While many of the points made by this article are valid, it fails to address important questions like: how can we remain informed and how do we decide what is important enough to be informed about?
I stopped reading the news on a regular basis many years ago. There were a few reasons for that. One is that most of the news is about topics that we have no control over, another is that news is highly repetitive in nature (few significant events are isolated to a particular day or week).
Yet the biggest reason is that much of what is presented as news is actually opinion. While the author suggest separating fact from opinion, that is usually only possible to achieve by reading the news. News outlets may denote a handful of prominent sources as opinion or analysis, but they aren't going to do that for a puffed up piece where the facts alone would barely fill a paragraph.
Is my life better for ignoring the news? Probably, but I will also admit that I miss out on many things that I should be informed about.
>While many of the points made by this article are valid, it fails to address important questions like: how can we remain informed
Well, an earlier question would be: why should we "remain informed"?
To have something to talk about with friends, or because it "matters"?
If it matters, it's not just news we get from media to us, but something we actively follow and do something about it (e.g. it might be labour laws and we're a union). If that's the case, news will get to us one way or another, and with more primary sources and higher quality than what we'd have learned from the media.
>and how do we decide what is important enough to be informed about?
Did anything you were "informed about" in the past by news made any real difference in your life (you having been informed, not the news item itself).
I agree with you but today's "news" is really just infotainment designed to outrage. When was the last time you read a headline that wasn't click-bait? The issue is that we want news to match the speed of Twitter and FB. Most people will never go read 4 articles with point/counter about any topic. No one has the time and the world is too complicated. My approach is to wait until I hear enough other people talking about something that maybe I should get up to speed. Otherwise, I don't bother. This will continue until we make fear-mongering less profitable.
As you said how do you separate fact from opinion? In some cases, certain details aren't even available. Take the following statement/headline, it is 100% true but likely will invoke different feelings and opinions depending on your position: "Prior to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the President negotiated the release of 400 Taliban leaders from prison". This is super click bait and if you did the research into this statement, you are likely to count it as fake if it disagrees with your current position.
I stopped reading news somewhere in 2011 while working at a news site. I was already jaded but the medias handling of the Breivik attacks in Norway pushed me over the edge.
From my experience over the years, if something is important enough for me to know, it reaches me eventually one way or another. Yes, I'm no longer the first to have heard something happened, a new music album coming out or a new version of some technology being released, But I also felt this had very little negative impact on my life beyond small talk topics being a bit diminished. There is some fear of missing out to deal with in the beginning, but I can't think of a major thing I really missed.
But that doesn't mean I don't read news sites at all, just not the "news" section. Whenever there is a significant event, one feels the urge to want to know more now, but in reality there is just not going to be any really useful information available for the first couple of weeks while everyone rushes to generate the most clicks from it. So it is better to wait until some more profound and evidence based articles are being published.
I also adapted the position that I either want to have a strong or no opinion on any given topic. I rather concede ignorance on something instead of arguing on shallow information. If I actually care about it, I do put in the time to try to understand it deeply.
A lot of it is just not newsworthy, too. My spouse is currently obsessed with this latest "random white girl found dead" story. Why on earth is this considered nationally newsworthy enough to be on the front page of every major non-finance news site I've tried? Every single day, there's something about it. Really? This is one of the single-digit number of important topics to put above the fold on every page? It's even on BBC news, so I guess someone decided it's actually world news.
The Real News companies continue to kill their own credibility with this stuff, so it's no surprise that people are seeking out other sources, which tend to be even less reliable/credible.
> how can we remain informed and how do we decide what is important enough to be informed about?
I stopped reading the news several years ago. I replaced it with becoming more informed about the world. I read a lot of books about the sorts of things that pop into the news. That serves as the basis for "evergreen" knowledge about what's going on.
Once you have that, you can occasionally glance and headlines to get a diff/update.
By experience, if you don’t pay attention to the news somebody will tell you about it soonish and for the most part there is not much you can do about it anyway.
Sometimes you can mitigate it (incoming hurricane, upcoming pandemic lockdown), very rarely can you fix it. For mitigation and fixing, getting the information in a timely manner is important.
Of course most of the news has no relevance anyway.
My personal plan is to pay attention to hyper local news, things that impact my job and, once we move on from Covid-19, as little as possible to anything else commonly called news.
> most of the news is about topics that we have no control over
> news is highly repetitive
> what is presented as news is actually opinion
Agreed on all points.
A few years ago I went through a period of wanting to get down to the truth on major stories in the news. Almost on a daily basis I would watch/read the same story form sources with different political biases. After that, I would look for actual source documents to verify claims. If it was a crime story, there would be police reports. If it was about a law or treaty, there would be a document trail. Etc. I kept notes.
