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

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#441

Post by rashkov » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 6:23 PM UTC

voidz wrote: post #282

voidz wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is inevitable. Even the effect of mass media going against so-called "fake news" won't have the effect they desire: In my estimation people will stop trusting and hence following all of it. It pays off, for as you and I have both gathered from the comments it is obvious that people do feel their lives improve once they "tune out". Since 2010 or so, this applies to me as well. Besides, I don't know for ho…

One thing to add: the only source I loyally follow is the No Agenda Show ( http://www.noagendashow.com - a podcast which I help out technically, fully pro bono) because they are the only source of media that has no advertisers to keep happy, they get 100% of their income via donations, and they don't even digest the news as much as analyse where the news comes from, and what the interests and hidden agendas are of th…

It took me all of a few minutes of listening to that podcast to realize that they're peddling conspiracy theories and consider themselves to occupy a similar space as Alex Jones' Infowars.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#442

Post by Broken_Hippo » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 6:39 PM UTC

zorked wrote: post #229

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…

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.

To be fair, I live in the such a country. Only, in my case, it is Norway, so it is kind of different altogether.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#443

Post by Broken_Hippo » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 6:45 PM UTC

ldev wrote: post #369

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…

>I haven't had a TV in the house for nearly 8 years now, and don't miss it at all. You enjoy watching movies, sitcoms, documentaries, etc, on a 27" computer monitor? Just buy a TV and external hard drive, it's so much better watching stuff on 55" TV on a couch...

Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. That was an upgraded size, and it is at my feet when my feet are on the table.

Also, my couch is a floor. It isn't as glorious to stretch out on as one might think.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#444

Post by LordKano » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 6:59 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…

I have a couple of areas of interest where my knowledge is quite deep and I notice this whenever there's anything about those subjects written in the local or national press.

I see people asking why we can't have a meaningful dialog about the subject and it's because at least half of us don't understand the basics of the issue.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#445

Post by lintiness » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 7:06 PM UTC

rudolf0 wrote: post #420

ideonexus wrote: post #364

One of the contributors of FiveThirtyEight made an observation that, along with this article, has convinced me to start filtering out the news. They were discussing what public policy initiatives we could expect from the incoming administration, and she said that she could not speculate on the subject because Donald Trump's signal-to-noise ratio in his public statements was so low as to render forecasting initiatives…

I check the news roughly once a day just to get a feel for the headlines. I check the left-leaning sources and right-leaning sources and don't read any of the articles. I don't get sucked in, and also just get an idea of what people think is important that day/week. Usually it is just noise but it can be at least helpful to know when things have happened. The headlines are enough for me.

amazing what kind of bias exists in headlines alone. when you filter down, it becomes so much more obvious.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#446

Post by ashark » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 7:08 PM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #439

ashark wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If mood-setting music is unacceptable emotional manipulation, we'd better all stop interacting with one another to avoid the great crimes we're all (apparently) constantly committing, because that's about as benign as it gets.

Not really. There's nothing wrong with sharing music with others, what matters is the intent. Sharing music to enjoy together, great. Sharing music you may not enjoy just to get your rocks off, not exactly the best thing in the world.

I don't know what social interaction generally, and especially relations between the sexes, would look like absent anything that's at least as "manipulative" as mood music, of all things. It'd be some extreme sci-fi material, probably considered highly dystopic by most exposed to it.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#447

Post by norea-armozel » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 7:12 PM UTC

I really hate the news for lots of reasons. But the one thing that always got under my skin is the false sense of being informed. If I wanted to know trivia, I'll just read the histories of Muslim scholars or the finer points of knot theory. At least those give some context for the world we live in whereas the mainstream news outlets on both wings of the political spectrum just insult me with doom and gloom (unless it's global warming then it's really not that worrying IMO). I know that's a pretty crappy way to look at the news because I like to know what happens around me but if the delivery is crap then I'm not going to bother trying to digest it. I got plenty of other things to keep my interest. Pretending to care for what I can't fix or what really isn't an existential threat to me is just dumb.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#448

Post by kruhft » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 7:13 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #317

sooheon wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same question as you and skimmed Eichenwald's article. He claims that his own words were attributed to someone else (Blumenthal) in these manipulated leaks, and subsequently parroted by trump. He had written a long article about Benghazi, and the email leak takes Blumenthal's quotation of that out of context, misattributing it. It checks out, and at least on that point Eichenwald seems to be closer to the t…

Eichenwald's article is significantly rewritten from when it first came out, and you're probably not reading the version Greenwald was responding to: First publication: Oct 10, 2016: https://web.archive.org/web/20161010235349/http://www.newswe... Today: http://www.newsweek.com/vladimir-putin-sidney-blumenthal-hil... Differences start around paragraph 6.

How Orwellian.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#449

Post by ssully » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 7:14 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…

The fake news being talked about is actually fake, as in nearly 100% made up with the intention to misinform. It's definitely not new but I saw it way more during the election and it's very different from shittt reporting.

Maybe I am misreading you and other posters here, but I am getting the idea that people don't think this is a real thing or that it's no worse then actual news. This shit is real, harmful, and really not hard to find. I have a pretty trimmed down Facebook account but I would see multiple fake news posts shared by people every other week or so this past year. The way people talk about manipulative ads here could be applied to these articles. The worst part is they are incredibly easy to debunk, but no one gives a shit about checking what they read.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#450

Post by nkurz » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 7:26 PM UTC

leephillips wrote: post #340

nkurz wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eichenwald did not claim that the leaked information was false When I follow a link from Greenwald's piece I see this tweet that was sent by Eichenwald: "Russian gov manipulates email to @johnpodesta. Publishes disinformation. Takes it down. Trump recites false info." https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald/status/785676641880027136 I interpret "manipulates" as claiming that the emails to Podesta were changed by the Russi…

Greenwald is claiming that Eichenwald is reporting that the emails leaked by Wikileaks are fake. In repititions of this claim he either refers to Eichenwald's article directly[0] or indirectly by linking to a tweet that mentions it. Greenwald's claim is a lie. Eichenwald never says that the emails are fake. Read the article. Greenwald certainly did. If you actually read the article in Newsweek you will learn that "ma…

Thanks for the very reasonable and persuasive response. Based on Eichenwald's original version of the article (as linked by 'nostrademons' https://web.archive.org/web/20161010235349/http://www.newswe...), it does look like Greenwald was wrong, and that Eichenwald was instead claiming that the leaked documents were unaltered but intentionally being used in a misleading manner by taking quotes out of context.

This isn't in itself proof that Greenwald was lying, since this requires additional knowledge of his internal mental processes, but it leaves open the possibility. I still think the phrasing in Eichenwald's tweet implies alteration, but with knowledge of the specifics of the article I agree that it can be interpreted differently.

But as 'nostrademons' points out, the current version of the article reads differently. I'll switch to a Dec 1 archive.org link in case it changes again: http://web.archive.org/web/20161201141729/http://www.newswee....

This version starts with a photo caption that includes the words "faked document". It's been changed to include the words "altered documents" multiple times. While couched in a hypothetical, it explicitly says "the Russian effort to quote an altered email". I feel certain that that the new version has been written in a manner that encourages the reader to conclude that leaked emails may have been altered and should not be considered authentic.

I don't know if these changes were made by Eichenwald or by someone else at Newsweek, but I think the post-publication changes strengthen rather than weaken Greenwald's overall claim that there as a strong media narrative to discredit the authenticity of the leaked Podesta emails. While the original article seems accurate, I find the changes that were made to it to be substantial, disingenuous, and worrisome. I'd be very interested to know how these changes came about.