Stop Watching the News (2019)

"> When was the last time you watched the news and thought, “thank God I saw that. Let me go take action.”?

I’ll answer for you: probably never."

This is what happens to a depoliticized population. When Trump announced the strike on the Iranian General, we were out on the streets within a few days to protest the possibility of a new war. Not taking action is a symptom of helplessness, apathy, or simply being overwhelmed by life. Alternatively, it can be because you passively support what is happening. You can combat the former ills by being part of a political organization that cares about these issues.

That said, I would recommend against TV. There's something about TV that just switches off the mind. The worst journalism is on TV, though it can be useful for monitoring live ongoing events.

On a large scale, perhaps so. But in terms of what I individually can accomplish, the answer is "nothing". The chances that my vote, my petition, my call to a politician, my letter to a newspaper, my post on social media, will affect the world in any way are infinitesimally small. Weighed against near certain negative mental health effects, it makes a lot of sense to just check out. Or at least to stop spending more than a few minutes per month on it.

If you really want to make a difference, spend five more minutes each day with your kid. Or checking in with someone in your life that's going through hard times.

> This seems like the author is explicitly arguing for the tragedy of the commons. Yes, any one individual getting 'wound up' doesn't accomplish much, but the public 'at large' getting wound up can and does effect real change sometimes.

There's an easy compromise: it's likely that some people are better off not watching the news. This group might be more sensitive to disruptive news and opinion pieces. It'd do them good to stay away from news.

This is similar to certain food allergies. Peanuts are good stuff, but some people have negative reactions to it. They are better off without peanuts.

Similarly, if your response to news is highly psychologically disruptive, you'd do well to stay away from it. It doesn't have to mean that you are shirking your responsibilities as a citizen. Rather than exhaust yourself by responding to local and temporal events, you could conserve your energies for longer-term projects that help the society at a fundamental level.

Yes, but what's the ratio where harm was done there, vs where the public outrage was entirely reasonable and good?

Public outrage is one check on societal institutions. The police are a check on general lawlessness and disorder, and the fact that sometimes they kill someone they really shouldn't have doesn't make us think, "well just get rid of the police then altogether I suppose". Why would we get rid of public outrage, just because sometimes it's wrong?

Public outrage is what makes journalism function as the fourth estate, after all. Investigative journalism of national-level issues in particular: what would the point of all of it be, if nobody read or cared? Thus, the author's argument is also an argument for investigate journalism of any non-'local' issue to cease to exist. Does this sound like a good idea?

I watch news because I want to know what's going on in my country and globally right now, biographies will not give me that knowledge. You don't need to stop watching the news, you just should detach your feelings from the facts and watch news from different sources. I watch liberal news in my country (equivalent to CNN in US) and conservative news (eq Fox in US I suppose) and I make my own conclusions on how to interpret what I see based on two different views. There is no such thing as unbiased news, everyone have his own views about world and will shape information in such a way to not experience cognitive dissonance.