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Things You Notice When You Quit the News

raptitude.com

221–230 of 502 posts

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greenwald's fake news is his false description of Eichenwald's reporting. If you read Eichenwald's article, then you have all the "personal experience" you need to see that Greenwald is misrepresenting what he reported. And when you look up Greenwald's past, identical lies, you see that this misinformation campaign is deliberate. It's not a matter of opinion or of trying to judge competing claims. It's laid out right…

Does HN have a hard-on for Greenwald? I really cannot understand the down votes here. I took 7 minutes to skim the article in question, and Eichenwald's point is very simple: his own word were misattributed to someone else, and Trump regurgitated this misinformation, knowingly or not. So many people are arguing from ignorance here...

HN largely views Snowden as a martyr, and thereby canonizes his confidants.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct. My viewpoint was mainly about being fed a constant stream of nonsense and/or distractions along with the general feed. For instance, I absolutely loathe 'celebrity news', but most main news sites here that I go to have at least one or two articles on rubbish like that as their lead, and I have to dig to find the stuff that is relevant to me. To use the example of air accidents above - I rarely find o…

> gossip for just a handful of drivers. They are using the technique of formula fiction , that is, what the ancient Greeks discovered as a sure-fire way to get and hold the attention of an audience. So, in that formula, there is a protagonist the audience comes to identify with , that is, care about. Then the protagonist has a problem. Through various highly in doubt and improbable victories, from skill, guts, determ…

>"Teenage boys, your life is so much easier now: Have that climax music queued up ready to go at a single button click at just the right time with her on the living room sofa. Trust me: Richard Strauss understood her much better than you do!"

While I appreciate your commentary on the music of Strauss, I disliked this particular comment. Is encouraging emotional manipulation really what we want for the younger generations?

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Economist also has a fairly evident political agenda.

Has The Economist shifted? I started reading it in about 2000, and at the time I really liked it because it seemed so intelligent and neutral. It seemed like such a pleasure to read something that went deep into interesting topics without an obvious axe to grind. In the past ten years it seems to have drifted gradually leftward. Sometimes I can't reconsile The Economist of 2000 with the one of 2016. Did The Economist…

If $xyz seems neutral to you, then it might mean you are politically and tonally aligned with $xyz ?

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're describing is Gell-Mann Amnesia: "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cau…

My favourite example of this is the Economist news magazine. The Economist reports on a much larger range of country and topics than the typical magazine or newspaper. Many of its readers like it for that exact reason: it gives them information on stories they won't normally find in their local or national news sources and they want to be informed about, say, hydroelectric developments in the Congo. The problem is th…

Very true, but TE is usually way less wrong than the alternatives. The journalists there at least seem to know how to use Wikipedia. I mean, what am I supposed to read instead?

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Economist also has a fairly evident political agenda.

I don't follow it that closely, but aren't they also pretty up-front about their own bias? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_editorial_stance

Indeed, and that is why I very rarely read it - for me, it would be too echo-chambery. I read the NYT quite deliberately and every day, enumerate why Krugman and Blow are wrong about whatever they are pontificating about...

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has The Economist shifted? I started reading it in about 2000, and at the time I really liked it because it seemed so intelligent and neutral. It seemed like such a pleasure to read something that went deep into interesting topics without an obvious axe to grind. In the past ten years it seems to have drifted gradually leftward. Sometimes I can't reconsile The Economist of 2000 with the one of 2016. Did The Economist…

Left? The Economist has a blatant liberal slant.

I think it depends on your viewpoint.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#227
post #219

Am I the only one who feels compelled to watch just to see whether another 9/11 is ongoing? Like after a while of being disconnected.

I'd argue that 9/11 is a good example of news media blowing something out of proportion with 24/7 coverage and lots of drama. Yes it was a tragedy, but ultimately the amount of people that died is a tiny fraction of the amount of lives lost in the middle east due to a disproportionate response.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're describing is Gell-Mann Amnesia: "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cau…

My favourite example of this is the Economist news magazine. The Economist reports on a much larger range of country and topics than the typical magazine or newspaper. Many of its readers like it for that exact reason: it gives them information on stories they won't normally find in their local or national news sources and they want to be informed about, say, hydroelectric developments in the Congo. The problem is th…

My experience is the opposite. And I'm definitely not blind to the Gell-Mann Amnesia, I notice it on Wikipedia all the time.

I've noticed that in The Economist the articles about my field of technology, work, and my small home country, have been accurate to the point that I suspect they have had experts in the field involved in creating them. That gives me confidence in the articles about issues I'm not intimately familiar with.

That is why The Economist is one of the few news sources I read after cutting out following daily news completely. As a result I'm much better informed about the facts and issues than I was when reading huge amounts of daily news. It boils down to a difference between consuming mostly noise and consuming mostly signal.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're describing is Gell-Mann Amnesia: "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cau…

My favourite example of this is the Economist news magazine. The Economist reports on a much larger range of country and topics than the typical magazine or newspaper. Many of its readers like it for that exact reason: it gives them information on stories they won't normally find in their local or national news sources and they want to be informed about, say, hydroelectric developments in the Congo. The problem is th…

I am from a non-US, non-EU, non-UK country and the Economist coverage about my country isn't perfect but it's pretty decent.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#230
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

interesting. do you know if the "in the news" selection is generated or curated?

Items are nominated, discussed, and then a consensus is reached regarding whether to include them. There is information on the 'In the news' section at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:In_the_news The page for nominating and discussing items is at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:In_the_news/Candidat... In case you hadn't heard of it before, Wikipedia also has a sister project called Wikinews: https:/…

Does Wikipedia source news from Wikinews?
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