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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

#151

Post by pjc50 »

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…

> 2016 he admitted to me he does not watch any news, read any news

> He then accused me of living in a bubble

This kind of tu quoque thing happens a lot when people get defensive. Accusing you of the thing they know they're in the wrong over.

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

#152

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

gaze wrote: post #98

Sorry but what exactly is non-political news? I’m convinced that people who talk about “politics” as a thing external to them are just refusing to engage with the parts of the world that are uncomfortable to them.

Looking at the CNN front page for a good source of examples, non-political news would be things like:

* Evacuations ordered in Colorado and Utah as crews battle new blazes

* NFL reports no new positive Covid-19 tests

* Preorders are open for the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro

When people discuss political news, they're referring to stories like "Biden is putting red states in play" or "Mexican restaurant takes political stand with sign declaring 'No Love, No Tacos'" - stories which are fundamentally about partisans doing battle with each other.

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

#153

Post by dr_dshiv »

ravenstine wrote: post #41
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 vari…

I hear you — but I can also see the opposite perspective, at least in the case of TV journalism. Once we lost the almost religious reverence for the nightly news anchor, it devolved into pure spin.

I also think that in a case like the news, there is a real need to step outside of the current cultural phenomena and engineer it — what are the known requirements for the news and how do we move from here to there.

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

#154

Post by makomk »

dudul wrote: post #87
dageshi wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Trump caught Covid I actually thought to myself that this is a soap opera plot from a parallel dimension and the writers had just jumped the shark.

I'm actually curious to understand why it was such a big deal. A fair amount of world leaders, ministers, representatives and all did get sick. Was this not mentioned in the news at all in the US?

The US media's coverage of Covid-19 outside the US mostly seems to be focused on pushing the narrative that the US is uniquely failing at dealing with it due to Trump. Most of the time they don't actually lie to do this, but the facts they include are very selectively chosen. So for example Boris Johnson's Covid infection got a lot of attention since he's seen as a kind of Trump analogue, but I don't think others did so much.

(There was a really... interesting progression in the NYT's coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak in Spain where they downplayed it as obviously less severe than say Florida, omitting the already much worse trajectory it was on, then when it finally and inevitably became too bad to ignore they turned that whole thing into an allegory for Trump's failings too.)

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

#155

Post by dtech »

pattusk wrote: post #149
gridlockd wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> MSNBC at least seems to be informing their viewers on domestic issues better than that baseline. The difference is only about 5% to the "no news" crowd. Also, people that are better-educated tend to lean liberal and therefore might prefer to consume liberal outlets, but that doesn't mean liberal outlets are better at informing people. Looking at the frontpage of MSNBC, it's almost exclusively political opinion piec…

> Research has found that media that is upsetting is more addictive? Do you have any source for tjat research? (Not doubting you, just curious.)

Anger is the emotion that most activates you and spurs you to action [1]

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1528077

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

#157

Post by qwerty456127 »

Egoistically, the less you care about politics - the better it is for you. Caring about politics is actually a duty, a contribution (of your time and health in particular), but in reality, for most of the people who seemingly care, it's merely a drug.

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

#158

Post by DC-3 »

nunez wrote: post #43
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.

I use the BBC World News site as my homepage.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world

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

#159

Post by augustt »

kyle_martin1 wrote: post #134
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 :)

New conservative gaslighting strategy detected: Trump is good because it's statistically impossible for him to be so bad
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