[HN Gopher] Reading too much political news is bad for your well...
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Reading too much political news is bad for your well-being
Author : DarkContinent
Score : 310 points
Date : 2020-10-18 15:41 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| loughnane wrote:
| The economist is great for this.
|
| Views aside, getting a single bolus of well-considered, well-
| written news once a week is wonderful.
|
| You "miss out" on the "did you hear what X said" water cooler
| talk, but the gains in understanding and attention are
| significant
| baron816 wrote:
| I think more should adopt The Economist model. Yes, they
| definitely have an opinion, and they push it, but they're open
| about it and are fair to other sides. It's much better than
| feigning impartiality, or doing a half-hearted "both sides"ing.
| fma wrote:
| I love the Economist. I used to pay for it but then ended up
| having a stack of unread magazines because I tried to read
| every page. I really should renew my subscription as their
| articles are in depth and I'm often amazed how can they crank
| out so many great articles within a week.
|
| Having said that - I see many tech people complain about pay
| walls even though many of us make $100k+. Pay walls on
| websites aren't that expensive. Wait till people find out how
| much the Economists costs.
| robk wrote:
| In the past five or size years the Economist has sadly become
| quite partisan and unreadable..in their trump derangement
| they've lost a lot of the even keel view they'd previously had
| over the prior decades I'd been a reader. Sadly I still read
| but effectively skip all politics as the new Eric Schmidt led
| board have certainly co-opted the formerly drier view the
| editors formerly would have taken in exchange for a more
| activist view which is far out of character for them. Sad
| because it was once a must read end to end to years for me. Now
| it's a skim for 35-45% unique content type of publication.. No
| one else covers the breadth of intriguing topics like African
| politics but the anti Brexit UK and anti Trump US political
| angle ruins most of the other content for the major western
| economies.
| loughnane wrote:
| Not that one counter example refutes your whole point, but I
| found the analysis of his record (this week's edition) to be
| rather clear-eyed.
|
| I do agree that I've noticed a tinge of bias that didn't seem
| there before, but to represent it as more than slight is
| incorrect based on my experience (been subscribijg for ~12
| years)
|
| >>> The bulk of the analysis covers the period from 2017,
| when Mr Trump took office, to the end of 2019. We stop in
| 2019 in part because some data are released only annually,
| and in part because the pandemic has turned economies across
| the world upside down. Our conclusion is that, in 2017-19,
| the American economy performed marginally better than
| expected. (That conclusion remains if we follow the practice
| of some political economists, who argue that the influence of
| presidents on the economy can be discerned only after a year
| in office, and limit our analysis to 2018-19.)
| cm2187 wrote:
| Agree (though I dropped the Economist a bit earlier). The
| Financial Times has followed the same path unfortunately. I
| was a long time reader (15y+) and it used to be pretty
| austere and reliable (good things in my opinion) but in the
| last few years it has become pretty much a gigantic opinion
| piece, with all articles biased to push a narrative. I know
| people around me who also cancelled their subscription for
| similar reasons (I am happy to pay for news but have no
| interest in paying for propaganda).
| pjriot wrote:
| The Economist does a good job of judging each case on its
| merits. A socially liberal, pro free-trade publication taking
| issue with Brexit or the actions of Donald Trump seems
| perfectly consistent. Fully in keeping with its heavily
| "partisan" coverage of the USSR in the 80s & 90s, the regime
| of Robert Mugabe later on or the current perspective on the
| CCP.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| I enjoy reading The Economist and I'm glad that I'm able to
| filter out their editorialism from the facts. I think it's
| easy to do due to their combination of forthrightness and
| writing style, plus my own ability to cut through the BS that
| I've worked hard to sharpen over many years.
|
| The one thing I dislike about The Economist is their cover
| art. I grew to strongly dislike having some caricature of
| Trump or nuclear blasts staring me in the face all the time.
| Something something "living rent free in my head." Except I
| was paying rent by paying the subscription.
|
| I just want the information, and I'm happy to pay for it! But
| I reached a point where I couldn't justify handing over that
| much money to them any more because it was unsettling having
| these images barge in at me every delivery or every time I
| took it out of my bag to crack it open. And they use the same
| lines other rags do: "if you read the economist, you'll be
| informed, and to be informed is to be safe... now look at how
| the world is going to hell!" I felt like I was being negged
| as a subscriber.
|
| There is a place for these works of art, I just wish it could
| be in the letter from the editor or one of their columns, all
| of which I appreciate.
| cm2187 wrote:
| The problem is that most biased articles aren't using
| outrageous headlines or pushing false and/or improbable
| facts. Most of the bias happens by simply omitting the
| facts that go against the narrative. No critical reading of
| the article will give you the missing facts. You kind of
| need to read away from biased newssources. Or read both
| sides on every topic.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Agreed. Any more, I struggle to find a single publication
| that even tries to do both.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The news _is_ depressing. This is, in its own way, a form of
| voter suppression.
| aklemm wrote:
| Read the news with a goal in mind: understand civic life. My 20+
| years of reading news daily has brought me a personal
| understanding of the world, and it's way better than when I
| started out in my teens ignorant, confused, and unmoored.
|
| I know what's most important to me now, and I know how to
| participate in those issues.
|
| Of course, there are many news outlets that don't offer much in
| terms of better understanding the world, so avoid those.
| tehjoker wrote:
| Yes, spectating is bad for your well being. If you want to feel
| better, join a political organization that accommodates
| discussion, education, strategizing, and action. I recommend most
| socialist outfits as they take democracy seriously. Even just
| having a regular live discussion of the news with close friends
| is a good start.
|
| Here are some good books to read:
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People%27s_History_of_the_Un...
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
|
| - https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/democracy-incorporated-2
|
| - https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Power
| binaryorganic wrote:
| On the Media (podcast) ran a good piece Friday about how the
| problem with news (especially right now with the election) is
| that journalists are treating the candidates as the protagonists
| of their own stories (and the media then get the voter reactions
| to what those protagonists deem important) when what's needed is
| for us voters to be the protagonists who set the priorities for
| what the campaigns should be talking about.
| cosmiccatnap wrote:
| Tell that to HN this week...
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| We should redesign the news. What would it ideally be like?
| ravenstine wrote:
| We can't just redesign the news because the incentive structure
| isn't there to do so. You have to Foster a culture where people
| don't treat politics like religion. When the culture doesn't
| give undue attention to self important people who wear suits
| and ties, then the incentive structure changes how news is
| produced to fit that environment. But if we just treat issues
| like these as engineering problems, tweaking variables to fit a
| broken environment without considering the human aspect, the
| system simply won't support whatever improvements we try to
| make.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I hear you -- but I can also see the opposite perspective, at
| least in the case of TV journalism. Once we lost the almost
| religious _reverence_ for the nightly news anchor, it
| devolved into pure spin.
|
| I also think that in a case like the news, there is a real
| need to step outside of the current cultural phenomena and
| engineer it -- what are the known requirements for the news
| and how do we move from here to there.
| gurleen_s wrote:
| I think Axios is on the right path in keeping news reports as
| short as possible without too much fluff.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| It would reward reporters who are honest and courageous. The
| incentives right now punish objectivity and reward conformity.
| verroq wrote:
| I won't call some of these reporters journalists, they are
| more like activists. They aren't interested in keeping
| society informed, they just want to push their agenda.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I wouldn't call them journalists either, more like royal
| scribes speaking to a class of courtiers. Real journalists
| have agendas other than uncritically repeating what some
| unnamed intelligence source told them.
| goldenManatee wrote:
| Ba dam bum.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| They're like that because that's what the current system
| rewards. I think that's why the user you replied to said
| what they did.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The only worthwhile journalism _is_ activism. Discomfort
| the powerful. Unfortunately it 's dangerous to be too good
| at this, see Daphne Caruana Galizia.