I would then report my findings, in detail, to friends, mostly on FB.
What I discovered was that nearly 100% of the news stories out there fell in a range between absolutely fake and seriously distorted. It was very rare to find objectively accurate reporting on anything. I would venture a guess that the only thing that is reported with some accuracy in news broadcasts are road conditions and traffic. It's that bad.
The amount of work it took to do this was surprising. One thing became certain, this was not sustainable. I took it on as a hobby/learning-experience. I think I was done in about a year. Even that was too long.
The other surprising finding was how otherwise-intelligent people received the reality that what they believed to be true was, in fact, either distorted or a complete fabrication. This is the part that hurt me the most. I lost friends over this. Seriously.
What is it that makes people, even those holding advanced degrees in the sciences, simply refuse to accept reality when presented to them in very clear detail? I don't know. It is incredibly frustrating to run into an "emperor has no clothes" situation with people you have thought to be capable, intelligent, analytical and objective for decades.
I try to hold no political bias and do not label myself with a political party at all. I think that's truly dumb, no political party can be right 100% of the time or about anything, I don't care who they might be. And yet, some of what I saw was the kind of deep attachment to ideology that you can only label as being a result of indoctrination.
This is what I think the algorithms that present information to people surfing the web, FB, whatever, have caused a lot of damage to society. On FB, I watched, as two family members went at each other from different sides of the political spectrum. One became extreme left and the other extreme right. Prior to spending a lot of time on FB they were the best of friends (siblings). After about a year of being very active on FB, each having made a descent into ideologically opposite resonant chambers, their relationship suffered serious damage, perhaps even permanently.
News of this kind does not deserve that label. And, in my opinion, does not deserve the protections afforded in the US constitution through freedom of the press. I don't believe the intent was to protect liars and manipulators. I think this has to change, I just don't know how. If someone like me can spend a few hours on a story and get down to the truth, news organizations, with their staff and resources can do the same or better.
From my perspective, after having determined that nearly 100% of what we are told is twisted garbage, this kind of thing needs to be criminalized. The reason I say this is that today's technology has enabled powerful lies to reach hundreds of millions of people, billions of people, around the world in an instant. This is the major change that has, again, in my opinion, tilted the scale from being lax about misinformation to having to be very strict.
From my perspective, lies and manipulation should not enjoy legal protection at all and they should come with severe civil and potentially criminal consequences based on scale. A television network has the kind of scale that would require them to be factual in their reporting. A local neighborhood newspaper or an individual without much reach is a different matter. What I say to my circle of friends is very different from the constitutionally protected category represented by major global and international media networks.
How about opinion? Sure, no problem. However, when purported news outlets engage in delivering manipulated opinion pieces nearly 100% of the time they should no longer be able to hide behind constitutional protection. If they cause someone, anyone, damage, they ought to be legally liable for it. In other words, you can't say someone is a murderer and spread that into the minds of tens or hundreds of millions of people and then claim it was just opinion. You've done damage. The laws should not protect you from the consequences of your actions.
Anyhow, a bit of a rant, I know. It pains me because the internet was supposed to launch an era of enlightenment. Yes, of course, it has done great good for humanity, and yet in this one domain I think I can say it has been a massive failure. There's probably more misinformation out there (in terms of news) than factual reporting. The problem is that it takes hours per story to get to the truth and almost nobody has the time or desire to engage in that kind of research. Repeat a lie enough times and it becomes the truth, at least in the minds of those without the time, skills or inclination to try and challenge what they are being told.
As a news junkie, my life has been improved somewhat by telegram channels. I like that they are hyper-focused on specific topics. There's even a telegram channel for HN stories that get more than 100 upvotes.
I've settled on periodically glancing at NYT headlines, but with a very high bar for whether to actually click and read the article. If you've read the news for long enough, you can develop a spider sense for whether they have anything new to say. To oversimplify - if they had anything new to say, they'd put it in the headline. So if the headline has no news, i.e. if it sounds like something you could reasonably predict based on your existing knowledge, the rest of the article has no news either.
Example 1, no news: this morning, nytimes.com has the headline "Pressure Grows on U.S. Companies to Share Covid Vaccine Technology". Does it make sense that people want Moderna and Pfizer to share their Covid vaccine secrets? Sure, that's not news. Is it likely that "pressure grows" actually means anything specific and important? No, because if it did, they'd put it in the headline. Most likely, this article is just a boilerplate reminder of how people still want Moderna and Pfizer to share their Covid vaccine technology, and how mad they are that they're not sharing it. So I don't read the article. (Feel free to read it and correct me if I'm wrong!)
