111–120 of 139 posts
Almost 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 cl…
> 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. The article is dated "July 29" so I'll assume 2019. We have a pretty huge counterexample right now: the pandemic has led to a lot of critical information needing to be conveyed to everyone very rapidly. For example, people need to be aware that they cannot leave home, or th…
> 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.
The 24 hour cable news cycle is toxic, yes, but there are still daily papers and even less frequent periodicals with generally calmer perspectives.
> 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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This guy must be loads of fun at dinner parties ;) There's nothing wrong with saying "I have no interest in participating in the outrage circus with you". The whole point is that that cycle is not fun, dinner party or not.
Adding "...and I don't really care to" could easily come across as smug and even condescending, though it depends on the tone in which it's delivered.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> 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. How is that a good thing? "Far right" and "far left" are both perfectly fine terms to describe certain political ideologies and movements.
Or, to put it another way, if half of the electorate holds fairly similar views, they cannot reasonably be described as "far right" (or "far left", for that matter). The "far" end would be maybe one percent, not fifty.
In any case, I appreciate journalists that simply describe the situation, and allow me to decide for myself what I think about it. Hard to remember now, but that's how it actually used to be.
He's saying that people's very-common argument that "it's important to know everything happening in the world" is bunk, and voracious consumption of news is not useful and is harmful. You can get 99% of utility from news with just a few objective headlines and summaries, once a week tops.
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 an…
What I find annoying are blanket statements like "don't follow the news". Says who? Who is this guy to tell me what is reasonable to consider interesting, and whether following world news is something I do "to worry"?
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…