| verroq wrote:
| The truth doesn't have an agenda
| aww_dang wrote:
| Unfortunately, truth hasn't published any articles. So
| far, only subjective views have been published by
| fallible humans.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This opinion is quite new. Unfortunately journalism has
| been coopted by such folks.
|
| We do need activists, but they don't have to be
| journalists. Maybe these groups on youtube that are just
| filming things without interrupting with questions are
| the journalists of the future ...
| https://youtu.be/pW_jsS_JnMY
| watwut wrote:
| It is not new, it is more of return back to where
| journalism started.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| Sorry, that is exactly the attitude that got us into the
| mess we are in. I for one care very little for activists
| doing journalism. Just tell people the truth, the whole
| truth and nothing but the truth as best as you can
| ascertain it and let them make their own choices.
| maxerickson wrote:
| If you have 1 hour a week or even 1 hour a day, the
| truths you choose to tell will look just like activism.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| Then you should not be in journalism. It can't be done
| that way and what can be done that way is worse than
| useless.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| What a destructive point of view. There is an enormous
| difference between activism and journalism.
| ars wrote:
| If the news could:
|
| 1. Stop publishing minority opinions as if they were
| representative.
|
| 2. Stop publishing minor stupidities because they are
| "exciting".
|
| 3. Stop trying to be entertaining or interesting. Stick with
| informative, and if you get less views, so be it.
|
| 4. ???? Open to suggestions. Maybe we could write up a set of
| voluntary rules for journalists with ethics.
| tijuco2 wrote:
| Here, the best definition by Denzel. The need to be first,
| not the need to be true. They don't care who they hurt.
| https://youtu.be/GXYzjYBTlpA
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| I think the problem isn't the news, but the obvious injustice
| that politics gets away with.
|
| In germany, the minister of transportation lost the taxpayer 500
| million euros, with a publicity stunt to bolster his party in a
| local election. He is now lying in people's face about it,
| everyone knows it and he does not have to step back.
|
| Instead, they wrote a fluff piece about him, because he managed
| to buy some masks for the nation by using some connections from
| his home town. The article that came out two weeks later about
| these masks being fake and another million euros lost was for
| some reason behind the paywall of the online newspaper.
|
| It's not the news that makes people unhappy, it's the blatant
| bullshitting we have to endure.
| Grollicus wrote:
| If you want to get really depressed you should look into the
| state of our media where they themselves have something at
| stake. One examples from the top of my head would be Peer
| Steinbrucks destruction in the weeks running up to the 2013
| election where they collectivly decided that fighting against
| tax evasion is bad. Or the reporting about Article 13 where
| they forgot to ask critical questions about how some of the
| arguments made absolutely no sense and could someone please
| explain that in more detail?
|
| On the other hand if you are looking for more nuanced reporting
| I've come to like deutschlandfunk radio lately.
| rektide wrote:
| > Reading Too Much Political News Is Bad for Your Well-Being
|
| unconvinced that atm the words "reading" and "news" are needed or
| helpful in calibrating where we all are
| pedro1976 wrote:
| News with its focus on recent data only is quite weird concept,
| given its popularity. The implication that recent data is
| relevant totally ignores all the former news that would still be
| a relevant and probably a much better source of information.
| jrgaston wrote:
| De Botton's "The News: A User's Manual," inspired me to cut back
| on my news consumption. The blow-by-blow of the news isn't
| particularly enlightening.
|
| De Botton's other books are worth a look, too.
| aww_dang wrote:
| I was surprised to learn that Bukowski submitted poems and
| stories to The Atlantic in his early, hungry years. In my
| lifetime, I've only known it as an outlet for partisan opinion
| pieces.
|
| On the occasions that I do visit the site, I wonder what he would
| say about what The Atlantic has become. Not in terms of how it
| would suit his political biases, but in the agenda first, logic
| last, unimaginative partisan hackery. I imagine him ranting at
| length or condemning them eloquently.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDiLfQUBnyA
| [deleted]
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| People in the (very small) poetry world used to know the
| Atlantic as one of the premier places to have a poem published.
| If you pick up a physical copy there are two or three poems and
| those are guaranteed to be by someone huge in the American
| poetry scene at the moment.
|
| In the last decade or so things have changed, online has
| boomed, spoken word/slam poetry took off and left it's mark.
| And now the markers which signify status in the poetry world
| are shifting. And for the first time in a while I was actually
| reading the Atlantic for the articles (online) and surprised to
| find how much of it was, as you said, partisan, ideology-first,
| logic-last type reporting.
| genericone wrote:
| Quora question: Why is slam poetry so bad? :
| https://www.quora.com/Why-is-slam-poetry-so-bad
| mrfusion wrote:
| If you don't read the news you're uninformed. If you do read the
| news you're misinformed.
|
| -- unknown
| fsagx wrote:
| I believed this was a Mark Twain quote. Turns out I was
| misinformed! (I always thought it sounded a little Mencken-
| esque too)
| fab1an wrote:
| I've been trying to cut news and social media out of my daily
| habits as much as possible, and am attempting to replace it with
| reading books whenever possible. It sure isn't easy, but I feel
| significantly more productive, healthier, happier and overall
| more human on days where this works particularly well.
|
| What helps is to not have the phone in your bedroom and charge
| iit elsewhere instead - replace it with a Kindle or a book and
| rread that instead for a few minutes upon waking up.
| mountainb wrote:
| You can read one book that recaps the events of multiple years
| in a fraction of the time that it takes to consume the news
| daily in fragment form, with the bonus that it comes with
| appropriate context. It is also easier to avoid sensational
| gore or celebrity tales that are for the most part meaningless
| (or the opposite if that is one's proclivity).
| jader201 wrote:
| I've come to realize that if someone is making money from
| delivering news, it's not news in the sense of the priory being
| to deliver facts.
|
| The priority is to make money, with news and "facts" being
| secondary (or even further down the list). Most of the time,
| facts are uninteresting and therefore not prone to gain a lot of
| viewers -- at least not when there is competing "news" that is
| more about being interesting than factual.
|
| In other words, I no longer trust viewership and/or ad-driven
| "news". Which pretty much means almost all news of all forms,
| including TV, web-based, and social media.
| scotchmi_st wrote:
| I agree, but there also exist papers, magazines and news sites
| that have capitalized on the fact that literally anyone can
| report the news these days, to provide news at a slower, more
| accurate rate.
|
| The Atlantic's Coronavirus coverage has been excellent for
| example, and the FT (while I don't always agree with the
| opinion pieces) has some of the most accurate and sober
| reporting around- often at the expense of being the first paper
| to a story.
|
| When the price of information drops to near-zero, the niche
| papers can fill is to provide _trustworthy_ information. This
| could be where every reputable paper goes in the future.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| What are we supposed to read then? Politics is the current day s
| soap opera
| dageshi wrote:
| When Trump caught Covid I actually thought to myself that this
| is a soap opera plot from a parallel dimension and the writers
| had just jumped the shark.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| That would have only been true had he also been attacked by
| murder hornets.
| taxicab wrote:
| The news actually feels like it's just messing with me now.
| We live in the timeline where Osama Bin Laden's QAnon
| conspiracy theorist neice went on Fox News to say that she is
| really an American at heart and to give Trump her
| endorsement.
|
| WHAT??? Looks like the writers decided to bring back a
| reference to two seasons ago.
|
| [1] https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-
| theory/tucker-...
