“Being concerned” makes us feel like we’re doing something when we’re not"
- yes! just stop saying "we are there for you and we support you" - well no you are at home on a phone typing things to make yourself feel better and useful.
Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)
361–370 of 741 posts
Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)
#362There are things that happen in the news that may affect your day to day life. Apart from the obvious things such as covid, there are a lot of things going on all the time that may influence your voting decisions (not just in the run up, but the entire time someone is in office), purchasing decisions, where you go on vacation, who you want to work for, how you get to work today etc. I guess if that is fine for you, t…
Not sure why any of this news absolutely has to come from TV in an entertainment mashup in it's delivery.
It doesn't. You can read a newspaper and get that exact info without the doomsaying that comes with TV.
Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)
#363Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same here, just scan news.google.com periodically, never watch anything unintentionally [0]. The incessant talking heads are such obvious brainwashers, whenever I get tricked into watching some in a clip or at a bar/taqueria it's utterly offensive and patronizing manipulative trash. I can't imagine how broken people are who constantly consume the stuff. [0] youtube-dl is a godsend for maintaining this without totally…
Google News is filled with spam and cheap attention grabbing garbage these days IMO. It’s also highly targeted leading to a bubble. But I agree with both of you otherwise!
> highly targeted leading to a bubble
I wish there were automation scripts one could leave running that literally just expanded ones bubble back to objective normalcy.
Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)
#364I fully agree with this. Scanning Google News or a couple of the more professional international news services like BBC / Al Jazeera / Reuters I still feel pretty well informed (and confident that there's usually nothing of immediate consequence to me) but it doesn't grow into "expert analysis" or impact my feelings much. Here's another thing I noticed: how manipulated / manipulative it is. And not just news and I do…
We dropped cable when our first daughter was born. No regrets at all. It was only when in the hotel lobby having breakfast did we see the CNN/FOX alarmist news coverage blaring about a world spiraling out of control. I thought, why is it always when we're on vacation that the world begins to teeter on the brink of destruction? And then I remembered what cable news was like before we cut the cord.
I find reading more history (preferably: dead person-ago history) to be a healthy tonic.
When my more liberal friends were ringing in the end of days at Trump's election, my take was "Do you know how many terrible Presidents the United States has had? And how openly corrupt politics was for the first century of our country? And yet, we're still here." This too shall pass, indeed.
Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)
#365Sad that most people are only realizing this 6 years later.
Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)
#366So much to unpack here. For starters, being informed makes for more interesting conversations with others. It means that you get to reflect on what you stand for, and grow as an individual with an opinion. News is also the gateway for deeper information. If you stick to just the news, that's one thing, but if you then go deeper into the topic (what is the relationship between Ukraine and Russia?) then you get invalua…
Strong disagree with the idea that watching or reading mainstream news is informative. I don't think it's unfair at all to label mainstream news (US) as propaganda. Have you ever compared the home pages of major mainstream media companies? It's as if they are reporting on a completely different country. It begs the question of whether it is better to be uninformed or misinformed. Consuming mainstream media in the US…
> It begs the question of whether it is better to be uninformed or misinformed. Consuming mainstream media in the US will misinform you. Not consuming any media will leave you uninformed. If I had to pick I'd rather have an electorate of uninformed than an electorate of misinformed.
Channeling from Thomas Jefferson[1] (emphasis mine):
"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables. General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, &c., &c.; but no details can be relied on. I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false."
His proposed solution is:
"Perhaps an editor might begin a reformation in some such way as this. Divide his paper into 4 chapters, heading the 1st, Truths. 2d, Probabilities. 3d, Possibilities. 4th, Lies. The first chapter would be very short, as it would contain little more than authentic papers, and information from such sources as the editor would be willing to risk his own reputation for their truth. The 2d would contain what, from a mature consideration of all circumstances, his judgment should conclude to be probably true. This, however, should rather contain too little than too much. The 3d & 4th should be professedly for those readers who would rather have lies for their money than the blank paper they would occupy."
