So lets keep consuming news. But we need to consume far less news. Far better news. A small amount of high-quality reporting, as opposed to the usual firehose of bullshit.
- admstockdale 13y ago
  I agree we need to consume better news. Instead of clicking on the link-bait headlines, take some time and read that long-form article that took months or years to research. If we tell the media that's what we want, that's what we will get. They need/want to make a profit.
Estragon 13y ago
I rely on talking to people who share my interests and do read the news. Works pretty well.

RodericDay 13y ago

this may be a little facile, but the article reads like a "psychologists have found..." version of "ignorance is bliss"

dobbsbob 13y ago

I change cable news by not watching it. When nobody watches their propaganda tabloid trash anymore they will cease to exist and something better will replace them.

admstockdale 13y ago
Cable news is only a sliver of the news picture. We have yet to come up with a better alternative because we consume & we want it all for free. We cry about journalism yet we don't want to fund any. When good journalism is done, no one or very few people read it. The key to changing news will be finding a way to monetize online content. Without this, all we will get is link-baiting and stories that are sensational to get people to come to a website.

AlexandrB 13y ago

> I know a lot of people don't like the doom & gloom of news. But it's needed. I recently discussed with someone who doesn't consume news about the NSA revelations. They were shocked. They said "why didn't anyone tell me?" So I've been following the NSA news closely. But I'm not American! What actionable information has following the minute of the NSA revelations provided me? I can't influence the US government in any way. The most I got out of it was that I should move to non-US based service providers if possible - but this was clear when the first revelations hit. Did I really need to spend (I'm guessing) 10+ hours reading articles about the NSA's revelations? I could see a case for following local news - where local might mean relevant to your industry or to your community. The more local the news, the more actionable the information. Nightly newscasts rarely focus on this though - they're basically entertainment, real reality television.

untog 13y ago
What actionable information has following the minute of the NSA revelations provided me? Encrypt your data better, perhaps. But that's kind of besides the point - are you suggesting that there is no point knowing about things you have no control over?
- aaronem 13y ago
  Are you suggesting there is some point? That there's real value, to oneself or to anyone else, in repeatedly dismaying oneself over things which one does not have, and cannot obtain, the power to affect?
  - untog 13y ago
    I suppose I just can't imagine being content at being ignorant of the world. By that principle surely it's also worthless to learn about world history?
    - jmagoon 13y ago
      It's probably hard to have a general rule about something like that. My take away from the article was that much of the current news that we consume isn't particularly useful to us--it doesn't improve the way we think or act, it just makes us sad and afraid. Like, say, watching a report about a kidnapped child. Or reading about the trial of a serial killer.
    - aaronem 13y ago
      Not in the slightest; the mistake there would lie not in studying the dead past, but rather in taking it personally enough to experience dismay. Taking sides in the past is pointless; one studies the past to take sides in the present. I also want to pick on the fallacy I find in your equation of largely ignoring journalism and being ignorant of the world. Having in early life studied journalism without reference to history, and then later studied history without reference to journalism, I found the former to leave me bewildered in a morass of facts with no useful means of assembling from them a coherent picture of the world, and the latter to furnish me with the cognitive mechanisms necessary to derive a coherent, if of course not perfectly accurate, model, into which to fit the facts I derive from review of what I am forced to conclude is the rather slapdash and careless journalistic profession.

aaronem 13y ago

The Guardian is the dynamic. Either it's working out well enough to suit them, or the institution has grown too sclerotic with age to behave other than how it does.

normloman 13y ago

I'm willing to wager many people who do consume news don't know about the NSA revelations, or don't care, because they're too busy reading about the tragic vehicular manslaughter of an attractive teenage white girl who lives 1000 miles away, or about this one weird old trick for increasing productivity at the office, or about the 10 new indie releases you should be listening to right now. Junk news can cause as much ignorance as no-news. And we have to concede that most of the news we read is junk, especially what you find on Hacker News. But I agree that a self-imposed news fast is silly. If we didn't get news, we'd be blind to the NSA's betrayal, among other things. So lets keep consuming news. But we need to consume far less news. Far better news. A small amount of high-quality reporting, as opposed to the usual firehose of bullshit.

admstockdale 13y ago
I agree we need to consume better news. Instead of clicking on the link-bait headlines, take some time and read that long-form article that took months or years to research. If we tell the media that's what we want, that's what we will get. They need/want to make a profit.

Estragon 13y ago

I rely on talking to people who share my interests and do read the news. Works pretty well.