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Damn the plot is thickening
| dudul wrote:
| I'm actually curious to understand why it was such a big
| deal. A fair amount of world leaders, ministers,
| representatives and all did get sick. Was this not mentioned
| in the news at all in the US?
| makomk wrote:
| The US media's coverage of Covid-19 outside the US mostly
| seems to be focused on pushing the narrative that the US is
| uniquely failing at dealing with it due to Trump. Most of
| the time they don't actually lie to do this, but the facts
| they include are very selectively chosen. So for example
| Boris Johnson's Covid infection got a lot of attention
| since he's seen as a kind of Trump analogue, but I don't
| think others did so much.
|
| (There was a really... interesting progression in the NYT's
| coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak in Spain where they
| downplayed it as obviously less severe than say Florida,
| omitting the already much worse trajectory it was on, then
| when it finally and inevitably became too bad to ignore
| they turned that whole thing into an allegory for Trump's
| failings too.)
| dbtc wrote:
| Step away from the screen
| dublinben wrote:
| Books. Replace the instant gratification of doomscrolling with
| more thoughtful consumption that encourages self-reflection
| rather than reaction.
| kabdib wrote:
| It's a good time to re-visit old friends on the shelf, or
| find new ones.
|
| I picked up a series that I'd stuck a bookmark in 30 years
| ago, and I wish I'd continued reading it back then. On the
| other hand, I have roughly 2,000 pages of greenfields
| escapist fantasy to crawl into. [For a number of reasons, I
| won't mention the series]
| aww_dang wrote:
| I agree with this approach. However, politicians and talking
| heads generally lack self-irony. Many refuse to acknowledge the
| farce they are participating in.
|
| Even worse, audiences have a tendency to take it all a bit too
| seriously.
|
| Everyone would be better off if pundits would look into the
| camera and wink occasionally. Just let us know that they know
| we know it is all a spectacle. A little acknowledgement goes a
| long way here.
| ravenstine wrote:
| You do other things to improve your life and the lives around
| you. This culture where everyone is compelled to be a
| participant in politics is relatively new, or wasn't common
| once civilization made small tribes obsolete.
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| More accurately, GIGO: those that watch garbage sources, i.e.
| Fox, MSNBC, are poorly informed compared to those getting news
| from more legitimate sources such as NPR, BBC, etc.
|
| If you want a quality education in anything, choose your sources
| carefully. For instance, Al Jazeera is a good source, except on
| the subject of Qatar.
| cabaalis wrote:
| I listen to NPR often. What they say is generally factual and
| true; however I often note that a bias shows through what they
| do not mention when covering a topic. That's why we have the
| concept of the truth and the WHOLE truth.
| rvz wrote:
| Right. Probably says something more about the Atlantic editors
| than the people who actually do incredible and productive things
| either on Show HN or Product Hunt to even waste an hour on
| reading dreadful articles like this one.
|
| Now if you excuse me, I have to continue counting the pages of
| sales from my paid customers for this week.
| blisterpeanuts wrote:
| I've all but quit reading Facebook and Twitter and Parler. I use
| Facebook Messenger on my Mac to keep in touch with a couple of
| friends.
|
| I've stopped bringing my phone to bed. Leave it in the office
| downstairs. The only device upstairs is a Kindle loaded with a
| lot of fiction and some nonfiction.
|
| It's a start, anyway. I now believe that it's possible to be too
| well informed, be exposed to too much information of an ephemeral
| nature. Our brains aren't really designed for it.
| aokiji wrote:
| Isn't The Atlantic busy attacking the credibility of the Nobel
| Peace Prize because Trump was nominated for it?
| theonemind wrote:
| About 15 years ago, it didn't seem like the news added anything
| of value to my life, so I stopped actively consuming news. You
| get some from the environment if you don't live in a cave, but I
| don't go to any news sites, listen to or watch news, even click
| one-off news links on HN or reddit. I've stopped _all_ active
| news consumption.
|
| I was right. It really didn't add anything of value to my life.
| I've never missed it.
| sethammons wrote:
| Very similar on my end. Active talk news radio consumer. I
| stopped around 2012. Like you, I've noticed nothing missing but
| am generally happier. I was so out of the loop that I was
| surprised to hear Trump had not only gotten the republican
| nomination but won the bid for president. I thought about
| getting back into things and watched the presidential debate.
| Oh lord, what a mess.
| ziml77 wrote:
| I stopped using Twitter for a couple weeks because the trending
| section that's forced you was always showing political garbage.
| It was driving me insane.
|
| When I came back, I installed an extension to get rid of the
| trending section and some other garbage on there. It's been so
| much nicer since then (Retweets can still be problematic, but I
| don't want to block them entirely because I use Twitter as a way
| to follow artists that were forced to flee Tumblr. Retweets are
| how those artists share art from others that they like)
|
| In the time that I was off Twitter, I didn't fully disengage from
| the news. I checked Apple News+ to stay up-to-date, but that was
| only once or twice a day instead of dozens.
| qazxcvbnmlp wrote:
| Yeah... whenever I consume news I get anxious and realize I
| should spend my time on things I have influence over.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| I stick with I stopped reading The Atlantic because they keep
| pushing these rag newspaper articles.
|
| What's on the front page of The Atlantic right now? "Evangelicals
| Made a Bad Bargain With Trump" and "After Trump, the Republican
| Party May Become More Extreme."
|
| Garbage.
|
| I stick with Reuters, PBS NewsHour, and others because I want
| news and not think pieces.
| watwut wrote:
| Why are those two garbage? I am not American and here local
| religious conservatives adopted Trump. Reading American radical
| evangelical writings, they are pro Trump too. Open support of
| Biden is superrare. And whether the Republicans become more
| radical is interesting question
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| It's not "news." Call it whatever you want, but it's
| definitely not that. No matter what your political stance.
| augustt wrote:
| Guy is uncomfortable with a commentary magazine's commentary
| that evangelicals should not love a thrice-married pornstar-
| fucker because it's like, clearly liberal bias.
| ImaCake wrote:
| If you have a decent income you should consider getting your news
| from magazines and history books. I subscribe to Australian
| Geographic which covers issues I actually care about. Another
| good source for global news is Delayed Gratification [0]. Aside
| from the coronavirus pandemic, if you live in a stable developed
| country (not the USA) there is pretty much no piece of news you
| can't wait a while to become informed about.
|
| I have found I know much more about politics now that I read
| history books and biographies rather than Sydney Morning Herald
| headlines.
|
| 0. https://www.slow-journalism.com/
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Australian Geographic is a truly wonderful magazine. I wish it
| were easier to obtain in the States.
| ajoy wrote:
| We launched https://www.thefactual.com over a year ago, to solve
| exactly this problem.
|
| Get a daily email that informs you of the main events with
| multiple perspectives, with a sprinkling of interesting articles.
|
| We are a paid service ($1/month, with a 2 week trial), no ads.
| [deleted]
| caseysoftware wrote:
| As I've noted here a few times:
|
| Just over 10 years ago, I conducted an experiment. I watched an
| hour of CNN every night but it was never that night's coverage.
| It was from exactly two weeks ago.
|
| It was amazing how much "breaking news!" was irrelevant or just
| outright wrong, how many large trend predictions were wrong, and
| how many "[person] will do X" were wrong. While the predictions
| could have been portrayed as opinions, they were presented as
| facts and the obvious next steps or conclusions.
|
| I realized pretty quickly that avoiding CNN kept out the
| blatantly wrong information so even if I didn't replace it with
| anything, I was net ahead.
|
| A few years ago, I discovered this article and realized that some
| portion of it was probably on purpose:
|
| https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-...
| hef19898 wrote:
| It always surprises me to what degree US cable news, as opposed
| to print, seems to treat politics like entertainment and sports
| coverage. At least from an outsider's perspective. Maybe no
| surprise a reality TV star became President.