Example 2, real news: on the right half of the page on nytimes.com, there is a much smaller headline which says "Moderna vs. Pfizer: Both vaccines are highly effective, but one seems to be more protective over the long term." Which one is it? I have no idea! Worth a click. (This is an example of good clickbait: credibly signaling you have something worth saying without saying it right away.)
Also, there's no point in being constantly reminded of bad things you can't do anything about. Like, yes, I know bad things are happening in Afghanistan. I vote against people who support pointless wars. I don't know what else to do about it. So I don't let it take up space in my life.
With these filters your counterproductive news consumption can be cut by up to 99% without the feeling of missing out.
Things that I speculate might help further, but I haven't actually tried:
- Reading a wire service's website like Reuters or AP instead of NYT
- Relying on local news. I don't because paywall, but I'd probably benefit more from knowing what's going on in my community
My personal rule is that I only consume news in a language I don't speak well.
It's tiring, which discourages doomscrolling and the like. It tends to be less psychologically troublesome, because reporters tend to be less melodramatic about news that doesn't directly involve members of their core audience. And, even when it's crap journalism that has absolutely no other merit, it's still good language practice.
That is an interesting approach. Being a non native English speaker I sometimes feel that a lot of language games in news do not work on me. It feels a lot like what Scott Adams meant by “watching two different movies on the same screen”
If we go back hundreds of years, to the days of the first newspapers, consuming news had more importance. Financially and health-wise. It probably also gave a greater sense of belonging and something to talk about.
I'm 40 and I cannot think of a single instance where consuming news (the of the moment, ephemeral kind we're talking about here) saved my ass in some way. It never had a direct effect, not even the extra-extra-read-all-about-it! news.
News of critical events, the 22/7 (Norway), 9/11, and gas leak type of events, always reached me through a phone call from a friend or relative before I read about it anywhere.
And certainly, other types of news, non-critical events kind, was never important enough to hear about right after or during the occurrence. Then again, I'm not a have-to-watch-it-live kind of guy, I can enjoy the replay.
Whether consuming the news causes more stress like some studies claim, I don't know, but I certainly think it a waste of ones time.
As for having something to talk about, hell, I have more than enough to talk about without knowing what happened in the world the last few moments, or even yesterday.
Not consuming this type of news is not choosing to stay uninformed. I read analysis, editorials, history, etc.
I never saw news consumption for having something to talk about.
Obviously as a voting citizen, my vote ought to be informed.
If there is something IO should be outraged about, outraged enough to take to the streets and protest about, I want to know about it.
Also, for things like the environment, financial health of the country/world, I like to be able to see trends (or think that I do) and am less likely to be surprised by either a positive or negative turn of events in the future.
All that being said, I do not need a daily stream of news — something much more coarse than daily would be more than adequate.
I used to be a big news consumer. Eventually canceled my NYT sub and quit all national news, except when something major is happening or when I’m about to vote. I read The Economist because it’s one of the last excellent publications and it does seem to help improve my thinking, especially with respect to understanding the macro landscape and investing. But yes, following every Congressional drama is probably a waste of your time.
I do think consumption of local news is not a bad idea — that’s the one arena where we could all probably benefit our communities by being more engaged. (Follow the zoning debates, not the murder mysteries.)
I could not agree more with this approach. The Economist is excellent, and because they are a weekly publication, their reporting can be more thoughtful and detached from the outrage du jour. They also have excellent podcasts: the daily Intelligence and, for those interested in US politics, the weekly "Checks and Balance".
Supporting local news has become so much more important here in the U.S., as more and more independent local newspapers are shutting down, even in medium-sized metro areas. In addition, a lot of "Local" TV stations are owned by, and puppets of, corporations with political agendas like Sinclair[1]. From the linked article:
> About 39% of Americans are within range of a Sinclair-owned TV outlet, most of them unwittingly, because local TV stations typically use the logos of national networks with which they are affiliated, like NBC, CBS and Fox [...] Last year 37% of Americans got their news from local television, according to the Pew Research Centre, compared with 28% who got news from cable networks [...]
I agree that local news is a meaningful exception. Watching my affiliate station makes me feel more connected to my community. Furthermore, it does actually cover things in my life: the state fair, exhibits at my local museum, maybe some kid hit a bird with a baseball and played "Taps" for it so the mayor's gonna give him a trophy which I can then steal and sell as scrap metal because I know where the trophy is because I watched the local news -- stuff like that.
The CXO of my massive employer once mentioned that the Economist was the only publication they still subscribed and read diligently. Do you find that yourself preferring the Economist on certain issues, and less strong elsewhere?
