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

theatlantic.com

161–170 of 333 posts

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

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, that is exactly the attitude that got us into the mess we are in. I for one care very little for activists doing journalism. Just tell people the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth as best as you can ascertain it and let them make their own choices.

If you have 1 hour a week or even 1 hour a day, the truths you choose to tell will look just like activism.

Then you should not be in journalism. It can't be done that way and what can be done that way is worse than useless.

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

#162

>Don't read the news, don't stay informed. >If you read too much news, it's bad for you. I do enjoy the idea of a newsbubble, as it really does not add much to your everyday life, knowing something bad happened here, or there - because the news is a marketing machine of commercials and local interests that sell your attention to sell stuff. But, it's also hilarious how they say too much is bad, it's akin to buzzfeed…

What purpose does it serve for you to be well informed about the democrats and republicans, what they vote on, who they elect, etc, when you have no control over their actions afterward? Same goes for voting. None of the research you do and the research others don't do will alter the outcome of the election.

It's not widely appreciated that the point of being well-informed is to influence what happens between elections. That's when the politics gets done - the lobbying efforts, candidate selections, control of local political groups, agenda and policy design, and so on.

Elections are just a process to rubber-stamp decisions that have already been made by groups of people who understand this.

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

#163
post #139

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

Guy is uncomfortable with a commentary magazine's commentary that evangelicals should not love a thrice-married pornstar-fucker because it's like, clearly liberal bias.

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

#164
Political news just expose the selfish nature of human being.

It is mostly a continuous attempt at manipulating people into thinking your party is good and that you should vote for this guy vs another. It shows how corrupted and dishonest people become, the more power they get. It's unhealthy by definition.

I disagree that the answer is ignoring the problem or tuning out politics as if it's something we can't control. Sure, we're powerless inside the golden prison of democracy, believing the lies of the current psychopath leading the country and without a real choice.

But we need to be aware of how rotten the situation is, fight state mandated indoctrination and hope enough people over time are going to reach the understanding that the root problem is centralisation of power, not what's the name of the current buffoon in charge of spending half of your salary.

I may be reading too much into this article; this is probably just another new age attempt at getting people to ignore whatever bombshells are being dropped between candidates before the elections.

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

#165
Yes, spectating is bad for your well being. If you want to feel better, join a political organization that accommodates discussion, education, strategizing, and action. I recommend most socialist outfits as they take democracy seriously. Even just having a regular live discussion of the news with close friends is a good start.

Here are some good books to read:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People%27s_History_of_the_Un...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

- https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/democracy-incorporated-2

- https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Power

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

#166

About 15 years ago, it didn't seem like the news added anything of value to my life, so I stopped actively consuming news. You get some from the environment if you don't live in a cave, but I don't go to any news sites, listen to or watch news, even click one-off news links on HN or reddit. I've stopped all active news consumption. I was right. It really didn't add anything of value to my life. I've never missed it.

Very similar on my end. Active talk news radio consumer. I stopped around 2012. Like you, I’ve noticed nothing missing but am generally happier. I was so out of the loop that I was surprised to hear Trump had not only gotten the republican nomination but won the bid for president. I thought about getting back into things and watched the presidential debate. Oh lord, what a mess.

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

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is a link to the wikipedia page on "Trump Derangement Syndrome", and contains little, if any, "explanation as to why". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_derangement_syndrome

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…

Very strange that an unusually terrible politician would have an unusual number of negative articles written about him, isn't it? Clearly this is bias in action. Many people don't realize that everyone has exactly the same moral standing, and that any indication to the contrary is not to be trusted.

Thank goodness we have the catchphrases "Orange Man Bad" and "Trump Derangement Syndrome" to safely allow us to ignore any and all criticism of the president. This certainly helps assuage any cognitive dissonance, which as we all know is a leftist plot.

Do make sure to read this extremely informative article from the eminently neutral Washington Times (here misidentified as the Washington Post, in what was surely an honest mistake) and while doing so keep in mind, that all politicians have a god-given right to exactly 50% positive coverage. This is as true for Trump as it is for Maduro, who as you know we laud precisely as much as we denigrate.

Just remember, anyone telling you that Donald Trump is going to reject any non-landslide loss and claim tens of millions of fraudulent votes without a shred of evidence, merely because he's told us this with his mouth, is clearly suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, their brain fried by a surfeit of orangeness.

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

#168

As I've noted here a few times: Just over 10 years ago, I conducted an experiment. I watched an hour of CNN every night but it was never that night's coverage. It was from exactly two weeks ago. It was amazing how much "breaking news!" was irrelevant or just outright wrong, how many large trend predictions were wrong, and how many "[person] will do X" were wrong. While the predictions could have been portrayed as opi…

It always surprises me to what degree US cable news, as opposed to print, seems to treat politics like entertainment and sports coverage. At least from an outsider's perspective. Maybe no surprise a reality TV star became President.

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

#169
post #65

This point rings strongly true to me. I have a number of members of friends/family who have become very difficult to be around, because they’ve become so intense/constantly outraged about politics, even if they are on the same end of the political spectrum as me: > The research doesn’t reveal precisely why we tend to dislike overly political people, but it doesn’t take too much imagination to guess that constant foam…

But Facebook and Twitter can sell many more ads this way. We are manipulated into constant outrage for someone else's profit.

While not wrong, the country is headed toward a revolution / Cival War. Similar to when Mao or Lenin came to power.

So yea, emotions are running a little high right now.

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

#170
post #93

The economist is great for this. Views aside, getting a single bolus of well-considered, well-written news once a week is wonderful. You “miss out” on the “did you hear what X said” water cooler talk, but the gains in understanding and attention are significant

In the past five or size years the Economist has sadly become quite partisan and unreadable..in their trump derangement they've lost a lot of the even keel view they'd previously had over the prior decades I'd been a reader. Sadly I still read but effectively skip all politics as the new Eric Schmidt led board have certainly co-opted the formerly drier view the editors formerly would have taken in exchange for a more…

Agree (though I dropped the Economist a bit earlier). The Financial Times has followed the same path unfortunately. I was a long time reader (15y+) and it used to be pretty austere and reliable (good things in my opinion) but in the last few years it has become pretty much a gigantic opinion piece, with all articles biased to push a narrative. I know people around me who also cancelled their subscription for similar reasons (I am happy to pay for news but have no interest in paying for propaganda).
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