| dnhz wrote:
| Written news and commentary (mainly online) is not that
| different. When Trump caught covid, there were endless
| articles speculating about how severe his illness was or
| whether a second week with the virus would bring about more
| severe symptoms. Just a bunch of suppositions and
| hypotheticals to get you to click and spend a few minutes
| reading.
|
| The main loss from all this is not wasted time but that
| serious issues receive less discussion in favor of what's
| happening right now and what it could possibly mean.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I mean, the current President of CNN was previously in charge
| of NBC's primetime programming when he lined up Trump for
| _The Apprentice._
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/20/business/media/jeff-
| zucke...
| bigbubba wrote:
| Commercial television news is very manipulative and the
| intent of the manipulation is to keep eyeballs glued to the
| screen to sell ads. They use lots of elaborately animated
| transitions with bright colors, swooshing sound effects and
| musical cues to mesmerize viewers, just as slot machines in
| Vegas use such things to mesmerize gamblers. It's the same
| sort of graphical bullshit they pad out televized American
| football with. And the talking head personalities emotively
| reading from teleprompters are there for viewers to form
| parasocial relationships with, to keep viewers coming back to
| that channel. Before social media was invented, the term was
| created to describe the asymmetric relationships television
| viewers have with television personalities. The whole
| industry has manipulation down to a science and I think
| anybody would be better off reading newspapers instead.
| Public funded news channels may be better, I remember PBS's
| News Hour was okay. But is there _any_ value in watching CNN
| instead of reading the NYTimes? I don 't see any.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| I wouldn't even put it in the pedestal of psychological
| manipulation. It's gossip, the same as teen magazines and
| tabloids. They just dress it up with authority.
|
| Standard low minded stuff.
|
| I tune in for some gossip from time to time, no harm no
| foul. But jesus, do it all the time and you might as well
| become this:
|
| https://youtu.be/XUT8ec24anM
| jariel wrote:
| It's manipulative both in the narrative sense (they're
| preaching to the choir) but also in a sense the commenter
| made - 'like they do in Vegas'.
|
| The big focus on the 'head only' now on CNN, because
| that's more engaging - personalities who are almost
| always 7.5/10 - i.e. nice to look at but not ultra-
| attractive, the ability to appear 'just credible enough
| in tone and disposition and yet also empathetic' - that
| posture is important. And then background, the overlays -
| it's designed like the environment in Vegas.
|
| Go to CNN.com right now and let the ad for Cuomo's show
| run - listen to the words he is using, listen to the
| music, the specific text that they overlay. They are
| communicating "It's panic time in America, is your heart
| racing? Because this is so important, and we have the
| 'Truth' for you here, tune in at 8pm".
|
| These are all generally intelligent, well intentioned
| people, but the ultra focus on eyeballs and attention
| really hurts credibility.
|
| During an election cycle it gets much worse, it's almost
| impossible to watch any cable news outlet right now.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| I disagree. In 'our' constitution there is the " _Recht
| auf korperliche Unversehrtheit_ / Right to physical
| integrity(of your body)" as in it is forbidden to harm
| you. I'd extend that to a right to mental integrity,
| which that sort of shit is in continous violation of. And
| even if you don't directly consume it, the 'overspill'
| alone is toxic enough.
|
| In other words: mass media is one big superfund site.
| kkotak wrote:
| This is exactly how I decide to watch or read something on the
| net.
|
| 1. Read the headline. 2. Ask - Is the topic likely to be
| relevant after 2-3 weeks? 3. If yes - Read/Watch it. 4. If no -
| Ignore.
| dmingod666 wrote:
| I like to imagine, that if "oh my god the world is ending and
| its because gasp donald trump" had a physical manifestation, it
| would be CNN.
| HashThis wrote:
| When the rich and powerful rig the economy, then the real problem
| is when you read about it. Not that it really happens.
| MR4D wrote:
| I think that's by design...
|
| From Sun Tzu (loosely): when an enemy is large in number,
| divide them.
|
| Isn't that what news does, especially the political crap we
| call news in the US - divide the population so they fight among
| themselves.
| smitty1e wrote:
| > After controlling for household income, education, age, gender,
| race, marital status, and political views, I found that people
| who were "very interested in politics" were about 8 percentage
| points more likely to be "not very happy" about life than people
| who were "not very interested" in politics.
|
| If we could locate these philosopher-kings from Aristotle and put
| them in charge, then ignoring politics might be safe.
|
| But your disdain for bossing others around isn't reciprocated by
| the Chads and Karens seeking office.
|
| This, detachment from the swamp is a sin of omission. You and
| your wallet will be punished.
| notsojustcity wrote:
| Interestingly enough, Plato's proposal for creating an ideal
| city-state had specific instructions for how to breed
| philosopher-kings.
|
| He advocated eugenics, and he also recommended lying to the
| citizens about how it was decided who would be paired up with
| who.
|
| So...I'm not sure we should go down that road?
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Any quotes to share?
| eutropia wrote:
| I am very interested in policy, but I do not watch the news.
|
| Why? Because it contains no actionable information that changes
| my decisions: I'm still going to vote in every election, I'm
| still going to research the candidates when the time comes, I'm
| still going to volunteer at the polls...
|
| The news is trivia, generally speaking. When I have a more
| active life in politics I'll take the Chomskian approach to
| news, but for now I'll vote with my ideals (which don't change
| with the passing tides of the news cycles)
| technoplato wrote:
| What is the Chomskian approach to news?
| eindiran wrote:
| Instead of drinking the koolaid, you complain that
| companies are manufacturing koolaid, despite the fact that
| you are currently using an I.V. drip of the stuff. Turn the
| dial on your I.V. up to 11, while you lean back and realize
| that you are glad that you're not thinking about
| linguistics.
| ggggtez wrote:
| > says person commenting on a news aggregation site
|
| This story didn't contain anything actionable that changes
| your decisions either, and yet you still read it and spent
| the time to comment. I don't see a substantive difference
| between reading HN and reading following political news.
| Nearly everything on this site (not even just this piece)
| will not affect your ability to accomplish your goals in
| anyway. It's a distraction at best.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Disagree.
|
| Let's suppose for a moment that we ever reach a point where
| the democratic process gets involved with the question of
| how best to manage the western forests (what's left of
| them) in the USA. There will be people arguing for regular
| understory and brush burning, and others arguing against
| it.
|
| Let's suppose that you're a citizen who gets to vote in
| some way on this matter. What will you base your vote on?
| The materials circulated at the time by those for and
| against various policies? Perhaps. But how will you judge
| those materials if you have not even a basic understanding
| of forest ecology.
|
| Now, if you sit down and read about forest ecology today,
| it will have no impact on your ability to accomplish your
| goals in anyway. But is is not a distraction: it's the
| groundwork and the preparation for you to be able to
| participate meaningfully in democratic decision making,
| perhaps tomorrow, or next year or some other time in the
| future.
|
| In short: it is education. You just have to be careful that
| you're learning about the actual world.
| didibus wrote:
| Agree, educating oneself is a great investment even if
| not immediately actionable. The knowledge you gained will
| pay dividends later when it comes in handy.
|
| The issue with news is that I'm not sure reading all news
| sources is an effective way of educating yourself.
|
| Another problem though is that of shared values and
| goals. In your example you said:
|
| > the democratic process gets involved with the question
| of how best to manage the western forests
|
| But how does it even get to this point? Does news play a
| bigger role in that part of the democratic process? The
| part where we decide on our values and our priorities?
| eutropia wrote:
| I didn't read the story.
| oblib wrote:
| I don't watch the news either but I do scan headlines here
| and on AP and/or Reuters every day and follow up on what
| interests me.
