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Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

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Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#501

Post by andrei_says_ »

macksd wrote: post #4

I 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…

There’s a documentary, Consuming Kids, showing how psychologists work with child focus groups to iterate on maximizing the impact of TV commercials targeting young audiences.

Immoral doesn’t even begin to describe this phenomenon.

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#502

Post by andrei_says_ »

cyberpunk wrote: post #460
simondotau wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? That's disappointing for an organisation with so many intelligent columnists.

At some point the employee wellness budget is just burning a hole in your pocket and so you put it to a vote. I wouldn’t feel too bad about it. Deepak is a charlatan and everyone knows it anyway :)

But I hear his retreats are very expensive and luxurious.

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#503

Post by andrei_says_ »

Groxx wrote: post #266
james-redwood wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

may be worth pointing out that you seem to be using that backwards - the Gell-Mann amnesia effect is about immediately forgetting that you read something so horribly misrepresented - you knowingly scoff and then trust the next thing you read. a reaction of "this is shit, what else in here might be shit, get it away from me" is the direct opposite.

Is there a name for this second, opposite effect.

I find it pretty common in all areas I hold some expertise in.

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#504

Post by yojo »

hoffspot wrote: post #452
wholinator2 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I would imagine any individual old enough to rent and/or shop at bed bath and beyond would be fairly familiar with the concept of receiving print ads in the mail. Those Valpack things are pretty common where I live and they're essentially exactly the same as the newspaper inserts, just like 50 of em in a branded envelope

The Valpack envelops make me so sad. I just take them out of the mailbox and toss them into the recycling bin. Think of all the trees used, energy wasted, and chemicals used in making the ink that are now in the environment for absolutely no reason.

You can stop that one! https://www.valpak.com/coupons/show/mailinglistsuppression

Unrelated to my original post, but I have been on a quest to purge all the junk from my physical mail. It is a huge PITA, but in almost all cases you can email someone and eventually get them to stop.

The other big ones that cut a lot of junk are DMA choice for catalog opt out (https://www.dmachoice.org/register.php) and the pre screened credit card offer opt out (https://www.optoutprescreen.com/).

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#505

Post by physicles »

salty_biscuits wrote: post #338
macksd wrote: post #4

I 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…

That was really shocking for me the first time I went to China and watched their version on state sponsored television, around 2005. The contrast between the doom version of the news back home, to china's overly positive "15 people are missing in a coal mine but we are trying our darnedest to get them out" was really confronting. Made me realise that it has entertainment/manipulation as a goal, not providing informat…

Really shows how the news basically sets the background music for everyday life around the entire country.

My Chinese friends have said that the evening news always comes in three parts: 1. Chinese leaders are busy; 2. Chinese people have good lives; 3. People outside China have not-so-good lives

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#506

Post by bnralt »

yojo wrote: post #455
bnralt wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.or…

The article leads with drawing a distinction between pop news and more traditional journalism: "To be clear, I’m mostly talking about following TV and internet newscasts here. This post isn’t an indictment of journalism as a whole." Good print journalism does go into depth, it does give useful background, and it does teach you about the proximate causes of events. It is not full of pundits trying to score internet po…

> The article leads with drawing a distinction between pop news and more traditional journalism:

Sure, but I don't think it goes on to justify why that distinction is there. Particularly points 2 to 5 seem to work just as well as criticism of written media as TV.

> If you're informed you can make rational decisions on things like giving and voting...I'm not convinced there's a better way of getting an understanding of what's going on in the world than reading a well-curated digest of what's going on in the world.

I used to work a lot on politics at the local level and can't say that's been my experience. Much of the time, the things people's votes have the most impact on are barely covered in the media, or in many cases not covered at all. Including fairly important things, such as when our state party leadership suspended elections for two years and staying on past their terms. Almost zero news coverage.

If you want to be informed and involved in ways that actually impact those around you, I'd say involvement in community organizations is important, reading the news not so much. As his fifth point says, it's easy to pretend you're being an informed citizen by indulging in a media habit when you're doing nothing of the sort.

