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Do you avoid the news? You’re in growing company

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Re: Do you avoid the news? You’re in growing company

#141

Post by tootie »

selectodude wrote: post #124
tootie wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is more and better quality news available now than ever in history and people flock to the crappiest options because they can't get enough. It's demand.

“When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give peo…

Ironic considering Jobs conspired to fix prices with media partners including News Corp. Either way, network TV isn't the only news. There's plenty of non-profit news and non-predatory news in the world besides network TV.

Re: Do you avoid the news? You’re in growing company

#142

Post by tomjen3 »

avalys wrote: post #4

The single biggest problem with America today is the presentation and consumption of national news, political commentary and public policy as entertainment. The media has figured out that America is the ultimate reality TV show and they present it as such. Cable TV and the internet are to blame for this. I don't know what could be done about it. But we'd be way better off if "the news" was something you could watch f…

I don't think you can really say anything is to blame for this: people follow incentives and the incentives are to yell higher and higher to be heard over all the noise of everybody else and to create the most insane headlines to be hear over all the other insane headlines.

The solution to this tradegi of the commons is to ignore it all and read up on the various candidates a few weeks before the election.

Re: Do you avoid the news? You’re in growing company

#143

Post by tootie »

throw0101b wrote: post #127
tootie wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is more and better quality news available now than ever in history and people flock to the crappiest options because they can't get enough. It's demand.

There has always been "better quality" news and worse quality news available to people. We simply have more of both now.

Right and people gravitate heavily towards the bad. The most watched cable news by far is FOX which has been caught dead to rights conspiring with government, with campaigns and telling intentional lies in furtherance of propaganda goals. And they don't suffer any loss in loyalty. That is 100% the faults of the viewers who elect to be deceived in ways they enjoy.

Re: Do you avoid the news? You’re in growing company

#144

Post by glonq »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #103
glonq wrote: post #100

In 2016 (for likely obvious reasons) I broke the habit of watching the evening news, and I'm much happier for it. And I'm still well-informed. I peek at TV news occasionally, and glimpse at online news too. But I avoid editorials and sources that add a lot of spin. Give me the as-raw-as-possible news so that I can decide if/how I feel about it on my own.

Is there such a thing nowadays? There's too much incentive to post polarizing, rage-inducing content. I'd love to see what sites you're getting information from.

I don't visit fringe news sites or echo chambers.

I mostly just eyeball the headlines of various news orgs and then try to deduce "what really happened if you strip away the clickbait, sensationalism, and fearmongering".

apnews.com is pretty good.

I'll even visit bullshit places like foxnews, not to find actualy news or facts but instead to see what is currently being planted into the smooth mushy brains of many Americans.

Re: Do you avoid the news? You’re in growing company

#145

Post by gfdsgvbcd »

jwells89 wrote: post #50
whalesalad wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is still true today, though. I am generally sick of the news too but sometimes it is nice to watch local news (WDIV channel 4 here in Detroit) from 6 to 6:30 to hear about stuff going on around town, and then NBC nightly news from 6:30 to 7 to get some more national info.

That's good to hear. I haven't watched cable or OTA TV for around 15 years at this point so I don't have a good idea of what it's like these days, except for that time ~5 years ago when I tried plugging in an antenna to see what I could pick up but immediately lost interest after being reminded how much time ads take up on OTA TV channels.

i feel like TV ads get a bad rap sometimes. you dont have to actually watch them, they provide a natural pause in the action to go get a snack, go to the bathroom, do something else, rather than sitting there for 12 hours straight "consuming content"

Re: Do you avoid the news? You’re in growing company

#146

Post by tomjen3 »

damnesian wrote: post #106
avalys wrote: post #4

The single biggest problem with America today is the presentation and consumption of national news, political commentary and public policy as entertainment. The media has figured out that America is the ultimate reality TV show and they present it as such. Cable TV and the internet are to blame for this. I don't know what could be done about it. But we'd be way better off if "the news" was something you could watch f…

Reinstating the Fairness Doctrine would be the one switch to flip to undo a lot of this very destructive mess. Of course all of the media giants would throw all the lawyers at it. Now that they know how incredibly lucrative news-as-entertainment is. But it's what must be done to turn this problem around and get a handle on it.

Would it? Remember TV competes with online news. Fox biggest competitor isn't NBC, it is Breitbart, The Dodge Report or Real truth network.

And you are never going to get the fairness doctrine to apply to those that are online.

You could have Facebook set rules for posts on their network, but then Facebook competes with Twitter and Tiktok and whatever, so if the posts on Facebook are less engaging than those on Twitter, people may go there.

Its all broken incentives all the way down.

Re: Do you avoid the news? You’re in growing company

#148

Post by cbsmith »

JohnFen wrote: post #140
taude wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in the early 90s news started shifting towards our modern incarnation. CNN was considered hard news in the 80s, but that changed around the time of the Persian Gulf war and Wolf Blitzer becoming the Scud-Stud, and all the other shows like Cross-Fire becoming news-er-tainment (or whatever the proper industry term is), etc...

> CNN was considered hard news in the 80s I blame CNN for much of the state of news today. TV news has always been poor, but before CNN proved otherwise, news was not something that was considered a profit-maker. Once CNN showed it can make money, then the profit maximalization began in earnest, and with that came the descent into news-as-entertainment. That started well before the gulf war.

Oh, that goes way back before CNN and cable, or even TV.

As an aside, 99% invisible had a pretty good podcast on how radio (which delivers news to more Americans -and is trusted more- than TV) content has changed over the years. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-divided-dial/

The change has been systemic, and that change shaped CNN more than the other way around.

Re: Do you avoid the news? You’re in growing company

#149

Post by sylens »

bcoates wrote: post #107
sylens wrote: post #3

I was recently listening to a podcast recapping a television show set in the early 2000s, where a current college aged student basically said "I wish I had the experience of being a teenager in that time period - it seemed much simpler as you weren't aware of every bad thing that was happening around the world" And that's really the way it used to be. It was even better before 24 hour news networks, as your evening n…

Uh, early 2000s? There was very much 24/7 news media back then. Mature internet news, immature social media, multiple 24/7 national news channels for most major countries and languages... I daresay most teens in the early 2000s were aware of such minor news events as Sept. 11 and the subsequent decade of global war. Your stereotypical Millennial news junkie that the Wapo is crying about moving on with their lives was…

I recognize there was 24/7 news media then, but it was still better than now. And before there was 24/7 news media was even better than the early 2000s

Re: Do you avoid the news? You’re in growing company

#150

Post by EatingWithForks »

I wish I had local news. For example if there's a crazy mom trying to get on the school board. Or my local towing company is owned by a person undergoing felony indictment. New businesses opening that could really use my dollars. My local shop had a 4 for 5$ sale for kombucha and I nearly missed out on it due to a lack of local news.

I really don't want to know what is happening to youth in a country that is very far from me as often.

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