|
| I can't say "it contains no actionable information that
| changes my decisions". For example the news that Obama wanted
| to renegotiate the "SOFA" agreement before he even took
| office made me regret my decision to vote for him in `08 and
| I did not vote for him again in 2012 because I already knew
| he would not end those wars.
|
| The only actionable thing I've really done since is keep
| others informed via FB of our progress to end those wars but
| for the most part interest in that fell off long ago with
| their yellow ribbon car magnets so it hasn't amounted to much
| real action.
| aww_dang wrote:
| As a hypothetical, can you imagine a scenario where nobody
| voted or put faith in the political class?
|
| From this perspective, participation only validates the farce.
| wallacoloo wrote:
| If you're upset about the system or the options, your other
| option is to vote a write-in. This sends a stronger message
| in my opinion: we call such votes "protest votes", whereas
| not voting all all leaves the situation a bit more ambiguous
| to the rest of us.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Many jurisdictions will ignore "write-ins" and they will
| not be reported.
| smitty1e wrote:
| My (apparently unpopular) point is that non-participation
| affords no solace.
| Scalestein wrote:
| It isn't non participation though. You can participate in
| politics (local, state or federal) without consuming the
| 24/7 news cycle. The "news" is usually pushing doom gloom
| and fear no matter which side of the spectrum you are on
| because that gets the clicks. Rarely do political issues
| have meaningful developments everyday so continually
| checking not actually enhancing your ability to
| participate.
| smitty1e wrote:
| Fair point. My response is quite binary when there is a
| full spectrum of engagement possibility.
| arcsincosin wrote:
| This is a good point: opting out of reality is a worse strategy
| for happiness on a longer timescale. However, reading the
| 24-hour news cycle and being aware of the real political
| landscape is not perfectly correlated; I'd argue it's 50%
| overlap at the upper bound and sub-ten % at the lower.
| Furthermore, reading the news cycle and being politically
| active in a way that affects your, your family's, and your
| "heirs'" wellbeing is probably almost negatively correlated.
|
| Any political wins made by groups exploiting and dominating
| mainstream media (Trump) are explained by the fact that the
| barrier to entry in political action is so low--just getting a
| few people to vote is politically effective because almost
| everyone is just watching the news instead of doing anything
| real. Meanwhile Trump's team meets with money and accrues
| powerful stakeholders by annexing their agenda, building
| support in institutions and markets.
|
| So ignoring political news and pursuing interfaces with actual
| nexuses of power is far more politically effective than the
| hundreds of people with twenty tabs of The Atlantic open and
| the WSJ draped across their lap like a religious shawl every
| morning. Go out, meet politically active people in your city,
| email representative staff, make friends with people with money
| and vested interests that are vulnerable to political changes.
| plafl wrote:
| We must be detached to think clearly but we must care to do
| something. So it's either we act foolhardy or we do nothing.
| xwdv wrote:
| I feel that most people would benefit more from reading or
| watching financial news rather than political news.
|
| Financial news is about numbers and events that pertain to
| companies relevant to people's everyday life. Financial news is
| immediately actionable, you could choose to invest your money
| based on your interpretation of what's going on in markets or
| various companies. Politics will occasionally creep their way in,
| but not in a way that dominates the conversation or appeals to
| emotion.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| There's a reason why FT, Bloomberg, and The Wall Street Journal
| are so good.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Or political articles spewed by The Atlantic
| x87678r wrote:
| The Lindy effect: The Lindy effect is a theory that the future
| life expectancy of some non-perishable things like a technology
| or an idea is proportional to their current age, so that every
| additional period of survival implies a longer remaining life
| expectancy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
|
| From that I reasoned that breaking headlines are really not much
| use for anything. Concentrate on old books or documentaries if
| you want to know what is going on in the world.
| aj7 wrote:
| I.e avoid suffering or accept it or deal with it, rather than
| cure its causes. What a fine recipe for well-being,
| enlightenment, and humanity.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Egoistically, the less you care about politics - the better it is
| for you. Caring about politics is actually a duty, a contribution
| (of your time and health in particular), but in reality, for most
| of the people who seemingly care, it's merely a drug.
| [deleted]
| oblib wrote:
| We have to learn to compartmentalize political news and keep it
| separated from our personal life.
|
| And we have to be honest with ourselves about our personal life.
| For many of us, and it's probably fair to say most of us here on
| HN, life is pretty good. But we have to put that statement in
| perspective to see it that way. Where I live, in the Ozarks, life
| 100 years ago was pretty tough and even compared to when and
| where I grew up life is pretty good here right now.
|
| In fact it's pretty amazing. Stuff I find here on HN amazes me
| almost daily.
| kyle_martin1 wrote:
| Worth a read for explanation as to why: https://rb.gy/81ygny
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| this is a link to the wikipedia page on "Trump Derangement
| Syndrome", and contains little, if any, "explanation as to
| why".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_derangement_syndrome
| wwwwwwwww wrote:
| And they placed a photo of Trump shaking hands with Putin at
| the top of the article. I wonder why.
| kyle_martin1 wrote:
| Reading too much negative _anything_ is bad for the psyche.
| It just so happens that the MSM is full-on TDS and they can
| 't seem to let go. Trump is the blackhole for MSM, everything
| is somehow connected to "Orange Man Bad".
|
| Moreover, the Washington Post reported that 90% of Trump's
| coverage is negative [1].
|
| Do you know anyone that is 90% terrible? I doubt it. Taking a
| step back from one's political views, which is hard for a lot
| of people, it becomes obvious that there's little honest and
| unbiased reporting going on within MSM.
|
| Sure it's fine to read information with a particular
| viewpoint (be it conservative or liberal), as long as the
| reader is made aware that the "facts" are framed from a
| particular viewpoint. Otherwise it's just brainwashing and
| intellectually dishonest. I think any rational person can get
| behind this sort of "zero-trust framework".
|
| [1] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jan/15/a-broadc
| ast...
| RonaldRaygun wrote:
| Very strange that an unusually terrible politician would
| have an unusual number of negative articles written about
| him, isn't it? Clearly this is bias in action. Many people
| don't realize that everyone has exactly the same moral
| standing, and that any indication to the contrary is not to
| be trusted.
|
| Thank goodness we have the catchphrases "Orange Man Bad"
| and "Trump Derangement Syndrome" to safely allow us to
| ignore any and all criticism of the president. This
| certainly helps assuage any cognitive dissonance, which as
| we all know is a leftist plot.
|
| Do make sure to read this extremely informative article
| from the eminently neutral Washington Times (here
| misidentified as the Washington Post, in what was surely an
| honest mistake) and while doing so keep in mind, that all
| politicians have a god-given right to exactly 50% positive
| coverage. This is as true for Trump as it is for Maduro,
| who as you know we laud precisely as much as we denigrate.
|
| Just remember, anyone telling you that Donald Trump is
| going to reject any non-landslide loss and claim tens of
| millions of fraudulent votes without a shred of evidence,
| merely because he's told us this with his mouth, is clearly
| suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, their brain
| fried by a surfeit of orangeness.
| robd003 wrote:
| Anyone else find it funny that this is being published just after
| the Joe Biden corruption was released?
| https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden...
| mapme wrote:
| The article posted was published in October 8th while the
| nypost piece about Hunter was published on October 14th, so
| clearly not the case.
| gaze wrote:
| Sorry but what exactly is non-political news?
|
| I'm convinced that people who talk about "politics" as a thing
| external to them are just refusing to engage with the parts of
| the world that are uncomfortable to them.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I think that the good faith of "politics" is more related to
| "winning elections and/or otherwise gaining the power to create
| and change legislation". This differentiates it, ideally, from
| e.g. processes to find solutions to problems that have
| different kinds of approaches depending on your political
| outlook.