For some reason I'm really interested in seeing a positive-yet-balanced review or anecdote about print journalism. I think it's the novelty-cheers.
> I do think consumption of local news is not a bad idea — that’s the one arena where we could all probably benefit our communities by being more engaged. (Follow the zoning debates, not the murder mysteries.)
The Metro section has always been my favorite part of the local paper and the one I read first on Sunday mornings.
In my view, ads are mostly to blame here. Just because the quantity of news is increasing and average quality of news is deteriorating, that does not mean all news is low quality and misinforming. I've read the NYT and NPR for years, they're still fine sources with actual experts and journalists, and they don't rely upon cheap ads.
If your goal is information, what you really need to avoid is entertainment masquerading as news. Cable news, YT, many podcasts, many subreddits or forums, they're all ideas submitted with little fact checking and little filter. They're shown to you by algorithms and TV executives because they'll captivate, make you fearful, make you react and keep watching more ads.
Is your attention truly worth a couple measly cents of ads to some media corporation?
Yeah, stop watching cable news. Take anything news related on social media with a helping of salt. Serious publications are usually more reliable even if they have a little bit of a slant.
I also like skimming memeorandum.com since it mainly just shows what people are discussing. Important to know that articles there are popular topics, but not necessarily accurate/objective.
I recently discovered 1440, a news email which gives you a 5-minute summary of the day's news. They don't know or care how long I spend consuming, so they don't have as much incentive to be melodramatic. I open the email, read it, and that's pretty much it. Much less time, much less melodrama, and if something enormously important happened that day I will still hear about it. It's really a lot more like the financial model and incentives of print newspapers several decades ago.
Anything you know of that is not daily but weekly (and summarizes the week)?
I ask because, as the article suggests, a story can change day to day — giving news a week before consuming means you're more likely to get a cogent picture of the event.
I read the news in part to be entertained, and to have something to talk about with others in the way that sports fans always keep up with new players, stats, and upcoming games. We can all think of low quality, highly polemic news sources that turn our friends and colleagues into absolute monsters, but I'm not talking about that.
It's news like HN, stuff from my favorite quirky subreddits and blogs, news in tech and gaming, and a skim of apnews.com & WSJ from time to time. Sometimes when I do stuff I enjoy, I have no further motivation than the enjoyment itself. I'm not under the delusion that keeping up with breaking news is going to help me change the world or become a better citizen or something.
As a general rule the national news is intended to persuade and is only informative if persuasion happens to require it.
This becomes extremely obvious when one compares the national news to the local news. The latter is relatively more concerned with informing than persuading. This was particularly clear during the 2020 protests where the national news was observably tasked with persuading viewers that these were legitimate (mostly) peaceful protests and not violent riots. Meanwhile, the local news where events were occurring provided the exceedingly valuable service of keeping people continually informed via airborne footage about where they might prefer to not go at the time.
"Rarely do we stop to ask ourselves questions about the media we consume: Is this good for me? Is this dense with detailed information? Is this important? Is this going to stand the test of time? Is the person writing someone who is well informed on the issue?"
Actually, I think most informed people are asking precisely those questions about the media they consume.
"To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. [....] The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter." ― Aleister Crowley
"I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me." ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
The news media is so bad in the US, I am seeing alternative news media in development. This new media is dedicated solely to criticism of the old media. Kind of like the original Daily Show but unfunny
I'll repeat what I always say whenever this comes up: subscribe to the Sunday edition of a major city daily. If your city doesn't have a very good one, then just do the New York Times (but note that the Metro section is one of the most interesting and useful parts of the daily paper and you'll miss out on that if you subscribe to a national paper). You want the Sunday edition because it's the week's largest edition and contains stories that ran earlier in the week, plus sections that aren't in the weekday editions. And you probably want real paper. The idea is to scan through it from beginning to end, getting an idea of what the major stories are and what's broadly happening in the world. Read it over coffee or while watching football or whatever.
Anything more than this is entertainment. It's not important and won't make you more informed. If you want to read more than that because you like it, then that's fine. Some people like The Bachelor. But they don't confuse it for an education. It's entertainment.
>but what's the point of watching(/reading) news? why bother?
>It's poor deal, it's not worth.
>Just because I may learn some small things that probably do not affect me directly and additionally receive some news that make my mood worse due to hearing some yet another negative news about bad stuff / politics / yada yada, what's the point?
