Obligatory mention: Aaron Schwartz's "I hate the news". [0] [0]: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews
Thanks for sharing this. I haven't read this before.
Rest in peace Schwartz.
Stop Watching the News (2019)
101–110 of 139 posts
Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)
#102> 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…
I have nothing to add except some commentary describing why or why not certain issue go viral.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...
The summary is that controversial issues are the ones that go viral. Not the ones that necessarily deserve to go viral. That is the theory of the post I linked -- I do not make any commentary whatsoever about any individual event.
Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)
#103It 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…
> The mainstream news didn't really seem to think it was a huge deal mid-February.
I have to disagree, or maybe we have a different idea of what is mainstream. The New York Times front page was making a big stink about the coronavirus in Wuhan as early as mid-January. By mid-February they were already quoting experts in European countries telling people to be prepared for a pandemic.
> Even then, what was anybody really able to do to prepare?
For me, more critical than stocking up on anything, was just more time to adjust to the new reality and grieve for what would be lost. I cancelled a number of trips ahead of time, and correctly called that our office wouldn't reopen in two weeks as it had originally been planned to do. I think it's just made the adjustment easier.
> Do you have any recommendations for good monthly magazines that do this well?
The Economist is solid, and in the last few years they added professionally recorded audio versions of their content available in tandem with the digital edition that drops every Thursday. It's like a podcast, except fact checked and with a good sense of perspective. I put it on when I'm cooking or cleaning. I'm also a fan of the Financial Times's Big Read (their weekly magazine stories) and they too put those out in audio form.
When I have more time, I like reading Harpers, the Atlantic, and the NY Times magazine.
Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)
#104"Millions of Americans staying at home are relying on Amazon" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6U2Un5kEdI
The Church committee hearings in 1975 had the CIA admitting they had key people in magazine and print media, but when pressed if they had people in TV, they requested a closed session.
If this clip showed just one set of news stations (all NBC stations) saying the same line, that would be one thing (they're just getting phrases to include from higher up) but it's tons of different networks.
Sure they could just be cutting up and reporting the same AP article they licensed or a press release (Occam's Razor) but it's also likely this particular narrative is pushed, at best, by advertisers wanting a specific message, and at worst, by the government or the CIA. It has happened before (Operation Mockingbird and COINTELPRO). It's silly to think it's not happening now.
Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> The mainstream news didn't really seem to think it was a huge deal mid-February. I have to disagree, or maybe we have a different idea of what is mainstream. The New York Times front page was making a big stink about the coronavirus in Wuhan as early as mid-January. By mid-February they were already quoting experts in European countries telling people to be prepared for a pandemic. > Even then, what was anybody rea…
> I have to disagree, or maybe we have a different idea of what is mainstream. The New York Times front page was making a big stink about the coronavirus in Wuhan as early as mid-January. By mid-February they were already quoting experts in European countries telling people to be prepared for a pandemic.
Fair, maybe it's the fact that the media is constantly catastrophizing everything that I didn't pay attention to coverage like that. I did start paying attention as soon as I started hearing the warning bells from a bunch of experts in mid February.
Thanks for the recommendation of The Economist. I wish they had a monthly option, looks like they only do weekly? I've had so much trouble finding a good news source or magazine that has a monthly edition / subscription. Guess there's not much money in that.
Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)
#106Almost all news is a race to the bottom and full of dark patterns. I'm quite surprised to see how many people here are defending the news. I see people who seem to have extreme anxiety caused by the news. Constantly refreshing NYTimes or Twitter. Its not healthy.
Read slow news. The article mentions local news which I agree with wholeheartedly. The Economist comes out once a month. There's balanced coverage and no clickbait. There's no homepage to constantly refresh or articles designed to induce outrage. You know that they are funded by subscriptions and not from selling your data.
I think that's the biggest point. Services that make money by selling your data or by serving you ads should not be trusted by default.
Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)
#107It 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.
Yeah, people can take things too far. There are definitely safe ways to go to a store, if the store is taking precautions. I'm not so sure about indoor restaurants right now in the US, but I guess you could make a case for it.
On the other hand, I can see why being gaslit for a few months would make lots of people neurotic. The sky was really falling for awhile before anybody in power in the US seemed willing to acknowledge it. Personally, I've lost a lot of faith in our public health departments to have the freedom to tell it like it is, or to have the budget to do anything about it. Being in New York City for the last few months probably doesn't help.
Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)
#108Earlier 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%.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...
> 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 cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)
#109> 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…
I have nothing to add except some commentary describing why or why not certain issue go viral. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage... The summary is that controversial issues are the ones that go viral. Not the ones that necessarily deserve to go viral. That is the theory of the post I linked -- I do not make any commentary whatsoever about any individual event.
Along these lines, CGP Grey's video about Anger Thought Germs is an excellent breakdown of why anger spreads like nothing else:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
You combine that behavior with social media, especially Twitter, and the symbiotic relationship with the news media. It's a non-stop anger generation machine. Rapidly iterating on these thoughts, packaging and surfacing the most potent, viral version. Any nuance and context long ago removed.
Re: Stop Watching the News (2019)
#110For 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.
I know it's hard for people to stomach. But look at the difference in the number of results for far left vs far right and you can see the bias.