|
| Someone who says that any discussion of e.g. energy policy is
| "political" is just being stupid. Someone who points out that
| someone is taking a particular position w.r.t e.g energy policy
| purely as a cynical political move might be right.
| zests wrote:
| If your response to "I don't like X" is "everything is at least
| a little bit X" then you should read "I don't like X" as
| something like "I don't like anything more X than necessary" or
| "I don't like anything unless its in the bottom 25% of X".
|
| This feels like a version of the continuum/heap paradox.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Looking at the CNN front page for a good source of examples,
| non-political news would be things like:
|
| * Evacuations ordered in Colorado and Utah as crews battle new
| blazes
|
| * NFL reports no new positive Covid-19 tests
|
| * Preorders are open for the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro
|
| When people discuss political news, they're referring to
| stories like "Biden is putting red states in play" or "Mexican
| restaurant takes political stand with sign declaring 'No Love,
| No Tacos'" - stories which are fundamentally about partisans
| doing battle with each other.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| I don't engage with politics online seeing as the psychotic
| leftist sentiment doesn't allow for an honest discussion of the
| current democrats. Also if anybody simply says they vote for
| trump, theyre labeled online as if some sort of abhorrent
| miniscule group.
| gaze wrote:
| I assure you most people outside this abhorant miniscule
| group abhors this abhorant miniscule group. Trump voters
| should indeed feel ashamed and lose their friends.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| See, you don't even know why they're voting for Trump. You
| just assume the worst and that they're all incoherent
| morons. Did you know that the moral high ground doesn't
| mean you're superior to these people. It affects your life
| in a minuscule way.
| 0xmohit wrote:
| Much of it isn't "news". It is mostly propaganda.
|
| Quoting Garry Kasparov: "The point of modern propaganda isn't
| only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your
| critical thinking, to annihilate truth."
| tumblerz wrote:
| But Garry, why not both?
|
| I concur, however. Like others, on this thread, I (slowly)
| eliminated nearly all news from my life over the last two
| years. Doing this has had a profound effect on my perspectives,
| but has also ruined a lot of "conversation" for me. Previously,
| I played along in various forms of political shittalkery, but
| now, I find it disturbing to hear/see.
|
| Increasingly, I am concerned by the tone, content, and purpose
| of many (American) people's strongly-held positions. On
| occasion I have found that voicing a contrary opinion results
| in estrangement, but more worryingly, merely not voicing a
| validation is enough to achieve some alienation.
| kazagistar wrote:
| Not being informed enough to be politically involved is often the
| worst possible thing for your wellbeing in the long term. If you
| don't fight for your wellbeing, someone who is fighting for
| theirs might do so at your expense.
|
| But of course, news is a pretty questionable source for this
| goal, because its always filtered through an ideology that might
| not really have your wellbeing in mind.
| JakeTheAndroid wrote:
| I'm curious if it's because political news is so messed up.
| Like, if we read tons of positive articles regarding good
| things being done, I doubt we'd see the same impact.
|
| Which highlights your point imo. If we change the way politics
| is done, then we can eliminate this issue. But it requires
| being politically informed.
| rootsudo wrote:
| >Don't read the news, don't stay informed.
|
| >If you read too much news, it's bad for you.
|
| I do enjoy the idea of a newsbubble, as it really does not add
| much to your everyday life, knowing something bad happened here,
| or there - because the news is a marketing machine of commercials
| and local interests that sell your attention to sell stuff.
|
| But, it's also hilarious how they say too much is bad, it's akin
| to buzzfeed saying these websites are good, these that don't
| agree with us is bad. --
|
| I use a pihole, but you can just add a rule into your HOSTS file
| or local firewall to block access and untrain your body. I used
| to always be on reddit, consuming, not really contributing much.
|
| Then I realized I spend way to much time, reading, which itself,
| is not a bad thing, but then I realized the communities of the
| people who may post in them may not be the best or really
| useful/smartest and then some communities turn into a "selfie"
| parade to whomever has some small budget can easily swing
| conversation.
|
| Then I stopped going, and missed nothing. Once I realized the
| people online wouldn't be the ones I would normally want to be
| "seen" with or socialize with, it helped break the distinction
| and neutrality of a screen with words on it.
|
| Now I'm more careful of whom I read articles from online, and
| forums, it's pretty much hit or miss, good for opinion swaying
| but any true info I make sure to verify and not rely solely on
| Google/AMP links, but if they are published and which vector of
| publishing are they on (from New York Times to Dailymail for
| example.)
|
| And even then it isn't enough, all news suck and really does not
| matter to _you_.
|
| Stoicism is best.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| What purpose does it serve for you to be well informed about
| the democrats and republicans, what they vote on, who they
| elect, etc, when you have no control over their actions
| afterward?
|
| Same goes for voting. None of the research you do and the
| research others don't do will alter the outcome of the
| election.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| It's not widely appreciated that the point of being well-
| informed is to influence what happens _between_ elections.
| That 's when the politics gets done - the lobbying efforts,
| candidate selections, control of local political groups,
| agenda and policy design, and so on.
|
| Elections are just a process to rubber-stamp decisions that
| have already been made by groups of people who understand
| this.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| ^^This point exactly. The entities that want legislation to
| help them make money do not change. Which is why elections
| hardly mean much. Trump does a little bit though just
| because he's lone wolfing it/looking for his own self
| interests. So it's "different" in a way, but it's still the
| same game.
| pedro1976 wrote:
| News with its focus on recent fata only is quite weird concept,
| given its popularity. The implication that recent data is
| relevant totally ignores all the former news that would still be
| a relevant source of information.
| kabdib wrote:
| I put myself into a news bubble about six weeks ago. I still very
| occasionally read local news and a mainstream front page (say,
| every few days), which seems sufficient to let me know what's
| going on in broad terms. Stuff leaks into the bubble (e.g., via
| HN) but the point is not to be totally isolated, just not to get
| caught in hours-long doom spirals.
|
| I've given money to the campaigns that are going to get money
| from me. I voted yesterday (which answered the question, "are we
| going to get our mail-in ballots on time?"). I'm done.
|
| As a consequence I'm getting more done and I'm happier. I'm
| reading a lot more books.
| mywacaday wrote:
| I put myself in a semi news bubble about 6 months ago, no
| longer check the news daily or watch TV news. Now if I could
| only stop checking HN multiple times a day....
| notRobot wrote:
| HN has a noprocrast feature that might help. Go to user
| settings to configure
| noneeeed wrote:
| I had no idea about that, thanks. I have Reddit totally
| blocked, but that always seemed excessive for HN.
| op03 wrote:
| Try Slashdot 5-6 links a day feels a bit less addictive than
| the HN 30.
| nharada wrote:
| Same, my new routine is I receive a daily news briefing email
| in the morning and read that, and then don't read/watch any
| other news for the rest of the day. I feel relatively informed
| but no longer feel as depressed as when I would check the front
| page of news sites every hour.
|
| The other plus side to this is that the whiplash of rapidly
| developing news is never an issue. Previously the news
| headlines would speculate on new developments so frequently
| that you felt like you were always behind on what was current,
| but truthfully most news can wait 24 hours (and if it can't
| it's probably an emergency).
| spidersouris wrote:
| What service do you use for daily news briefing by email?
| ajoy wrote:
| sorry for spam, but do try us out:
| https://www.thefactual.com
| adriand wrote:
| I also instituted a news blackout about three weeks ago, with
| the intent to (perhaps) resume reading the news on Nov 5. In
| 2016 I spent an inordinate amount of time hooked on election
| news. This year I decided to spend my time more productively
| (as a Canadian, I can't even vote in the US elections, so I'm
| ultra powerless).
