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Stop Watching the News (2019)

josephcwells.com

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Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)

#81

Post by cellar_door »

shadowprofile77 wrote: post #70
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…

On the other hand many people (I can think of a number of them from my personal circle of acquaintances alone) learned to be terrified of the virus to a wholly unreasonable and panicked degree that doesn't even let them rationally consider risks vs. benefits in going out for a bit of exercise or to buy needed groceries. This happened because of the news, frequently reporting tentative theories and information about w…

Agree. And there's actually empirical data to back that up: individuals dramatically overestimate the infectiousness and fatality rate of COVID-19 relative to expert opinion.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w27245.pdf

Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)

#82

Post by [deleted] »

ianleeclark wrote: post #54
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.

> 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 d…

[deleted]

Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)

#83

Post by mshron »

hirundo wrote: post #58
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.

Fair, but I think for the purposes of this article, social media accounts (could be friends or corporations) that talk about breaking events would also count as "the news". Both in the plusses and the minuses! Upside, you're more aware of what's going on. Downside, you still can't do anything about it. Only faster.

In a lot of ways, current-events Twitter is more like cable news than it is like reading a weekly. All hot takes, no time for context. But like you said, for idiosyncratic folks, the "lifestyle" content is going to be much more relevant on Twitter than on CNN.

Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)

#84

Post by Trasmatta »

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'm dubious of this claim that those paying attention to the news were those best prepared for COVID. The mainstream news didn't really seem to think it was a huge deal mid-February. I feel like the people that were "prepared" were those listening to certain experts sounding the alarm.

Even then, what was anybody really able to do to prepare? The best you could have done was to have gotten your shopping in during mid to late February before the panic buying started. And even then, most goods weren't that hard to come by. The other thing would have been having a good emergency fund, to prepare for the economic turmoil and potential job losses. But that's something you would have needed to prepare for much, much earlier, and should be something everyone does, regardless of their news intake.

> I find that weekly and monthly magazines strike a better balance

I agree on this. Do you have any recommendations for good monthly magazines that do this well?

Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)

#85

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #76
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

You think the news that causes widespread public outrage is substantially inaccurate 25-50% of the time? I'd be shocked if it was even 5%.

Yes. About a quarter of the time I hear about some public outrage, I've definitively concluded that it's misinformed. It's possible there's selection bias in which outrages I hear about, but I don't have a strong reason to expect that.

Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)

#86

Post by Trasmatta »

the_af wrote: post #32

I'm not sure. Is this talking about TV news? If so, I might agree. TV oversimplifies and goes for the sensational and emotional. Plus, they have hours and hours to fill even if there's no content. These days TV news is almost completely a time waster. But other kinds of news? Disagreed. Especially world and national news. Those are the most interesting. If you keep yourself focused on community news -- which are both…

> Those are the most interesting. If you keep yourself focused on community news -- which are both relevant and at the same time the most inane -- you stay parochial, which is ok if you don't mind it, but I do. I find the world and world news interesting and relevant. My immediate community is not that interesting.

As someone who deals with anxiety, I don't find world news interesting and relevant. I find it panic and anxiety inducing, and it's rarely ever actionable. Local news is generally much more useful and actionable for my daily life.

I still find it important to stay informed of general world events, but I just can't mentally follow it on a daily or even weekly basis anymore.

Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)

#87

Post by TulliusCicero »

brmgb wrote: post #80
TulliusCicero wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the angle the author is taking here, I can hardly believe that he'd be saying "yeah but spending your time on Twitter is good and productive", considering its reputation as a source of constant outrage seems even worse than for internet or TV news. So, the same reasoning applies. You could also look at something covered more by regular news sources, like how the GOP's attempted repeal of Obamacare was blocked b…

> The author's argument is one in favor of selfishness: being a well-informed citizen of your state or country does not benefit you personally, so why bother? I don't think that the author point at all. He is arguing that the news in their modern form have mostly become a form of entertainment. I will hasard that someone who would forever stop following the news but actually engaged in any form of local actions conne…

Hard disagree. Look at his own reasoning:

> But to what end?

> Aside from feeling bad for the victims –and worrying the same thing might happen to you – you’re powerless to make a positive impact. Hearing the news is merely a distraction.

> “But,” you might argue, “everything on the news doesn’t revolve around tragedies. I need to know what’s going on in the world!”

> Do you really?

> 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.

> If that’s the case, what’re you actually getting from the news? Aggravated? Wound up? Certainly not informed about anything important.

> Most of the time, watching the news is as useful as watching The Jersey Shore. You’re watching it to turn off your brain and mainline outrage.

He's not arguing about something that's not "real news"; an enormous tragedy occurring somewhere, like a tsunami killing many people, obviously qualifies as real news. He's arguing that it leading to "just outrage", just sentiment, is not productive. But that's only true if you look at it in an individual sense, of being productive in your own life. If you look at it being productive in aggregate, in society as a whole, the reasoning doesn't work anymore.

Now, you could make the argument that the author is unaware of the many thousands of times that outrage in its various forms -- like protests, or riots, or revolutions -- has led to significant changes; perhaps he is simply astoundingly ignorant of essentially all history, and thus doesn't know that outrage can do things like, say, get America to leave the Vietnam war, or get a President to resign from office, to use two well-known examples. But I'm not sure that's a more charitable or plausible take.

Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)

#88

Post by djsumdog »

californical wrote: post #7
djsumdog wrote: post #2

I love this post. I rarely watch the news any more. I was surprised that during the beginning of this current era, I found myself watching news for the first time (like not just clips posted elsewhere, but explicitly seeking it out) and it's honestly degraded even more than I can imagine. Most major news networks talk to their audience like children. They provide entertainment or promote the agenda of their advertise…

I would also highly recommend your local NPR affiliate radio station. They can vary in quality, but tend to be pretty excellent at just telling you "what's happening" without much agenda. I think Colorado has the best NPR affiliate of all time -- they go by CPR. Really popular, even among younger people. Highest quality news and radio... I wonder if any other states/cities have similar quality public radio?

I really started to tune out NPR back around 2008 after Inskeep's terrible interview with Ahmadinejad. I wrote about it more in detail back then:

https://battlepenguin.com/politics/wipedoffthemap/

I use to listen to Democracy Now back then too, but I really don't think either news source as really held up over the years. They're both very polarized, and the quality of their content has gone down as well.

Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)

#89

Post by miesman »

I made this change 20 years ago and it improved the quality of my life. I’d suggest for someone to try it and see for themselves. Start with skipping one day then a few days then try to go for a week. See how you feel for yourself and then decide if you want to continue.

Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)

#90

Post by NikolaNovak »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #76
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

You think the news that causes widespread public outrage is substantially inaccurate 25-50% of the time? I'd be shocked if it was even 5%.

I'd be shocked if it were less than 50%

Commercial news by definition is looking to shock/sensationalize/rile up. It may not be on a conscious level but it's a race to gather & keep attention - boring stuff won't cut it.

I'm not supporting author's point mind you, I believe education/informedness is the only thing we have approaching a silver bullet. But the amount of internet justice and vigilanteism we have today, a lot of it inspired by various kinds of news - from local cable TV news indicating our suburbian neighbourhoods are a pithole of violence, to politically charged national news, to hilarious reporting on science and medicine... it all outrages and most of it is at best numbing, at worst utterly wrong.

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