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Stop Reading News (2013)

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Re: Stop Reading News (2013)

#101

Post by birksherty »

nkozyra wrote: post #70

Do not stop reading news. Be selective with your sources. Be a discerning news consumer. An uninformed populace is a malleable one. Controlling and limiting information has long been a strategy for despots or worse. > The point is, most of what you read online today is pointless Don't read that then. Read sources you believe are important to you and deliver information that is important. Be a discerning news consumer…

I don't read news, don't use social media. I find it working fine. Although hacker news kind of works like a news source to me.

I find almost everything in news noise now. Don't following any of that on purpose makes me feel calm.

Now if there is something that I should really know, it comes to me. I meet people all the time and then they tell me if something important is going on. I don't have to go after news. I adopted this after going through all the political bs in last few years. It works like a filter and I enjoy it.

Re: Stop Reading News (2013)

#102

Post by GordonS »

skilled wrote: post #6

For the last 4-5 years, Hacker News has been pretty much my only source of any kind of news outside of the topics that I work with on a daily basis. This is true. Before that, I did not read newspapers or follow any kind of journalism. I still recall being around age 12 or 13 and making a conscious decision not to watch TV anymore. It has been around just as much time since I last saw a TV news report. Maybe it has s…

I've done the same, but only for the past few years. I grew tired, emotionally exhausted even, of being bombarded with strongly biased negativity, images of war, brutality, poverty and injustice, NIMBYism and fake outrage - and most of all, at my sense of helplessness against it all. I could do nothing about any of it, and resolved to remove it from my life.

Since I did so, I've been much happier. I can't avoid all news - for example, I see non-tech stuff on HN sometimes, or see Trump's latest nonsense in my Twitter timeline - but with the exception of technical stuff on HN, I never seek it out.

Re: Stop Reading News (2013)

#103

Post by coldtea »

nkozyra wrote: post #87
dgellow wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be informed without following news. Often reading books/articles produced some time after an event gives a more nuanced and in-depth analysis.

I don't disagree, but the time that passes limits your ability to respond in the present. Don't eschew current news because it's slight, because it's invite, because it's simplistic in form. That's the point.

>I don't disagree, but the time that passes limits your ability to respond in the present.

What examples are there of any meaningful "responding in the present" that happened because of news (as opposed because of directly suffering some oppression on yourself)?

Re: Stop Reading News (2013)

#104

Post by jshowa3 »

afiori wrote: post #89
nkozyra wrote: post #70

Do not stop reading news. Be selective with your sources. Be a discerning news consumer. An uninformed populace is a malleable one. Controlling and limiting information has long been a strategy for despots or worse. > The point is, most of what you read online today is pointless Don't read that then. Read sources you believe are important to you and deliver information that is important. Be a discerning news consumer…

> An uninformed populace is a malleable one. A overreacting population is even more malleable. >This isn't news, it's opinion. Don't read this. >Be a discerning news consumer. Media, even big mainstream media, is very flexible regarding the distinction between news and opinion; the latest big example being the maga-kids and how people were rewriting the same articles over and over on debunked facts. I am not saying t…

How does this make any sense? Why should you distrust news because they report on inconsequential stuff? Whatever is on twitter is still a real fact because they repeat, verbatim what people post on it.

Distrust implies they're lying to you, when most of the time they aren't.

Re: Stop Reading News (2013)

#105

Post by coldtea »

pjc50 wrote: post #96
justtopost wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to mean well, but your post is also a recipie for creating a personal bubble, no matter how well spoken.

The "bubble" expression I've only ever encountered used by people from a rightish perspective to complain that other people aren't listening to them and that their perspective isn't the completely dominant one. Whereas people of the opposite view always know what the opposing view is - it gets shouted at them a lot - they just don't agree with it. Anti-vaxers and flat-earthers might be called "bubbles", but then so i…

>The "bubble" expression I've only ever encountered used by people from a rightish perspective

That's perhaps because you live in a bubble.

Re: Stop Reading News (2013)

#106

Post by cjslep »

nkozyra wrote: post #70

Do not stop reading news. Be selective with your sources. Be a discerning news consumer. An uninformed populace is a malleable one. Controlling and limiting information has long been a strategy for despots or worse. > The point is, most of what you read online today is pointless Don't read that then. Read sources you believe are important to you and deliver information that is important. Be a discerning news consumer…

I agree. I am currently reading the classic "Manufacturing Consent" and I find it a great critique of the mainstream media in such a way that can be emulated on a personal level.

I like that it shows how to be critical of mainstream media while consuming it and without needing to adopt a pseudo-conspiracy "alternative fact" mindset.