|
| Anecdotally, I do feel happier. I've also poured the time I
| previously spent on news consumption into studying and making
| music, and it's just generally a more positive mental
| environment for me.
|
| I may decide to switch to a less in-the-moment mode of news
| consumption, such as getting an Economist subscription and
| only reading the paper magazine when it arrives. Or maybe the
| NYT Saturday paper only, or something. I feel a duty to be an
| informed citizen but the ceaseless noise and sense of angry
| powerlessness doesn't make me feel happy or satisfied.
| gerbler wrote:
| I did this too. I gave up reading the news about four
| months ago. I'm much happier and sleep much better. I found
| I was constantly reaching for something like the guardian
| to kill time (including if I woke up at night).
|
| I wanted to still read something current so I subscribed to
| the New Yorker and love their long articles.
| eywneidid wrote:
| Its living in a fucked up society that is bad for your well
| being. These fucks would rather have you stay ignorant happy and
| complacent. Fuck them. I wish I could jam political news down the
| throat of everyone that is dumb enough to say I dont give a shit
| about politics.
| khalilravanna wrote:
| Does this approach seem like it will bring people around to
| your point of view? I think this sort of toxic aggression is
| exactly what produces the partisanship that leads to a lack of
| progress on all sides.
|
| I think this article is pretty constructive. It specifically
| argue there's value in being informed. And it even goes on to
| suggest active involvement in the community over passive
| consumption of news.
| darepublic wrote:
| The debate between Trump and Biden epitomizes why political news
| is a mental health risk. No questions about long term goals and
| how we get there. Yes Trump is bad but I don't think it would be
| any different without him. Just questions that lead to petty,
| divisive tit for tat.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| These days, instead of reading the news in the evening, I play a
| game of chess. I check the headlines on news.google once per day,
| but don't delve in much.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| yashap wrote:
| This point rings strongly true to me. I have a number of members
| of friends/family who have become very difficult to be around,
| because they've become so intense/constantly outraged about
| politics, even if they are on the same end of the political
| spectrum as me:
|
| > The research doesn't reveal precisely why we tend to dislike
| overly political people, but it doesn't take too much imagination
| to guess that constant foam-flecked political outrage makes one
| quite tedious. It also impedes our ability to think clearly: At
| least one experiment has shown that people become less accurate
| in interpreting data when the data concern something politically
| polarizing.
| noneeeed wrote:
| This is basically why I stopped using Twitter. Reading a dozen
| of my friends expressing basically the same thought at the same
| time, even though I agreed with it, was just getting tideous.
| In hindsight it took me way too long to realise how much time I
| was wasting on it.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| But Facebook and Twitter can sell many more ads this way.
|
| We are manipulated into constant outrage for someone else's
| profit.
| treeman79 wrote:
| While not wrong, the country is headed toward a revolution /
| Cival War. Similar to when Mao or Lenin came to power.
|
| So yea, emotions are running a little high right now.
| bazeblackwood wrote:
| > They found that those watching the most partisan television
| news sources--on both the left and the right--were often less
| knowledgeable about world events than those who consumed no news
| at all.
|
| This is some very fancy footwork to leave out some key
| information. The study found that those watching _only_ Fox News
| and MSNBC answered worse than people who watch no news programs
| at all. As far as I can tell, this latter group doesn 't exclude
| people who read newspapers, blogs, political websites, etc.
| Meanwhile, all of the viewers of other programs/networks (NPR,
| Daily Show, CNN, etc.) score higher than average, so saying
| "often less knowledgable" kind of buries the lede if you ask me,
| which is that some "partisan" viewers are in fact, much more
| informed than others. Also, since the quiz the survey
| participants answered was split into domestic and international
| topics, FOX is the only network whose viewers consistently failed
| both on exceeding the average number of correct questions than
| achieved by "no news" viewers--MSNBC at least seems to be
| informing their viewers on domestic issues better than that
| baseline.
|
| http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2012/confirmed/final.pdf
| gridlockd wrote:
| > MSNBC at least seems to be informing their viewers on
| domestic issues better than that baseline.
|
| The difference is only about 5% to the "no news" crowd. Also,
| people that are better-educated tend to lean liberal and
| therefore might prefer to consume liberal outlets, but that
| doesn't mean liberal outlets are better at informing people.
| Looking at the frontpage of MSNBC, it's almost exclusively
| political opinion pieces centered around the US.
|
| Moreover, the key question is not whether you're being informed
| better by consuming this media, but whether it is worth risking
| some of your well-being by consuming it. Research has found
| that media that is upsetting is the most addictive. People with
| addictions make up all kinds of rationalizations on how their
| addiction has upsides. The idea that you've been wasting time
| consuming ultimately useless information that irritates you -
| it's not very attractive.
| dmingod666 wrote:
| 100% of Americans believe, that 50% of the American
| population is filled with morons, the rest of them are either
| average or intelligent. To find out, if the person is
| intelligent or not, all you have to do, is check is if they
| support the same party that I support.
| pattusk wrote:
| > Research has found that media that is upsetting is more
| addictive?
|
| Do you have any source for tjat research? (Not doubting you,
| just curious.)
| dtech wrote:
| Anger is the emotion that most activates you and spurs you
| to action [1]
|
| [1]
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1528077
| throwawaygh wrote:
| Being spurred to action != addiction.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| > better educated
|
| Then you can fill in the blanks faster and don't need quite
| as much spoon feeding
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Country song I heard some years ago, a weary older man is
| singing (obviously in the era of newspapers)
|
| _I read Ann Landers and the comics_
|
| _And know as much as the people of the left and the right_
|
| Some days it feels that way, even with things as urgent as they
| seem today in the US.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Electric Light Orchestra - Here Is the News (Official Video)
| from 1981, 4m9s
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bzehb_yeZtU
| olivermarks wrote:
| 'News is bad for you - and giving up reading it will make you
| happier' Ralf Dobelli UK Guardian 2013, changed my life
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-ro...
| Dahoon wrote:
| Luckily news isn't near as bad most places as in the US. Fox news
| wouldn't even be allowed to call itself "news" in lots of places.
| kleton wrote:
| This perennial story pops up regularly whenever there is news
| someone powerful doesn't want people to see.
| pedro1976 wrote:
| I find news as a concept quite weird, since it implies recent
| data is important data, with all its side effects. There is a ton
| of old news, maybe even years, that did not loose relevance, but
| we simply ignore it.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Actually, watching "news" on TV is even worse that reading news.
| I spend five minutes every morning reading The Guardian's morning
| email to US subscribers and I think that is time well spent.
|
| I have fright spend a couple of hours a day obsessing and
| watching the news, and I politely tell them their behavior is
| idiotic.
| paul7986 wrote:
| This coming from a highly partisan outlet.
|
| To me all sides are a joke with both of their arbitrary soap
| opera drama (Hunter Biden, the Impeachment, the russia collusion
| junk, PizzaGate (lol that one). Stop with the madness and made up
| crap... tell voters what you will do for them and the issues that
| matter! Politics doesn't need to be reality TV but that's what it
| has become and not just because of only the reality tv star in
| office; again both sides feed this madness/reality tv drama b.s.
|
| The Atlantic ... is a joke just like the majority outlets feeding
| this reality tv narrative! Which is just about each and everyone
| of them; most local news isnt as bad, though.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Political news just expose the selfish nature of human being.
|
| It is mostly a continuous attempt at manipulating people into
| thinking your party is good and that you should vote for this guy
| vs another. It shows how corrupted and dishonest people become,
| the more power they get. It's unhealthy by definition.
