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The power of ignoring mainstream news

joel.is

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Re: The power of ignoring mainstream news

#81

Post by ghshephard »

bpatrianakos wrote: post #66
ghshephard wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Not following the news is what causes harm." - I totally agree with Joel here, and disagree with you. I've spent the last 5 years pretty much a news junkie. I spent 2-3 hours a day, equally split between the NYT, WSJ, Economist, and weekends spent listening to NPR. What I've realized is that, in general, I'm not better informed about the world, but I am more indoctrinated into the Left Wing (NYT), Right Wing (WSJ) a…

I made it a point to make sure I mentioned that all news is biased. I meter said otherwise. But bias is not a bad thing like everyone wants to make us think. Sometimes bias is good. Not all opinions are created equal and this whole idea of two differing opinions both having equal merit is bullshit. Sometimes one opinion has merit and the other is just bullshit. I embrace bias. You called yourself a news junkie. That…

I actually did take the time to read your 852 word, eleven paragraph missive.

The part that you didn't capture, is that, by and large, listening to the "news" is not actionable, and mostly serves the purposes of indoctrination, and entertainment. There is also a difference between having a bias towards the truth, and just being biased. Saying "Man landed on the moon" is biased towards the truth. Saying "Science is a solution to many of our problems" is just bias. (albeit one that I have)

If something's really important, you'll hear about it (I would call that important subset of events the news, as opposed to the "news"). I fully support Joel's "Just turn it off and make better use of your time" position - you (and your community/country) will be better served.

Also - don't get me wrong, there is a difference between broadly educated, and well read (which I strongly, strongly support) - and being up to date on the "news" - which I see minimal value in.

Re: The power of ignoring mainstream news

#82

Post by bpatrianakos »

mquander wrote: post #76
bpatrianakos wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price is something you described. You prefer to learn from your friends and blogs rather than news outlets. The consensus is that media is useless and biased but it's not so bad that you're better off ignoring it all. Your friends and those bloggers are the same kind of non-experts explaining complicated things as the guy who writes the editorials you just got done criticizing. I'm not knocking your friends or yo…

Allow me to retreat slightly, because the quality of journalism as opposed to other information sources isn't my true objection, and I'd rather not argue about it. My true objection is the "new" in "news." I have absolutely no interest in current events that aren't directly affecting me. Paul Krugman and Nate Silver are smart people, but if I want to spend my time learning about economics or politics -- which I reall…

And now we're all starting to agree with each other... I don't know why there was such a rush to disagree with me when we've been in the area of the same page all along.

What you said plays exactly into my original point about being a good consumer of news. Having the ability to filter relevant information from noise is what important and not taking in news for the sake of news. I've been saying this the entire time.

I can get on board with not caring about what's going on right this minute too and I never argued that anyone should. That's just as bad as Joel's prescription for ignoring news completely. That said, you never know when something you read may become relevant to you at a later time. I would suggest making it a point to consume news that isn't relevant to you in the same way I wouldn't suggest ignoring all news but I also would say that if you have a minute, reading some random piece of news every now and then may prove useful. And if it doesn't, well then you've got something you might be able to talk intelligently about at some party. It doesn't hurt and hey, maybe it'll even get you laid.

At the end of the day Joel's post came off to me as totally anti-intellectual, naive, and self-helpish (in a bad way). Like I said before, I'm a big fan of his posts but this one did not sit right with me.

Re: The power of ignoring mainstream news

#83

Post by bpatrianakos »

ghshephard wrote: post #81
bpatrianakos wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made it a point to make sure I mentioned that all news is biased. I meter said otherwise. But bias is not a bad thing like everyone wants to make us think. Sometimes bias is good. Not all opinions are created equal and this whole idea of two differing opinions both having equal merit is bullshit. Sometimes one opinion has merit and the other is just bullshit. I embrace bias. You called yourself a news junkie. That…

I actually did take the time to read your 852 word, eleven paragraph missive. The part that you didn't capture, is that, by and large, listening to the "news" is not actionable, and mostly serves the purposes of indoctrination, and entertainment. There is also a difference between having a bias towards the truth, and just being biased. Saying "Man landed on the moon" is biased towards the truth. Saying "Science is a…

Then maybe we're thinking about different versions of what the news is. Telling people to shut off the news is destructive because the news is not all indoctrination and entertainment. I'm not an idiot. I know what the news is in that sense. But when you put out a broad call to shut it all off that means shutting out the good stuff too. The better solution I'm talking about is knowing how to tell the difference. If you can do that and be informed with the news that's worth consuming that infinitely better than tuning out completely which is what Joel calls for. Maybe he didn't mean it like that but when you have an audience that large you have to assume most of the audience will take it as its written which, if they do, will lead them down an ignorant anti-intellectual path. We don't need anymore anti-intellectuals in this world (especially in the US where it's recently become cool to be an idiot and somehow being elite is a bad thing).

Re: The power of ignoring mainstream news

#84

Post by bpatrianakos »

adrianbravo wrote: post #79
bpatrianakos wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like everyone is taking what I said to be an extreme opinion. I'm not arguing for daily monitoring of the the news. I'm not advancing the exact opposite of what Joel suggests. I'm suggesting something very moderate. So yeah, checking in every week or two works. That's fine. Religiously following news is just as bad as not following any news. So we can agree on that part - the checking in part. I'm not sure how…

> It certainly can be and these days it's doing more harm than good but part of what was great about the news is that it took the burden of thinking away from people. This is absurd.