Re: Stop Reading News (2013)

#107

Post by smoe »

Although not directly mentioning it, the post seems to imply that things were better in the past. I like this 2013 article from the Guardian better because it goes deeper into fundamental issues with news, independent from the "internet age".

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-ro...

Key points for me:

News has no explanatory power. News items are bubbles popping on the surface of a deeper world. Will accumulating facts help you understand the world? Sadly, no. The relationship is inverted. The important stories are non-stories: slow, powerful movements that develop below journalists' radar but have a transforming effect.

[...]

Society needs journalism – but in a different way. Investigative journalism is always relevant. We need reporting that polices our institutions and uncovers truth. But important findings don't have to arrive in the form of news.

I stopped reading news around 2011, while I was working at a big news site, within a building complex of about half a dozen more publications including online, print, paid, free, weekly and daily. Seeing how the sausage is made has overall increased my respect for journalists, but decreased the one for the process of publication and the business behind it. It easy to blame corporate overloads, but the pressure for almost real time news comes in part from the readers.

At first I sought to solve the potential problem of being uninformed of not reading news technically. Thinking about building an aggregator with a more objective way to judge news-worthiness and relevancy than the existing ones and news sites. But then I realized there is already a good enough solution in place: If something is important for me to care about, it will eventually reach me in some way or another trough social interactions (mostly offline since i don't use social media much). And because of the delay of information getting to me, I'm way more likely to get actual useful insights when I then dig deeper than when trying to keep up with everything live.

Re: Stop Reading News (2013)

#108

Post by ModernMech »

skh wrote: post #99
nkozyra wrote: post #70

Do not stop reading news. Be selective with your sources. Be a discerning news consumer. An uninformed populace is a malleable one. Controlling and limiting information has long been a strategy for despots or worse. > The point is, most of what you read online today is pointless Don't read that then. Read sources you believe are important to you and deliver information that is important. Be a discerning news consumer…

Have you heard of the Murray Gellmann Amnesia Effect? How do you know the source you are reading is trustworthy? I've witnessed the Murray Gellmann effect in my area of specialty which is mathematics. It makes me wonder about articles in areas outside of my specialty. I recently watched the Netflix documentary on the Fyre Festival. I also watched the one on Hulu. One of the documentaries was produced by a company inv…

The solution to biased or inaccurate sources isn't to consume no sources. It's to consume more than one source, preferably many. When you see the same story reported in 6 different ways, you start to notice patterns. You see that certain sources leave out crucial information, while others focus on those. You see headlines written in salacious forms, and sometimes you see a headline change during the course of the day because, perhaps the original one wasn't generating enough clicks. For a critical reader, these clues help to make one more critical, not less, no matter how biased the source.

Re: Stop Reading News (2013)

#109

Post by whatshisface »

ModernMech wrote: post #108
skh wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you heard of the Murray Gellmann Amnesia Effect? How do you know the source you are reading is trustworthy? I've witnessed the Murray Gellmann effect in my area of specialty which is mathematics. It makes me wonder about articles in areas outside of my specialty. I recently watched the Netflix documentary on the Fyre Festival. I also watched the one on Hulu. One of the documentaries was produced by a company inv…

The solution to biased or inaccurate sources isn't to consume no sources. It's to consume more than one source, preferably many. When you see the same story reported in 6 different ways, you start to notice patterns. You see that certain sources leave out crucial information, while others focus on those. You see headlines written in salacious forms, and sometimes you see a headline change during the course of the day…

Each source writes its own take, but what if the truth is Option Three, which none of the biased articles support?

Re: Stop Reading News (2013)

#110

Post by Datsundere »

birksherty wrote: post #101
nkozyra wrote: post #70

Do not stop reading news. Be selective with your sources. Be a discerning news consumer. An uninformed populace is a malleable one. Controlling and limiting information has long been a strategy for despots or worse. > The point is, most of what you read online today is pointless Don't read that then. Read sources you believe are important to you and deliver information that is important. Be a discerning news consumer…

I don't read news, don't use social media. I find it working fine. Although hacker news kind of works like a news source to me. I find almost everything in news noise now. Don't following any of that on purpose makes me feel calm. Now if there is something that I should really know, it comes to me. I meet people all the time and then they tell me if something important is going on. I don't have to go after news. I ad…

>I find almost everything in news noise now. Don't following any of that on purpose makes me feel calm.

Yes, that's what ignorants do. It's easier to ignore what's happening around the world. Vietnam war could've gone longer had it not for the public to come out and tell the government to pull out of Vietnam. It's easier to ignore things and live a blissful life, but then you have the no right to complain when laws are passed that don't align to your values.

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