Reading too much political news is bad for your well-being • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by kyle_martin1 » Sun, Oct 18, 2020, 6:58 PM UTC

Reading too much negative anything is bad for the psyche. It just so happens that the MSM is full-on TDS and they can't seem to let go. Trump is the blackhole for MSM, everything is somehow connected to "Orange Man Bad". Moreover, the Washington Post reported that 90% of Trump's coverage is negative [1].

Do you know anyone that is 90% terrible? I doubt it. Taking a step back from one's political views, which is hard for a lot of people, it becomes obvious that there's little honest and unbiased reporting going on within MSM.

Sure it's fine to read information with a particular viewpoint (be it conservative or liberal), as long as the reader is made aware that the "facts" are framed from a particular viewpoint. Otherwise it's just brainwashing and intellectually dishonest. I think any rational person can get behind this sort of "zero-trust framework".

[1] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jan/15/a-broadcast...

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

#132

Post by AdamGibbins » Sun, Oct 18, 2020, 7:01 PM UTC

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...

https://weekly.hatnote.com/ might be of interest, weekly update with the most active wikipedia entries. Tends to be news events.

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

#133

Post by casefields » Sun, Oct 18, 2020, 7:03 PM UTC

vinbreau wrote: post #128

I reconnected with an old friend from childhood a few years ago. I knew he was politically opposite from me so I kept politics out of our conversations... do you know how hard that is? It's hard enough that it requires effort, effort that he noted. He accused me of being closed off and never saying what I really wanted to. I made it clear we should not go there. He told me that several years ago watching the news mad…

Who do you think the get out the vote targets? It's people that barely have an opinion nor care enough to get off their butt and vote.

>Just because one has the right to vote does not mean just any vote is right. Citizens should not vote badly. This duty to avoid voting badly is grounded in a general duty not to engage in collectively harmful activities when the personal cost of restraint is low. Good governance is a public good. Bad governance is a public bad. We should not be contributing to public bads when the benefit to ourselves is low. Many democratic theorists agree that we shouldn’t vote badly, but that’s because they think we should vote well. This demands too much of citizens.

>Most voters have no idea what is going on–they may not even know who their leaders are, and certainly do not know who is the best candidate. Imagine that someone asks you for directions to a local restaurant. If you have no idea where the restaurant is, you should not make it up. You should not tell the person some guess that seems sort of plausible to you. You should tell them you don’t know and let them get directions from someone more knowledgeable.

>Ignorant voting is even worse than ignorant giving of directions, because voting is an exercise of political power (albeit a very small one)–to vote for a policy is not only to make a recommendation, but to request that the policy be imposed on others by force.

[Polluting the Polls: When Citizens Should Not Vote](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0004840080258730...

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

#134

Post by kyle_martin1 » Sun, Oct 18, 2020, 7:03 PM UTC

kyle_martin1 wrote: post #131

Reading too much negative anything is bad for the psyche. It just so happens that the MSM is full-on TDS and they can't seem to let go. Trump is the blackhole for MSM, everything is somehow connected to "Orange Man Bad". Moreover, the Washington Post reported that 90% of Trump's coverage is negative [1]. Do you know anyone that is 90% terrible? I doubt it. Taking a step back from one's political views, which is hard…

Downvotes but no comments for an honest discussion? I'm not surprised given the culture of young, white, male SF liberals :)

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

#135

Post by jader201 » Sun, Oct 18, 2020, 7:08 PM UTC

I’ve come to realize that if someone is making money from delivering news, it’s not news in the sense of the priory being to deliver facts.

The priority is to make money, with news and “facts” being secondary (or even further down the list). Most of the time, facts are uninteresting and therefore not prone to gain a lot of viewers — at least not when there is competing “news” that is more about being interesting than factual.

In other words, I no longer trust viewership and/or ad-driven “news”. Which pretty much means almost all news of all forms, including TV, web-based, and social media.

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

#136

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Oct 18, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

vinbreau wrote: post #128

I reconnected with an old friend from childhood a few years ago. I knew he was politically opposite from me so I kept politics out of our conversations... do you know how hard that is? It's hard enough that it requires effort, effort that he noted. He accused me of being closed off and never saying what I really wanted to. I made it clear we should not go there. He told me that several years ago watching the news mad…

[deleted]

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

#137

Post by watwut » Sun, Oct 18, 2020, 7:19 PM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #96

pjc50 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This opinion is quite new. Unfortunately journalism has been coopted by such folks. We do need activists, but they don’t have to be journalists. Maybe these groups on youtube that are just filming things without interrupting with questions are the journalists of the future ... https://youtu.be/pW_jsS_JnMY

It is not new, it is more of return back to where journalism started.

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

#138

Post by scotchmi_st » Sun, Oct 18, 2020, 7:24 PM UTC

jader201 wrote: post #135

I’ve come to realize that if someone is making money from delivering news, it’s not news in the sense of the priory being to deliver facts. The priority is to make money, with news and “facts” being secondary (or even further down the list). Most of the time, facts are uninteresting and therefore not prone to gain a lot of viewers — at least not when there is competing “news” that is more about being interesting than…

I agree, but there also exist papers, magazines and news sites that have capitalized on the fact that literally anyone can report the news these days, to provide news at a slower, more accurate rate.

The Atlantic's Coronavirus coverage has been excellent for example, and the FT (while I don't always agree with the opinion pieces) has some of the most accurate and sober reporting around- often at the expense of being the first paper to a story.

When the price of information drops to near-zero, the niche papers can fill is to provide _trustworthy_ information. This could be where every reputable paper goes in the future.

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

#139

Post by watwut » Sun, Oct 18, 2020, 7:24 PM UTC

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #112

I stick with I stopped reading The Atlantic because they keep pushing these rag newspaper articles. What's on the front page of The Atlantic right now? "Evangelicals Made a Bad Bargain With Trump" and "After Trump, the Republican Party May Become More Extreme." Garbage. I stick with Reuters, PBS NewsHour, and others because I want news and not think pieces.

Why are those two garbage? I am not American and here local religious conservatives adopted Trump. Reading American radical evangelical writings, they are pro Trump too. Open support of Biden is superrare. And whether the Republicans become more radical is interesting question

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

#140

Post by didibus » Sun, Oct 18, 2020, 7:30 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #115

ggggtez wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> says person commenting on a news aggregation site This story didn't contain anything actionable that changes your decisions either, and yet you still read it and spent the time to comment. I don't see a substantive difference between reading HN and reading following political news. Nearly everything on this site (not even just this piece) will not affect your ability to accomplish your goals in anyway. It's a distr…

Disagree. Let's suppose for a moment that we ever reach a point where the democratic process gets involved with the question of how best to manage the western forests (what's left of them) in the USA. There will be people arguing for regular understory and brush burning, and others arguing against it. Let's suppose that you're a citizen who gets to vote in some way on this matter. What will you base your vote on? The…

Agree, educating oneself is a great investment even if not immediately actionable. The knowledge you gained will pay dividends later when it comes in handy.

The issue with news is that I'm not sure reading all news sources is an effective way of educating yourself.

Another problem though is that of shared values and goals. In your example you said:

> the democratic process gets involved with the question of how best to manage the western forests

But how does it even get to this point? Does news play a bigger role in that part of the democratic process? The part where we decide on our values and our priorities?