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Reading too much political news is bad for your well-being

theatlantic.com

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Re: Reading too much political news is bad for your well-being

#41

Post by ravenstine »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #17

We should redesign the news. What would it ideally be like?

We can't just redesign the news because the incentive structure isn't there to do so. You have to Foster a culture where people don't treat politics like religion. When the culture doesn't give undue attention to self important people who wear suits and ties, then the incentive structure changes how news is produced to fit that environment. But if we just treat issues like these as engineering problems, tweaking variables to fit a broken environment without considering the human aspect, the system simply won't support whatever improvements we try to make.

Re: Reading too much political news is bad for your well-being

#42

Post by Grollicus »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #18

I think the problem isn't the news, but the obvious injustice that politics gets away with. In germany, the minister of transportation lost the taxpayer 500 million euros, with a publicity stunt to bolster his party in a local election. He is now lying in people's face about it, everyone knows it and he does not have to step back. Instead, they wrote a fluff piece about him, because he managed to buy some masks for t…

If you want to get really depressed you should look into the state of our media where they themselves have something at stake. One examples from the top of my head would be Peer Steinbrücks destruction in the weeks running up to the 2013 election where they collectivly decided that fighting against tax evasion is bad. Or the reporting about Article 13 where they forgot to ask critical questions about how some of the arguments made absolutely no sense and could someone please explain that in more detail?

On the other hand if you are looking for more nuanced reporting I've come to like deutschlandfunk radio lately.

Re: Reading too much political news is bad for your well-being

#43

Post by nunez »

deadalus wrote: post #39

I get very frustrated, sad and emotional when I read CNN or any of the major news sites. So I avoid it. Instead I use Wikipedia once a month : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events/Septembe...

This is incredible. I wish I knew about this years ago. I have long been looking for impartial news sources. I used to listen to CBC, NPR, and ABC (Australia) to try and get more angles to a story, but that got tiring.

Re: Reading too much political news is bad for your well-being

#45

Post by oblib »

eutropia wrote: post #7
smitty1e wrote: post #4

> After controlling for household income, education, age, gender, race, marital status, and political views, I found that people who were “very interested in politics” were about 8 percentage points more likely to be “not very happy” about life than people who were “not very interested” in politics. If we could locate these philosopher-kings from Aristotle and put them in charge, then ignoring politics might be safe.…

I am very interested in policy, but I do not watch the news. Why? Because it contains no actionable information that changes my decisions: I'm still going to vote in every election, I'm still going to research the candidates when the time comes, I'm still going to volunteer at the polls... The news is trivia, generally speaking. When I have a more active life in politics I'll take the Chomskian approach to news, but…

I don't watch the news either but I do scan headlines here and on AP and/or Reuters every day and follow up on what interests me.

I can't say "it contains no actionable information that changes my decisions". For example the news that Obama wanted to renegotiate the "SOFA" agreement before he even took office made me regret my decision to vote for him in `08 and I did not vote for him again in 2012 because I already knew he would not end those wars.

The only actionable thing I've really done since is keep others informed via FB of our progress to end those wars but for the most part interest in that fell off long ago with their yellow ribbon car magnets so it hasn't amounted to much real action.

Re: Reading too much political news is bad for your well-being

#46

Post by fab1an »

I've been trying to cut news and social media out of my daily habits as much as possible, and am attempting to replace it with reading books whenever possible. It sure isn't easy, but I feel significantly more productive, healthier, happier and overall more human on days where this works particularly well.

What helps is to not have the phone in your bedroom and charge iit elsewhere instead - replace it with a Kindle or a book and rread that instead for a few minutes upon waking up.

Re: Reading too much political news is bad for your well-being

#47

Post by verroq »

pjc50 wrote: post #38
verroq wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won’t call some of these reporters journalists, they are more like activists. They aren’t interested in keeping society informed, they just want to push their agenda.

The only worthwhile journalism is activism. Discomfort the powerful. Unfortunately it's dangerous to be too good at this, see Daphne Caruana Galizia.

The truth doesn’t have an agenda

Re: Reading too much political news is bad for your well-being

#48

Post by tijuco2 »

ars wrote: post #25
dr_dshiv wrote: post #17

We should redesign the news. What would it ideally be like?

If the news could: 1. Stop publishing minority opinions as if they were representative. 2. Stop publishing minor stupidities because they are "exciting". 3. Stop trying to be entertaining or interesting. Stick with informative, and if you get less views, so be it. 4. ???? Open to suggestions. Maybe we could write up a set of voluntary rules for journalists with ethics.

Here, the best definition by Denzel. The need to be first, not the need to be true. They don't care who they hurt. https://youtu.be/GXYzjYBTlpA

Re: Reading too much political news is bad for your well-being

#50

Post by smitty1e »

Scalestein wrote: post #19
smitty1e wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My (apparently unpopular) point is that non-participation affords no solace.

It isn't non participation though. You can participate in politics (local, state or federal) without consuming the 24/7 news cycle. The "news" is usually pushing doom gloom and fear no matter which side of the spectrum you are on because that gets the clicks. Rarely do political issues have meaningful developments everyday so continually checking not actually enhancing your ability to participate.

Fair point. My response is quite binary when there is a full spectrum of engagement possibility.
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