Things You Notice When You Quit the News • Hacker News Board

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#381

Post by VLM » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 2:49 PM UTC

glaberficken wrote: post #260

cyberferret wrote: post #70

I haven't had a TV in the house for nearly 8 years now, and don't miss it at all. The biggest problem to me, seems to be the 24 hour news cycle for things like wars, elections and the like. I was visiting friends during a couple of major air accidents in the past couple of years (The MH370 and MH17 incidents in particular), and was astounded at the propensity for news stations on ALL channels to fill every minute of…

At my place (me, my wife, 6yo and 1yo daughters) we have done the same (got rid of our TV about 5 years ago). We watch the occasional TV show via on demand streaming (guilty pleasure="The Voice", food for thought="several long form journalistic features, tv documentaries etc") The improvement to our quality of life at home as been significant. In the little free time our daily chores still leave us, we simply play wi…

With respect to the kids, its worth looking at the demographics of actual viewers leading to interesting commercial choices where the ads are mostly old people pills and old people cars. Meanwhile the content is aimed, narrowcasting style, right back at the old people to steal old people from other news channels rather than to try and appeal generally, so there's lots of coverage of the 2010s antics (or deaths) of 1970s child TV stars, 60s musicians, and so forth that mean nothing culturally to a 2010s kid.

No 2010s kid is going to get "street cred" socially by walking into school talking about how sick Buicks are and Crestor is awesome and its almost but not quite the 15th anniversary of John Ritter's death.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#382

Post by DonaldFoss » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 2:49 PM UTC

graycat wrote: post #151

blhack wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not only that, I used to be a commercial pilot, and I could not believe the amount of disinformation and outright ridiculous theories being bandied about by so called 'reputable' news sources. This is true every time there is a news story on about anything that somebody around me is an expert on. It's always "what the hell are they talking about!?" I've seen this directly, too. I've been on the local news quite a fe…

> frightening Well, it's sad. But, in part, you can relax: The "fake news" is just a current meme and will go away in at most a few weeks. You can hear so much about such a meme because the news organizations form herds, gang up, pile on.

Tribal instincts, competing for scarce resources?

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#383

Post by talmand » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 2:49 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #258

blhack wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not only that, I used to be a commercial pilot, and I could not believe the amount of disinformation and outright ridiculous theories being bandied about by so called 'reputable' news sources. This is true every time there is a news story on about anything that somebody around me is an expert on. It's always "what the hell are they talking about!?" I've seen this directly, too. I've been on the local news quite a fe…

> What's really really scary to me lately is all of this talk about "fake news", which originally referred to outright lies that were part of click-farms, but is now being talked about as if CNN and MSNBC are somehow the only source of "real" news. I am surprised by that too. This whole "fake news" thing appeared out of thin air around the US election and is reportedly a new phenomenon - as if most of the "regular" n…

It was an undefined talking point that has spread farther and faster than it was likely intended. I suspect it will disappear soon as the stupidity of it starts to affect the major news agencies and social media.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#384

Post by VLM » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 2:52 PM UTC

cyberferret wrote: post #296

glaberficken wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my place (me, my wife, 6yo and 1yo daughters) we have done the same (got rid of our TV about 5 years ago). We watch the occasional TV show via on demand streaming (guilty pleasure="The Voice", food for thought="several long form journalistic features, tv documentaries etc") The improvement to our quality of life at home as been significant. In the little free time our daily chores still leave us, we simply play wi…

Good move. How I counter this news awareness in our house is to actually have discussions with my kids about news that I know they are interested in. For instance, my younger son is super interested in space and space exploration. Whenever I see a news article or announcement on the web (or even right here on HN), I read up a little about it and then seek him out with a "Hey, did you hear about ...". This often leads…

And if you have the technology to subscribe to video RSS feeds there's news such as:

https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/podcasting/twan_index.html

Only two things to not like about TWAN, coverage of politicians photo ops, and for a weekly show its simply too short.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#385

Post by makomk » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 2:52 PM UTC

throwaway7312 wrote: post #288

tw04 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It coalesced when the "MSM" managed to get the election outcome in the US so comically wrong. The only possible reason for the mistake was "fake news". It turns out "fake news" has been a driving force since roughly the time twitter arrived. I can only hope the (in theory) REAL media will eventually give up on "first is best" and instead focus on ACTUAL REPORTING . Relaying what twitter has to say about a world event…