>80% of the news I read is HN and some programming related websites and whenever I jump into "mainstream" media, then I feel like I'm reading some shit - click baits, tragedies, controversial stuff, drama seeking, celebrities
In a similar vein, I recommend Neil Postman's book "How to Watch TV News". It's a little dated, but his recommendations are still relevant to modern media formats. One of his most interesting (and obvious in hindsight) insights is that "news" is NOT what is happening around you; it's what someone else TELLS YOU is happening around you, based on a complex set of criteria that they use to prioritize, include, and exclude information, and is not in any way comprehensive. This is necessary due to the limits of communication, but can also have profound effects on the impressions we then carry with us regarding what we think about the world around us. The book is short, but rich; I highly recommend it.
It's important to understand that there's only one news. Rest everything that different news outlets publish are perspectives.
It's a classic example of the elephant and 10 blind men.
A news is a one time event observed in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person perspective. When news outlets start acting as businesses, the need for differentiation leads them to dig out the different interpretations of the same event and report those that have higher probability of capturing public attention.
Reading multiple interpretations of the same news could feel like something really big and noteworth has happened. In effect, it's the same news being reported everywhere.
I stopped reading news. Often, it just looks like gaslighting. When I read content on a topic I’m familiar with, it’s clear that many journalists don’t even Google things they cover. But most importantly, it isn’t actionable. It’s inactionable stress.
Consider elections. When I get a voting card, I can just look up the candidates or choices when I have the most information. Frivolous minutia like ice cream scandals (Trump and Pelosi have both had ice cream scandals!) doesn’t even show up.
Frankly my experience of the world is drastically different without letting an entire industry wind me up on purpose.
People I know personally who are overexposed to the news look, to me, like they have been mentally poisoned. There is a kind of rage and demoralization. Left or right wing. They’re just wound up by different people. It’s frankly disturbing.
I don’t have a solution to everything. But aside from researching when things are actionable, one thing we have in Poland is the government just texts you sometimes. For example I’d get a text whenever they’d change the covid lockdown rules.
Maybe that’s a good lead. Some kind of actionability oriented news aggregator with push notifications. Maybe I should code that.
Removing almost every blue check journalist from my feed certainly improved my Twitter experience. It is no longer about news, it is about stirring sht up. According to the news we have been living in parallel universe for ages
[+] [-] II2II|4 years ago|reply
I stopped reading the news on a regular basis many years ago. There were a few reasons for that. One is that most of the news is about topics that we have no control over, another is that news is highly repetitive in nature (few significant events are isolated to a particular day or week).
Yet the biggest reason is that much of what is presented as news is actually opinion. While the author suggest separating fact from opinion, that is usually only possible to achieve by reading the news. News outlets may denote a handful of prominent sources as opinion or analysis, but they aren't going to do that for a puffed up piece where the facts alone would barely fill a paragraph.
Is my life better for ignoring the news? Probably, but I will also admit that I miss out on many things that I should be informed about.
[+] [-] coldtea|4 years ago|reply
Well, an earlier question would be: why should we "remain informed"?
To have something to talk about with friends, or because it "matters"?
If it matters, it's not just news we get from media to us, but something we actively follow and do something about it (e.g. it might be labour laws and we're a union). If that's the case, news will get to us one way or another, and with more primary sources and higher quality than what we'd have learned from the media.
>and how do we decide what is important enough to be informed about?
Did anything you were "informed about" in the past by news made any real difference in your life (you having been informed, not the news item itself).
[+] [-] snarf21|4 years ago|reply
As you said how do you separate fact from opinion? In some cases, certain details aren't even available. Take the following statement/headline, it is 100% true but likely will invoke different feelings and opinions depending on your position: "Prior to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the President negotiated the release of 400 Taliban leaders from prison". This is super click bait and if you did the research into this statement, you are likely to count it as fake if it disagrees with your current position.
[+] [-] smoe|4 years ago|reply
From my experience over the years, if something is important enough for me to know, it reaches me eventually one way or another. Yes, I'm no longer the first to have heard something happened, a new music album coming out or a new version of some technology being released, But I also felt this had very little negative impact on my life beyond small talk topics being a bit diminished. There is some fear of missing out to deal with in the beginning, but I can't think of a major thing I really missed.
But that doesn't mean I don't read news sites at all, just not the "news" section. Whenever there is a significant event, one feels the urge to want to know more now, but in reality there is just not going to be any really useful information available for the first couple of weeks while everyone rushes to generate the most clicks from it. So it is better to wait until some more profound and evidence based articles are being published.
I also adapted the position that I either want to have a strong or no opinion on any given topic. I rather concede ignorance on something instead of arguing on shallow information. If I actually care about it, I do put in the time to try to understand it deeply.
[+] [-] ryandrake|4 years ago|reply
The Real News companies continue to kill their own credibility with this stuff, so it's no surprise that people are seeking out other sources, which tend to be even less reliable/credible.
