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Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?

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Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Language is important. There's a clear distinction between the left, leftists, and the Democratic party. We often call the Democratic party the left, but they are not a leftist party. (In fact they are a pretty bog standard centrist party these days). Just like the right isn't some monoculture, the left has pretty important sub groups. Leftist typically implies socialist, anarchist, maybe social democrats, communists…

> Language is important. There's a clear distinction between the left, leftists, and the Democratic party. No there isn’t. There are localized differences. A leftist in Denmark is nothing like a leftist in Germany nor a leftist in Canada. > We often call the Democratic party the left Then why the fuck are you pretending to be so confused?

I'm not confused. Calling them the left and calling them leftist are different. One can be "left" of the GOP, and not be a leftist. Just like one can be "right" of the DSA and not be an arch conservative.

Neither the left nor the right are monocultures, and they do not hold consistent views. The world is more complicated than that. I'm a socialist who hates plenty of leftists and can hang with some right wingers because I don't write off anyone right of me as a "right wing nut job" or whatever.

You also seem really bothered by this. I'm not sure what's got you so upset. I just don't see the world as black and white as you do, we can say "agree to disagree" whenever if this conversation is making you angry.

Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?

#252
post #190
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oryx (blog and Twitter) provides good raw open source intelligence data. I've found The Guardian's reporting and FT's analysis to be quite good. They report based on verifiable facts and also claims by both sides, with explicit mentions if there's corroborating sources or not. The Guardian also have a daily "what's new" so that's useful to keep up.

I read the guardian but it's pretty biased l and sometimes the reporting is terrible. It tends to align with my views but it's still super flawed. Recently I've also been reading dw.com Deutsche Welle. They are more straight factual and of course biased to German related news which is interesting.

What is DW saying about Nord Stream 2 and the impact on Germany?

Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One example from the latest podcast from The Telegraph: they spent a lot of time talking about the wheat from Ukraine going to the "global south." But a few days ago a Turkish minister said over 60% was sold to Europe, so which is it?

Luckily in 2022, you don't have to take news at face value. 5 seconds to enter "Ukraine wheat exports by country" into Google, yielding a USDA page saying: "In 2021, Ukrainian wheat exports were valued at $5.1 billion, with Egypt, Indonesia, Turkey, Pakistan, and Bangladesh as the primary destinations." Telegraph 1 - Turkish politician 0.

To coin a phrase, the nice thing about news websites is that there are so many to choose from:

Here's the BBC quoting the UN:

> However, UN figures show that the bulk of Ukrainian food exported in the last three months has been going to Spain, Turkey, Italy, China and Netherlands.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-61759692

See why I'm confused?

Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?

#254
post #235
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I read the guardian but it's pretty biased l and sometimes the reporting is terrible Do you have any specific examples? I can't say that it mirrors my experience but i might have missed something.

I don't keep a record of the articles that have made me roll my eyes. Usually it's when they report on an area I know a little about, like New Zealand or tech news, and I think "wait, that's not entirely true" or "that's not what people actually think about this subject" and it makes me think if I feel that way about those articles then that reduces the credibility of all articles by a small amount. https://mediabias…

Interesting. There's an upcoming Indian channel (WION) which seems to get good marks from this group.

However, most Indian journalists call them "right wing."

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/wion-world-one-news/

Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?

#255
> In the past people have been harsh to call me ill informed for not being up to date on all things media, but to what end does this actually benefit the individual? My argument is that it’s mostly a detriment given the state of the world.

News like NYT, TWP, WSJ is just partisanship, it isn't something people should take seriously. Even the factual reporting on those sites is selective, they will deliberately leave out certain details in order to reach a political end. At the same time, I still read them to figure out what they're trying to obscure or distract people with, that in itself is interesting and entertaining

Things like AP/reuters or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events are much more reliable for knowing about actual events

Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree profoundly. I can do good work which will still never be perfect. Doesn't mean I don't try to do a good job. Without objectivity, what does a news story have left? Amounts of clicks? Granted, that is the current economic reality of news writers. To teach and inform someone means to broaden their perspective. Without a goal like objectivity, a news story has no value. Why even listen to propaganda, it would…

Nothing is objective.

Nothing is absolute. There are observations that are more objective than others and those that are plain objective. We can discuss the definition of it, but it wouldn't be that fruitful, objectively.