[1] https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.038_0592_0594/?sp=2&st=tex...
Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)
#367"Things you notice when you quit paying attention to your surroundings"
What's really needed are sources of reliable information about events, particularly about events that impact directly or indirectly on your own personal situation. Usually the written form of news is more information-dense.
Understanding those events, however, does require a degree of background knowledge that 'news' will never provide; for that you need to at least read books in the subject.
Television and radio news, it's always going to be more entertainment than information, due to its audio-visual format.
However, crappy sources of information that distrort reality in order to serve the interests of a government's reelection campaign, a corporate business strategy, etc. - that's what most what is labelled 'news' today consists of. Hence the news consumer has to act as a filter, seeking the nuggets of information gold in a sewer of manufactured garbage.
There are however ways to help with the filtering although authoritarian and heirarchical societies seem to prefer to generate a dumbed-down population incapable of discerning truth from falsehood, because such a population is easier to manipulate by a small group of ruling elites. Which is what you might call the cynical view of the current status quo.
Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)
#368I fully agree with this. Scanning Google News or a couple of the more professional international news services like BBC / Al Jazeera / Reuters I still feel pretty well informed (and confident that there's usually nothing of immediate consequence to me) but it doesn't grow into "expert analysis" or impact my feelings much. Here's another thing I noticed: how manipulated / manipulative it is. And not just news and I do…
Family member of mine wanted to turn on TV news the morning of Thanksgiving just to get an update on "the weather". The immediate and visceral negative reaction of everyone under the age of approximately 40 was pretty hilarious. After not having cable for 10+ years broadcast news just feels like an incredibly arduous waste of time compared to what I can read in just a few minutes. I started subscribing to a fairly la…
I'm trying to imagine your state of mind when you asked a newspaper to quit sending advertisements. Why not give the number of a good law firm specializing in bankruptcy also?
It reminds me of a guy who wanted to start a company that would "help" the USPS by allowing customers to filter out junk mail in order to improve overall postal service. Yeah, no. Junk is their core business, just like the news.
Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)
#369I strongly agree with this. I would, however, like to call out one TV program here in the U.S. that I think comes much closer to approximating the experience of “reading a 5,000-word article”: PBS NewsHour. It’s great, completely free and available to watch online, and you can even get most of what you need from their podcast alone ( https://www.pbs.org/newshour/feeds/rss/podcasts/segments ). It consists of fairly in…
I would have also recommended the Economist until I experienced a Gell-Mann amnesiac effect [1] with regards to an article they wrote about South Africa, a country where I lived much of my life in, in which they so horrifically butchered the coverage I simply canceled my subscription for fear of how inaccurate everything else might have been. [1]: https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
link?
Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)
#370I fully agree with this. Scanning Google News or a couple of the more professional international news services like BBC / Al Jazeera / Reuters I still feel pretty well informed (and confident that there's usually nothing of immediate consequence to me) but it doesn't grow into "expert analysis" or impact my feelings much. Here's another thing I noticed: how manipulated / manipulative it is. And not just news and I do…
I'm a firm believer in quality over quantity when it comes to news. Google News has gotten increasingly annoying though, forcing me harder toward the "personalized" results, the kind of filter bubble I'm intentionally trying to avoid. What worked well for me was getting a print subscription to the Economist. They definitely have a bias (particularly in their editorials), but it's mostly of the "free trade" variety, w…
It seems like that still runs into the issues that are outlined in the blog post, however (not accomplishing anything, shallow conversations about current events, better ways to stay informed, and feeling like you're doing something when you're not). In general it's hard to overcome these issues as long as you're still reading something considered news.
I think a good exercise is to spend a few weeks using archive.org to read the news from a few years back (or old back issues of The Economist, if you like). It's useful to see how many things people were obsessed over are now forgotten, and how many predictions ended up failing to materialize.
We should also probably be honest with ourselves and admit that reading the news is mostly done for entertainment, and it very well might not be any better than people who spend their time reading celebrity gossip rags.