[+] [-] SquishyPanda23|4 years ago|reply
I stopped reading the news several years ago. I replaced it with becoming more informed about the world. I read a lot of books about the sorts of things that pop into the news. That serves as the basis for "evergreen" knowledge about what's going on.
Once you have that, you can occasionally glance and headlines to get a diff/update.
[+] [-] tomjen3|4 years ago|reply
Sometimes you can mitigate it (incoming hurricane, upcoming pandemic lockdown), very rarely can you fix it. For mitigation and fixing, getting the information in a timely manner is important.
Of course most of the news has no relevance anyway.
My personal plan is to pay attention to hyper local news, things that impact my job and, once we move on from Covid-19, as little as possible to anything else commonly called news.
[+] [-] robomartin|4 years ago|reply
> news is highly repetitive
> what is presented as news is actually opinion
Agreed on all points.
A few years ago I went through a period of wanting to get down to the truth on major stories in the news. Almost on a daily basis I would watch/read the same story form sources with different political biases. After that, I would look for actual source documents to verify claims. If it was a crime story, there would be police reports. If it was about a law or treaty, there would be a document trail. Etc. I kept notes.
I would then report my findings, in detail, to friends, mostly on FB.
What I discovered was that nearly 100% of the news stories out there fell in a range between absolutely fake and seriously distorted. It was very rare to find objectively accurate reporting on anything. I would venture a guess that the only thing that is reported with some accuracy in news broadcasts are road conditions and traffic. It's that bad.
The amount of work it took to do this was surprising. One thing became certain, this was not sustainable. I took it on as a hobby/learning-experience. I think I was done in about a year. Even that was too long.
The other surprising finding was how otherwise-intelligent people received the reality that what they believed to be true was, in fact, either distorted or a complete fabrication. This is the part that hurt me the most. I lost friends over this. Seriously.
What is it that makes people, even those holding advanced degrees in the sciences, simply refuse to accept reality when presented to them in very clear detail? I don't know. It is incredibly frustrating to run into an "emperor has no clothes" situation with people you have thought to be capable, intelligent, analytical and objective for decades.
I try to hold no political bias and do not label myself with a political party at all. I think that's truly dumb, no political party can be right 100% of the time or about anything, I don't care who they might be. And yet, some of what I saw was the kind of deep attachment to ideology that you can only label as being a result of indoctrination.
This is what I think the algorithms that present information to people surfing the web, FB, whatever, have caused a lot of damage to society. On FB, I watched, as two family members went at each other from different sides of the political spectrum. One became extreme left and the other extreme right. Prior to spending a lot of time on FB they were the best of friends (siblings). After about a year of being very active on FB, each having made a descent into ideologically opposite resonant chambers, their relationship suffered serious damage, perhaps even permanently.
News of this kind does not deserve that label. And, in my opinion, does not deserve the protections afforded in the US constitution through freedom of the press. I don't believe the intent was to protect liars and manipulators. I think this has to change, I just don't know how. If someone like me can spend a few hours on a story and get down to the truth, news organizations, with their staff and resources can do the same or better.
From my perspective, after having determined that nearly 100% of what we are told is twisted garbage, this kind of thing needs to be criminalized. The reason I say this is that today's technology has enabled powerful lies to reach hundreds of millions of people, billions of people, around the world in an instant. This is the major change that has, again, in my opinion, tilted the scale from being lax about misinformation to having to be very strict.
From my perspective, lies and manipulation should not enjoy legal protection at all and they should come with severe civil and potentially criminal consequences based on scale. A television network has the kind of scale that would require them to be factual in their reporting. A local neighborhood newspaper or an individual without much reach is a different matter. What I say to my circle of friends is very different from the constitutionally protected category represented by major global and international media networks.
How about opinion? Sure, no problem. However, when purported news outlets engage in delivering manipulated opinion pieces nearly 100% of the time they should no longer be able to hide behind constitutional protection. If they cause someone, anyone, damage, they ought to be legally liable for it. In other words, you can't say someone is a murderer and spread that into the minds of tens or hundreds of millions of people and then claim it was just opinion. You've done damage. The laws should not protect you from the consequences of your actions.
Anyhow, a bit of a rant, I know. It pains me because the internet was supposed to launch an era of enlightenment. Yes, of course, it has done great good for humanity, and yet in this one domain I think I can say it has been a massive failure. There's probably more misinformation out there (in terms of news) than factual reporting. The problem is that it takes hours per story to get to the truth and almost nobody has the time or desire to engage in that kind of research. Repeat a lie enough times and it becomes the truth, at least in the minds of those without the time, skills or inclination to try and challenge what they are being told.