|
| I disagree that the answer is ignoring the problem or tuning out
| politics as if it's something we can't control. Sure, we're
| powerless inside the golden prison of democracy, believing the
| lies of the current psychopath leading the country and without a
| real choice.
|
| But we need to be aware of how rotten the situation is, fight
| state mandated indoctrination and hope enough people over time
| are going to reach the understanding that the root problem is
| centralisation of power, not what's the name of the current
| buffoon in charge of spending half of your salary.
|
| I may be reading too much into this article; this is probably
| just another new age attempt at getting people to ignore whatever
| bombshells are being dropped between candidates before the
| elections.
| vinbreau wrote:
| I reconnected with an old friend from childhood a few years ago.
| I knew he was politically opposite from me so I kept politics out
| of our conversations... do you know how hard that is? It's hard
| enough that it requires effort, effort that he noted. He accused
| me of being closed off and never saying what I really wanted to.
| I made it clear we should not go there.
|
| He told me that several years ago watching the news made him
| physically ill and his GP told him to avoid news. His health
| improved. In 2016 he admitted to me he does not watch any news,
| read any news, but he believes in voting. I asked him how he
| could vote if he hasn't educated himself on the candidates. How a
| person like me who thinks you either eat politics or it eats you,
| sees an uninformed voter, proudly ignorant of the candidates, but
| voting with his gut, what am I supposed to say? This deeply
| offended him. He then accused me of living in a bubble despite
| the fact I read news from all over and he reads none.
|
| I asked him how should educated voters feel about gut-feeling
| voters with uneducated opinions? I think his response was "Fuck
| off". We do not talk anymore because any subject he brought up
| that had any hint of politics to it was an empty conversation. I
| would bring up things related to the subject and he would default
| to making jokes. Serious conversation was beyond him.
|
| Tone deaf, dumb, and blind. He eventually said he found all women
| of my wife's race "unattractive" and then could not understand
| why I was upset at him. Ex-Navy man, ex-Nuclear Engineer, ex-
| friend.
| casefields wrote:
| Who do you think the _get out the vote_ targets? It 's people
| that barely have an opinion nor care enough to get off their
| butt and vote.
|
| >Just because one has the right to vote does not mean just any
| vote is right. Citizens should not vote badly. This duty to
| avoid voting badly is grounded in a general duty not to engage
| in collectively harmful activities when the personal cost of
| restraint is low. Good governance is a public good. Bad
| governance is a public bad. We should not be contributing to
| public bads when the benefit to ourselves is low. Many
| democratic theorists agree that we shouldn't vote badly, but
| that's because they think we should vote well. This demands too
| much of citizens.
|
| >Most voters have no idea what is going on-they may not even
| know who their leaders are, and certainly do not know who is
| the best candidate. Imagine that someone asks you for
| directions to a local restaurant. If you have no idea where the
| restaurant is, you should not make it up. You should not tell
| the person some guess that seems sort of plausible to you. You
| should tell them you don't know and let them get directions
| from someone more knowledgeable.
|
| >Ignorant voting is even worse than ignorant giving of
| directions, because voting is an exercise of political power
| (albeit a very small one)-to vote for a policy is not only to
| make a recommendation, but to request that the policy be
| imposed on others by force.
|
| [Polluting the Polls: When Citizens Should Not Vote](https://ww
| w.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0004840080258730...
| [deleted]
| pjc50 wrote:
| > 2016 he admitted to me he does not watch any news, read any
| news
|
| > He then accused me of living in a bubble
|
| This kind of _tu quoque_ thing happens a lot when people get
| defensive. Accusing you of the thing they know they 're in the
| wrong over.
| mynameishere wrote:
| _Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often
| convincing._
|
| -Oscar Wilde
| [deleted]
| kyle_martin1 wrote:
| Reading too much negative anything is bad for the psyche. It just
| so happens that the MSM is full-on TDS and they can't seem to let
| go. Trump is the blackhole for MSM, everything is somehow
| connected to "Orange Man Bad". Moreover, the Washington Post
| reported that 90% of Trump's coverage is negative [1].
|
| Do you know anyone that is 90% terrible? I doubt it. Taking a
| step back from one's political views, which is hard for a lot of
| people, it becomes obvious that there's little honest and
| unbiased reporting going on within MSM.
|
| Sure it's fine to read information with a particular viewpoint
| (be it conservative or liberal), as long as the reader is made
| aware that the "facts" are framed from a particular viewpoint.
| Otherwise it's just brainwashing and intellectually dishonest. I
| think any rational person can get behind this sort of "zero-trust
| framework".
|
| [1]
| https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jan/15/a-broadcast...
| kyle_martin1 wrote:
| Downvotes but no comments for an honest discussion? I'm not
| surprised given the culture of young, white, male SF liberals
| :)
| augustt wrote:
| New conservative gaslighting strategy detected: Trump is good
| because it's statistically impossible for him to be so bad
| technoplato wrote:
| In other news of things that are completely obvious...
| deadalus wrote:
| I get very frustrated, sad and emotional when I read CNN or any
| of the major news sites. So I avoid it.
|
| Instead I use Wikipedia once a month :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events/Septembe...
| AdamGibbins wrote:
| https://weekly.hatnote.com/ might be of interest, weekly update
| with the most active wikipedia entries. Tends to be news
| events.
| nunez wrote:
| This is incredible. I wish I knew about this years ago. I have
| long been looking for impartial news sources. I used to listen
| to CBC, NPR, and ABC (Australia) to try and get more angles to
| a story, but that got tiring.
| DC-3 wrote:
| I use the BBC World News site as my homepage.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world
| jaredtn wrote:
| Thank you for this!
| _prototype_ wrote:
| This, this is awesome
| notankies wrote:
| That's intentional, especially with CNN. The major news sites
| have essentially been tabloids since the death of print.
|
| Sites from local TV news groups seem to be the most
| dispassionate reporting these days.
| WalterBright wrote:
| CNN is nothing but editorials.
| Medicalidiot wrote:
| PBS News Hour. I've never watched more boring and informative
| news in my entire life.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| NewsHour is great. Litigation of the petty partisan crap is
| restricted to a 10-15 minute segment on Friday evening.
| easton wrote:
| Reuters TV[0] is pretty good for this too, you can even set
| how much time you want to watch it and it will pair down
| the information. Extremely boring for the most part.
|
| 0: https://www.reuters.tv/
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| Cspan in a nutshell
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> Sites from local TV news groups seem to be the most
| dispassionate reporting these days._
|
| Really? Our local TV news websites are:
|
| 1) absolutely terrible user experiences -- like, so many ads
| that the scrolling lags on my 16 inch MBP.
|
| 2) clearly just reposting whatever their parent networks feed
| them for everything except local news (so, Fox and NBC, the
| two mentioned in this article...)
|
| IMO: the death of local newspapers is a problem but the death
| of local TV news can't happen fast enough.
| tartoran wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this link. It helps catching up with news
| once a month or so.
| [deleted]
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| I read only Reuters and APNews these days. They report things
| but not in a way to make you emotional. They make news outright
| boring which is a good thing.
|
| I don't know what happened to CNN. Seems they have decided to
| become the left wing FoxNews.
| mawaldne wrote:
| Great suggestion! I'm going to try this as well.
| jader201 wrote:
| The OP link is to September, but if you go to the main/parent
| link, it's always the current month, which conveniently has
| today's news at the top (reverse chronological):
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events
| awak3ning wrote:
| That's a very good resource, I find that even if one truly
| believes that the news or political media is not warping your
| vision of reality and your beliefs that is not the case. Once
| you step back and view the situation from the outside, then you
| really start to understand how people's nervous systems are
| being regulated and influenced by the media.
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