Your statement would ultimately be an oxymoron too.

Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?

#257
I no longer see any value in trying to keep up with the news. Most of it is sensationalized clickbait or political circus that has no bearing on anything that actually matters to me. Extracting anything of value from these services requires lots of effort and time.

I mean, looking right now at the front page of one of the most popular news sites in my country I can see:

- clickbait title about possible corruption between two politicans

- some dude I don't know discussing some changes to social programs, except the government is not actually changing anything about that program

- some border shenanigans that doesn't affect me at all

- some celebrity I haven't heard about before is dead

- speculation regarding Russia-Ukraine war

- someone found a dead body in the forest

- another debate about a policy that is not even being changed

- someone crashed a car into a gas station building

- a balcony fell down

- speculation about Putin doing whatever

- report about the court case of a school shooter in the US (I don't live in the US)

- more speculation about Putin

- more Russia-Ukraine speculation

- a driver killed a cyclist on the road

- Hubble telescope photos

So many articles and yet the value of what I've seen is close to zero. Why would I want to keep up with this?

Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?

#258

Very opiniated answer here : I now rely mostly on Wikipedia, cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events Most news look to me as entertainment, not information. Articles detail what B.Spears has done or what hominous unacceptable sentence has been said by CongressMan X or Y. Spoiler : I don't want entertainment, I don't want to be outraged (most people do and won't really admit it). I want the state of the…

FYI there is a quite nice concise front-end for the wikipedia news portal: https://legiblenews.com/

Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?

#259
Mostly stopped reading most news - this describes where I am now.

Some techcrunch titles still catch my eye and I read through as they are relevant for my work (digital marketing & tech entrepreneur). It is not hard not to read the news, it is hard to avoid being bombarded by bombastic news titles all the time but after a while of practice, an initial reaction (haha, WOT?!, OMG) is all they get out of me.

Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing is objective.

Nothing is absolute. There are observations that are more objective than others and those that are plain objective. We can discuss the definition of it, but it wouldn't be that fruitful, objectively. Your statement would ultimately be an oxymoron too.

> Your statement would ultimately be an oxymoron too.

It demonstrates that the very notion of objectivity is flawed. Objectivity is a hyper-simplified model of external validity[1]. It cannot be measured as a boolean variable or by a real number. Neither black-and-white nor shades of gray could help with measuring objectivity. It is much more tricky. It is as tricky as the reality itself.

If someone wants to deal with the data from reality, they need to track all the way from reality to the data they got. Where did it come from and how it was processed. It is the only way, and it has no place for objectivity. I mean all your thoughts will have no references to objectivity, they would deal with ways how data might become biased or falsified on the way from a reality to you.

> There are observations that are more objective than others and those that are plain objective.

Can you give an example of a plain objective statement? I can think of no such statements. 2+2=4? It is a math statement, it is not about reality, it is just a part of definition of an addition.

Or maybe "apple hit Newton on the head"? Is it an objective statement? Did apple bounced and hit him on the shoulder also? Was someone sitting on the tree dropped apple on Newton's head? Was Newton leaning on a trunk of the tree? Did he tried to dodge? How many details were omitted? Who decided that these details are not important enough to report? Was he objective while deciding? How can anyone measure his objectivity?

The only way to explain why this is an objective reporting needs resorting to a beauty of a narrative of a sudden insight induced by a seemingly irrelevant and mundane event. And this narrative "decides" what is important and what is not. Was the choice of this narrative "objective"?

What if we choose a narrative of a God's blessing? Like Descartes did when he invented a coordinate system. If we did then the choice of details to report would be different. And it would be an "objective" reporting also.

Pure data (like numbers in a table) have no narrative, so maybe it is objective? But when we do not know the narrative behind the data, we cannot make inference from the data. So pure objective data is useless.

Everything is subjective. Though there are cases when it doesn't matter. Cases when we do not need to keep an eye on a narrative, on a process of data gathering and processing... But even despite the majority of cases are of this kind, a critical thinker needs to keep an eye on a narrative and on a process of data gathering, because it is his second nature: you never know when this skills will become needed, so the only safe way is to use them constantly. Make them automatic, so you need not to think about it.

[1] https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/external-validity/

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