That's not what this is about. It erupted across every news channel precisely as Pizzagate did. If you searched on Google News for "Pizzagate", what you would get was "FAKE NEWS!" "FAKE NEWS!" "FAKE NEWS!" The MSM hasn't been this desperate since it was shrieking to high heaven there was no chance in any universe in which Donald Trump could possibly win the US election. Whether this is because the MSM is desperate to…

That disappearing NY Times article is from Associated Press. It's not unusual for AP articles to disappear from sites, because I think news organisations often only have a license to publish them from a limited time. Obnoxious, but not uncommon.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#386

Post by talmand » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 2:55 PM UTC

glaberficken wrote: post #260

cyberferret wrote: post #70

I haven't had a TV in the house for nearly 8 years now, and don't miss it at all. The biggest problem to me, seems to be the 24 hour news cycle for things like wars, elections and the like. I was visiting friends during a couple of major air accidents in the past couple of years (The MH370 and MH17 incidents in particular), and was astounded at the propensity for news stations on ALL channels to fill every minute of…

At my place (me, my wife, 6yo and 1yo daughters) we have done the same (got rid of our TV about 5 years ago). We watch the occasional TV show via on demand streaming (guilty pleasure="The Voice", food for thought="several long form journalistic features, tv documentaries etc") The improvement to our quality of life at home as been significant. In the little free time our daily chores still leave us, we simply play wi…

Don't worry over it, your local school will gladly accept that responsibility for you and play the news of their choice directly to the class room.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#387

Post by habosa » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 2:59 PM UTC

A few summers ago I went three weeks without any news at all. No TV, no internet, and even avoiding physical newspapers.

At the end of the three weeks I was excited to go online and see what I had missed. I found that I had not missed a single thing worth knowing about in the long term. All the energy I would have spent on the news in that time would have been for nothing.

I am back to being a daily news consumer but I wonder how much time I am wasting.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#388

Post by DonaldFoss » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 3:03 PM UTC

cyberferret wrote: post #296

glaberficken wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my place (me, my wife, 6yo and 1yo daughters) we have done the same (got rid of our TV about 5 years ago). We watch the occasional TV show via on demand streaming (guilty pleasure="The Voice", food for thought="several long form journalistic features, tv documentaries etc") The improvement to our quality of life at home as been significant. In the little free time our daily chores still leave us, we simply play wi…

Good move. How I counter this news awareness in our house is to actually have discussions with my kids about news that I know they are interested in. For instance, my younger son is super interested in space and space exploration. Whenever I see a news article or announcement on the web (or even right here on HN), I read up a little about it and then seek him out with a "Hey, did you hear about ...". This often leads…

With 1 daughter in university and 2 in high school, I do something similar, adding in listening to their viewpoints, and asking them critical thinking questions about their views without necessarily disagreeing with them. It doesn't matter whether I agree or disagree, I simply ask them to think for themselves and question the reason they feel the way they do. It's often quite interesting to go into a direction which I had not considered. I've also found flaws in my own views from the exercise.

As may be expected, they also get tired of this sometimes, and they know it's coming, so I try to pick and choose items at random and just let others go. I believe--well hope really, that this encourages them to think and ask questions themselves and not dread another dinner with dad :)

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#389

Post by mSparks » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 3:08 PM UTC

zmb_ wrote: post #228

eigenvector wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fa…

yes and no.

Ive noticed the economist has a habit of playing policy games.

In that case they publish nonsense to further certain policy aims.

But often its well researched unbiased material.

not that easy to tell the difference.

but infinately better than the junk put out by the likes of the bbc fox cnn times etc.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#390

Post by specialist » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 3:12 PM UTC

elsonrodriguez wrote: post #148

blhack wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not only that, I used to be a commercial pilot, and I could not believe the amount of disinformation and outright ridiculous theories being bandied about by so called 'reputable' news sources. This is true every time there is a news story on about anything that somebody around me is an expert on. It's always "what the hell are they talking about!?" I've seen this directly, too. I've been on the local news quite a fe…

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…

Michael Crichton? The xenophobe and anthropocentric climate change denier? Pot, meet kettle.

He should have stuck to fantasy land, err, show business.