[+] [-] narrator|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] civilized|4 years ago|reply
Example 1, no news: this morning, nytimes.com has the headline "Pressure Grows on U.S. Companies to Share Covid Vaccine Technology". Does it make sense that people want Moderna and Pfizer to share their Covid vaccine secrets? Sure, that's not news. Is it likely that "pressure grows" actually means anything specific and important? No, because if it did, they'd put it in the headline. Most likely, this article is just a boilerplate reminder of how people still want Moderna and Pfizer to share their Covid vaccine technology, and how mad they are that they're not sharing it. So I don't read the article. (Feel free to read it and correct me if I'm wrong!)
Example 2, real news: on the right half of the page on nytimes.com, there is a much smaller headline which says "Moderna vs. Pfizer: Both vaccines are highly effective, but one seems to be more protective over the long term." Which one is it? I have no idea! Worth a click. (This is an example of good clickbait: credibly signaling you have something worth saying without saying it right away.)
Also, there's no point in being constantly reminded of bad things you can't do anything about. Like, yes, I know bad things are happening in Afghanistan. I vote against people who support pointless wars. I don't know what else to do about it. So I don't let it take up space in my life.
With these filters your counterproductive news consumption can be cut by up to 99% without the feeling of missing out.
Things that I speculate might help further, but I haven't actually tried:
- Reading a wire service's website like Reuters or AP instead of NYT
- Relying on local news. I don't because paywall, but I'd probably benefit more from knowing what's going on in my community
[+] [-] mumblemumble|4 years ago|reply
It's tiring, which discourages doomscrolling and the like. It tends to be less psychologically troublesome, because reporters tend to be less melodramatic about news that doesn't directly involve members of their core audience. And, even when it's crap journalism that has absolutely no other merit, it's still good language practice.
[+] [-] AzzieElbab|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] burlesona|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saint_angels|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] misiti3780|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erikbye|4 years ago|reply
I'm 40 and I cannot think of a single instance where consuming news (the of the moment, ephemeral kind we're talking about here) saved my ass in some way. It never had a direct effect, not even the extra-extra-read-all-about-it! news.
News of critical events, the 22/7 (Norway), 9/11, and gas leak type of events, always reached me through a phone call from a friend or relative before I read about it anywhere.
And certainly, other types of news, non-critical events kind, was never important enough to hear about right after or during the occurrence. Then again, I'm not a have-to-watch-it-live kind of guy, I can enjoy the replay.
Whether consuming the news causes more stress like some studies claim, I don't know, but I certainly think it a waste of ones time.
As for having something to talk about, hell, I have more than enough to talk about without knowing what happened in the world the last few moments, or even yesterday.
Not consuming this type of news is not choosing to stay uninformed. I read analysis, editorials, history, etc.
[+] [-] JKCalhoun|4 years ago|reply
Obviously as a voting citizen, my vote ought to be informed.
If there is something IO should be outraged about, outraged enough to take to the streets and protest about, I want to know about it.
Also, for things like the environment, financial health of the country/world, I like to be able to see trends (or think that I do) and am less likely to be surprised by either a positive or negative turn of events in the future.
All that being said, I do not need a daily stream of news — something much more coarse than daily would be more than adequate.
[+] [-] carbine|4 years ago|reply
I do think consumption of local news is not a bad idea — that’s the one arena where we could all probably benefit our communities by being more engaged. (Follow the zoning debates, not the murder mysteries.)
[+] [-] mvexel|4 years ago|reply
Supporting local news has become so much more important here in the U.S., as more and more independent local newspapers are shutting down, even in medium-sized metro areas. In addition, a lot of "Local" TV stations are owned by, and puppets of, corporations with political agendas like Sinclair[1]. From the linked article:
> About 39% of Americans are within range of a Sinclair-owned TV outlet, most of them unwittingly, because local TV stations typically use the logos of national networks with which they are affiliated, like NBC, CBS and Fox [...] Last year 37% of Americans got their news from local television, according to the Pew Research Centre, compared with 28% who got news from cable networks [...]
EDIT adding a link to 2018 reporting on Sinclair from PBS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwA4k0E51Oo (less than 5 minutes)
[1] https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/04/05/orders-to...
[+] [-] byecomputer|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DiggyJohnson|4 years ago|reply
For some reason I'm really interested in seeing a positive-yet-balanced review or anecdote about print journalism. I think it's the novelty-cheers.
[+] [-] dionidium|4 years ago|reply
The Metro section has always been my favorite part of the local paper and the one I read first on Sunday mornings.
