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Stop Watching the News (2019)

josephcwells.com

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Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)

#51

Post by downerending »

tobltobs wrote: post #29
wayupthere wrote: post #12

For those who still want news, I think reuters provides the most balance. They do still lean left at times though with overuse of phrases like "far right".

Doing a Google search 'site:reuters.com "far right"' I couldn't find any hit where the "far-right" would be inappropriate. Could you give an example where Reuters is left-leaning in your opinion.

That seems to be true. But partly so because there don't seem to be any hits for "far right" in their coverage of US politics. Good for them.

I doubt this would be true for NYT, WaPo, etc., but I am indeed too lazy to look.

For those too young to remember what reasonable journalism used to look like, Reuters and AP are probably the closest, in the MSM.

Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)

#52

Post by TulliusCicero »

Arun2009 wrote: post #45
TulliusCicero wrote: post #4

> If that’s the case, what’re you actually getting from the news? Aggravated? Wound up? Certainly not informed about anything important. 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. Like, it's very easy to point to a variety of to…

> 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 g…

This would be a better take. If you genuinely feel that being more informed about current events doesn't outweigh the psychological damage involved, especially if it stops you from being a contributing citizen in other ways, I could see an argument for checking out.

My counter-argument is specifically that if you scale up this advice to everyone or even most people, the implications are really awful.

Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)

#53

Post by karatestomp »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #14

I never look at CNN, MSNBC or FoxNews. I feel sites like reuters.com or apnews.com give me a good level of news without the emotional content. I agree about local newspapers. We should worry more about what's going on close to us versus Washington.

List of political activities ordered by actual effects on the world, more to less:

1) involvement in local politics (say, with a party or with advocacy groups),

2) voting in local politics,

3) involvement in state or national politics,

...

1,000) voting in state or national elections.

You're arguably a better citizen if you ignore everything past your county or metro area entirely but get really involved in the local stuff—internal party activity, commission meetings, GOTV, activism, that kind of thing, maybe even run for office—compared with your average only-votes-every-two-years-at-best-but-reads-the-NYT folks. Caring about Federal politics, unless you get really involved, only makes sense as entertainment or out of some kind of categorical-imperative obligation.

Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)

#54

Post by ianleeclark »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #33
TulliusCicero wrote: post #4

> If that’s the case, what’re you actually getting from the news? Aggravated? Wound up? Certainly not informed about anything important. 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. Like, it's very easy to point to a variety of to…

There are many similar cases where the outrage was wrong , the facts of the case weren't as originally reported, and the resulting outrage couldn't be rolled back or productively channeled. My heart breaks at the idea of a guy being murdered with no consequences, but that can't mean that we embrace anything and everything which delivers those consequences.

> My heart breaks at the idea of a guy being murdered with no consequences, but that can't mean that we embrace anything and everything which delivers those consequences.

We don't. The outrage isn't even remotely what it ought to be. We see the videos, we perform grief, and then we forget. I don't see where this belief that we're somehow overreacting comes from: every couple of months, one of these murders in broad daylights happens to have the cop fired, only for them to be later rehired elsewhere. If your fear of overreaction reflected even a tenth of reality, they simply wouldn't be wearing, "I can't breathe," shirts.

Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)

#55

Post by rubber_duck »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #4

> If that’s the case, what’re you actually getting from the news? Aggravated? Wound up? Certainly not informed about anything important. 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. Like, it's very easy to point to a variety of to…

>If the author here had gotten his way, nobody would've seen the video, nobody would've been outraged, and nothing would've happened after Ahmed was murdered. Am I supposed to believe that this is an improvement?

Well you need to compare against wasted time on framed narratives, misguided outrage leading to self-defeating policies, etc.

It's like saying poking holes in the ground randomly is a good method for discovering oil because someone lucked out.

Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)

#56

Post by [deleted] »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #33
TulliusCicero wrote: post #4

> If that’s the case, what’re you actually getting from the news? Aggravated? Wound up? Certainly not informed about anything important. 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. Like, it's very easy to point to a variety of to…

There are many similar cases where the outrage was wrong , the facts of the case weren't as originally reported, and the resulting outrage couldn't be rolled back or productively channeled. My heart breaks at the idea of a guy being murdered with no consequences, but that can't mean that we embrace anything and everything which delivers those consequences.

[deleted]

Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)

#57

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

mshron wrote: post #31

It seems like a weird time to post this article to HN. Aren't we all living through an extremely good example of why paying attention to the news pays off? Generally speaking, people I know who read the news prepared for SARS-CoV-2 by mid-February, and those who were disconnected from the news were caught off guard a month later when everything shut down. One thing I will happily grant is that _watching_ the news is…

People I know who read the news were prepared in mid-February, but they're now extraordinarily neurotic. One of them won't allow visits from even his girlfriend and expects that American manufacturing will collapse within a few months; another doesn't plan to visit restaurants or stores until 2021. They're the ones who I most want to shake and say, hey, it won't hurt you to stop seeking out bad news.

Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)

#58

Post by hirundo »

mshron wrote: post #31

It seems like a weird time to post this article to HN. Aren't we all living through an extremely good example of why paying attention to the news pays off? Generally speaking, people I know who read the news prepared for SARS-CoV-2 by mid-February, and those who were disconnected from the news were caught off guard a month later when everything shut down. One thing I will happily grant is that _watching_ the news is…

I learned about the risk from individuals on twitter long before mass media took it seriously. A news channel is a pre curated collection of editors and reporters. I don't think many do a good job of it, due to my ideosyncracies and their incentives. I find it much better to curate my own channel from around the web ... like HN. Modern tech makes it easy.

Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)

#59

Post by raz32dust »

Stop watching the news for entertainment. Start watching the news as a means of learning the truth. Change passive consumption to active consumption. Involve your critical thinking, discuss it more, understand opposing viewpoints, be really engaged in it. Even if you do the other things the author suggests, as long as you do it passively for entertainment, they would suffer from the same drawbacks.

As a by-product, you'd realize that you can only consume so much news in a day, and would automatically optimize for the best quality.

Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)

#60

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #47
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many similar cases where the outrage was wrong , the facts of the case weren't as originally reported, and the resulting outrage couldn't be rolled back or productively channeled. My heart breaks at the idea of a guy being murdered with no consequences, but that can't mean that we embrace anything and everything which delivers those consequences.

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 out…

I would guess the ratio isn't much below 1:1, which I don't find acceptable. If a friend told me shocking stories about my coworkers, and 50% of them or even 25% of them were wrong, I'd stop listening to her.

As I mentioned in another comment thread, I don't think the author objects (and I certainly don't object) to in-depth investigations of national or global issues. That's a vanishingly small portion of what the news as instantiated today does.

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