Another issue is that everyone can see how new organizations they don't like can leave people misinformed, but never consider that news organizations they like can do the same. Again, from what I've seen, misinformation is fairly common. It's not even necessarily done for nefarious purposes. A busy reporter might just have time to look at a press release, while local organizations will have people that often go into much more depth and look at the actual meeting minutes or the exact wording of particular pieces of legislation.

People should think of concrete things they're trying to accomplish, not just vague notions of "being informed." I bet that someone who ignores the news and spends an hour looking at Vote411 and reading about candidates on the web before they fill out a ballot is going to make more informed voting decisions than a news junkie who follows national and international news 24/7, already knows who they're going to vote for at the national level, and completely ignores downballot races (a surprisingly large portion of voters fit this description).

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#507

Post by duped »

jollybean wrote: post #499
duped wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some examples? Particularly with NPR, you have to focus on particular shows and stations. There's no central editorial staff for the content that comes from their member stations. For example the Takeaway has quite different editorial standards than All Things Considered or Morning Edition.

NPR has a subtle, but fairly clear centre left bias. "There's no central editorial staff" - there's no need to have a central staff if you hire the same types of people. Hear it from former senior NPR Exec. himself [1] I'm not supporting this man's views at all, other than to point out he gives a fairly clear articulation into how 'bias' doesn't remotely need to have some kind of central authority and that it absolut…

I never said whether I agree or disagree that bias exists or where it was, bias exists in all human institutions. Part of modern, respectable journalism is the active task of acknowledging it, even.

What I asked were for some concrete examples. Whenever the discussion comes up on bias at NPR (in particular) people tend to hand wave around "subtle, but fairly clear centre left bias."

In my opinion there is a bias, which I would call "radical centrism" (the Sisyphean task of trying to recognize bias and attempt to curtail it), and I could point to few in the past week as a regular listener, but whenever I hear "NPR has a liberal bias" I can't get anyone to give me concrete examples. It's taken as fact.

My overwhelming interpretation of the national NPR broadcasts are two part :

Firstly, the majority of it are human interest stories. They do not devote a majority of their air time to politics. I don't see how the Moth, Fresh Air, This American Life, or the handful of local shows I listen to regularly about local news stories trends anywhere but whichever direction is compelling to a listener.

And secondly, an opinion that I don't like articulating on HN or anywhere that might ruffle feathers is that facts have a liberal bias. You can argue until the cows come up about the role of government in society, but the cardinal direction of "reality" on the political compass is <- that way.

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#508

Post by YATA0 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #421
YATA0 wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unironically, no it's not.

Given their strong track record, that opinion would seem to lack a solid foundation.

It's not an opinion, it's an objective fact. They don't have a strong track record.

Remember when BuzzFeedNews was peddling such fake news garbage that Robert Mueller's team had to call them out on their bullshit [0]? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

[0] https://apnews.com/article/north-america-donald-trump-robert...

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#509

Post by jdminhbg »

valachio wrote: post #339
mattlondon wrote: post #317

There 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…

I agree with your assessment. To completely quit news is not a good idea, unless you want to live under a rock, metaphorically speaking. Fact of the matter is, day-to-day events affect each one of us who live in a modern society. You don't want to be the guy who has no mask and 0 preparation for a pandemic when it hits. You don't want to be the guy who keeps buying/using a product when there's news circulating that i…

> You don't want to be the guy who has no mask and 0 preparation for a pandemic when it hits.

So you should read the news, which right up until it hits is telling you that worrying about it is hysterical and maybe a little bit racist?

Re: Things you notice when you quit the news (2016)

#510

Post by axxl »

StevePerkins wrote: post #275
Swenrekcah wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can fully attest to the quality of the Economist but I caution anyone to subscribe because they don’t provide any way to easily unsubscribe. It’s either to call some phone number or attempt it via live chat. I tried the second option and the representative just went on with the script trying to fatigue me out of it, no matter what I said.

My local library has a certain number of electronic subscriptions, so I am able to read The Economist on my iPad with the Libby app for "free" (i.e. paid for by by local taxes). I would GLADLY pay for a print subscription, because I greatly prefer physical magazines over digital. But whether it's magazines, satellite radio, or whatever... I'm just not subscribing to anything known for not letting people go.

The economist cancellation process is an email last time I did it (I subscribe in spurts). Not as ideal as a button but not as egregious as requiring a phone call or something.
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