[+] [-] Dumblydorr|4 years ago|reply
If your goal is information, what you really need to avoid is entertainment masquerading as news. Cable news, YT, many podcasts, many subreddits or forums, they're all ideas submitted with little fact checking and little filter. They're shown to you by algorithms and TV executives because they'll captivate, make you fearful, make you react and keep watching more ads.
Is your attention truly worth a couple measly cents of ads to some media corporation?
[+] [-] wombat-man|4 years ago|reply
I also like skimming memeorandum.com since it mainly just shows what people are discussing. Important to know that articles there are popular topics, but not necessarily accurate/objective.
[+] [-] rossdavidh|4 years ago|reply
https://join1440.com/
Before you ask, no, I don't work for or have any financial interest.
[+] [-] JKCalhoun|4 years ago|reply
I ask because, as the article suggests, a story can change day to day — giving news a week before consuming means you're more likely to get a cogent picture of the event.
[+] [-] scbrg|4 years ago|reply
I can't say I agree with him 100%, but he sure has a point.
[+] [-] badRNG|4 years ago|reply
It's news like HN, stuff from my favorite quirky subreddits and blogs, news in tech and gaming, and a skim of apnews.com & WSJ from time to time. Sometimes when I do stuff I enjoy, I have no further motivation than the enjoyment itself. I'm not under the delusion that keeping up with breaking news is going to help me change the world or become a better citizen or something.
[+] [-] User23|4 years ago|reply
This becomes extremely obvious when one compares the national news to the local news. The latter is relatively more concerned with informing than persuading. This was particularly clear during the 2020 protests where the national news was observably tasked with persuading viewers that these were legitimate (mostly) peaceful protests and not violent riots. Meanwhile, the local news where events were occurring provided the exceedingly valuable service of keeping people continually informed via airborne footage about where they might prefer to not go at the time.
[+] [-] fergie|4 years ago|reply
Actually, I think most informed people are asking precisely those questions about the media they consume.
[+] [-] wizzwizz4|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freediver|4 years ago|reply
"I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me." ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
Few more great resources on this topic: https://tinygem.org/about/#stopnews
[+] [-] nobody0|4 years ago|reply
I guess frictions matters, our brains constantly seek the shortest path to getting excited.
Recently I resorted back to order physical books, and enjoy waiting for the books to arrive.
[+] [-] iamcurious|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] einpoklum|4 years ago|reply
> Second, the cost to produce news has dropped significantly.
So, yeah, Hacker News definitely counts... :-(
[+] [-] AzzieElbab|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dionidium|4 years ago|reply
Anything more than this is entertainment. It's not important and won't make you more informed. If you want to read more than that because you like it, then that's fine. Some people like The Bachelor. But they don't confuse it for an education. It's entertainment.
[+] [-] bityard|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tester34|4 years ago|reply
>but what's the point of watching(/reading) news? why bother?
>It's poor deal, it's not worth.
>Just because I may learn some small things that probably do not affect me directly and additionally receive some news that make my mood worse due to hearing some yet another negative news about bad stuff / politics / yada yada, what's the point?
>80% of the news I read is HN and some programming related websites and whenever I jump into "mainstream" media, then I feel like I'm reading some shit - click baits, tragedies, controversial stuff, drama seeking, celebrities
>it's irrelevant for me
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27433589
now, if I just managed to drop HN and Reddit then I'd be free
I guess I'd have to change career.
[+] [-] nicholascloud|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] socialleaf|4 years ago|reply
It's a classic example of the elephant and 10 blind men.
A news is a one time event observed in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person perspective. When news outlets start acting as businesses, the need for differentiation leads them to dig out the different interpretations of the same event and report those that have higher probability of capturing public attention. Reading multiple interpretations of the same news could feel like something really big and noteworth has happened. In effect, it's the same news being reported everywhere.
[+] [-] thatjoeoverthr|4 years ago|reply
Consider elections. When I get a voting card, I can just look up the candidates or choices when I have the most information. Frivolous minutia like ice cream scandals (Trump and Pelosi have both had ice cream scandals!) doesn’t even show up.
Frankly my experience of the world is drastically different without letting an entire industry wind me up on purpose.
People I know personally who are overexposed to the news look, to me, like they have been mentally poisoned. There is a kind of rage and demoralization. Left or right wing. They’re just wound up by different people. It’s frankly disturbing.
I don’t have a solution to everything. But aside from researching when things are actionable, one thing we have in Poland is the government just texts you sometimes. For example I’d get a text whenever they’d change the covid lockdown rules.
Maybe that’s a good lead. Some kind of actionability oriented news aggregator with push notifications. Maybe I should code that.
[+] [-] AzzieElbab|4 years ago|reply