No, it's the truth. Absurd is taking a single sentence of what I wrote and pretending like that was my entire point. Put that in context and you'll understand how it isn't absurd (didn't Joel recently write about that too).

The news is about reporting facts but facts are meaningless without context. Journalists take facts and put them into the proper context so that we don't have to. This isn't a new idea. It's been around for as long as there's been news and while some hacks do it badly and purposely distort the facts it doesn't mean doing it in and of itself is a bad thing.

I stand by what I said. Unless you've got a whole lot of time on your hands it's awful hard to put facts into context the way journalists do. I'm glad they take the work out of it for me because I have a job and I need to eat and I don't have time to play reporter and get my own facts so that I can some pure ideal version of the news. But I still need the news because I need to make informed decisions about things that affect me like where political candidates stand, how the new health care law affects me and if they recalled my car or some toy because the engine spontaneously explodes or the toy has some chemical that's going to kill my kid. I want to hear these things from people whose jobs it is to find out these things and not from Joe Schmoe who works at the local Walmart who read it from a guy who works for the guy that some news is about.

Re: The power of ignoring mainstream news

#85

Post by xradionut »

As I get older, I've grown to understand that you can't ignore news and media completely, you just need to filter it to the point that you can make it useful for your needs. Like any other media, 99.99 percent of news is crap. Between smart phone apps and RSS feeds I can limit my "daily consumption" to what I want and need with a modest amount of ads and fluff taking up my time. But periodically I hit the browser or the library and get caught up on subjects that may require deeper knowledge. The best source of links to a broad spectrum of media I have found is here: http://www.insideautomotive.com/sources.htm

Re: The power of ignoring mainstream news

#86

Post by ghshephard »

bpatrianakos wrote: post #84
adrianbravo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It certainly can be and these days it's doing more harm than good but part of what was great about the news is that it took the burden of thinking away from people. This is absurd.

No, it's the truth. Absurd is taking a single sentence of what I wrote and pretending like that was my entire point. Put that in context and you'll understand how it isn't absurd (didn't Joel recently write about that too). The news is about reporting facts but facts are meaningless without context. Journalists take facts and put them into the proper context so that we don't have to. This isn't a new idea. It's been…

Re: recent health care legislation. I can help you there.

If you gross > $350k/year it is not good for you personally, if you gross Spend 15 minutes talking to a Canadian, an American without insurance and medical bills, and anybody rich enough to have been able to afford health care at the mayo clinic, and you would discover this.

The meta point I'm trying to make here, is that we would be better served by discovering these things on our own, than into buying the propaganda around "death panels" or believing Obama when he says we won't make you wait in line for health care - both positions advocated by the various mainstream media channels.

Re: The power of ignoring mainstream news

#87

Post by bennesvig »

"The quicker goes the journalist the slower go his thoughts. The result is the newspaper of our time, which every day can be delivered earlier and earlier, and which, every day, is less worth delivering at all." - GK Chesterton...in the 1920's.

Re: The power of ignoring mainstream news

#88

Post by cf »

bpatrianakos wrote: post #46

This is terrible advice and not something I think people should be recommending to others. I love Joel's posts enough to subscribe to the rss feed (which I have never done for any site ever) but this post is something I strongly disagree with for many good reasons. The idea he puts forth is incredibly naive and has not been taken to its natural conclusion. He talks about the negative side of keeping up with the news…

The issue is that news in its raw form lack context. You just read the event and only have the news you immediately read before it for context. Most information is better understood from a larger window. Mainstream news does not bother to educate you in those terms. That is why it isn't informative to just read the daily paper is have a very myopic understanding of the world.

This also means we are likely better off reading longer, meatier articles that provide context for what is happening. They are the ones that explain why we have the present problems and why all actors are behaving as they are.

Critical thinking is still required for this kind of information, but this information isn't really news. It's a sort of longform journalism that is a bit removed. But it is informative and doesn't leave the reader ignorance to current events.

Re: The power of ignoring mainstream news

#89

Post by kvnn »

jberryman wrote: post #80
kiba wrote: post #35

One of the problem that the OP blog points out is that mainstream news dish out bad news that encourage an exaggerated and wraped fearful worldview. For example, when a mass murder incident happens, people talk a lot about gun violence and how it's gripping the country and we should do something about it. Of course, they forgot that 40K people die in car accidents, 600K more die of heart disease and about 500K more d…

You are aware that gun deaths are on course to exceed auto deaths this year? While the gov. has spent billions over decades to prevent auto deaths, cancer deaths, etc., effectively $0 have been spent to study and prevent gun deaths; how is it irrational to be concerned about that?

This is actually very surprising to me. Thanks for the info.

Re: The power of ignoring mainstream news

#90

Post by personlurking »

kika wrote: post #72
quesera wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The critical error in your logic is to believe that "the news" is news . It just isn't. By and large, it's noise , which you either have time for in your life, or you do not. I understand your worry about ignorance, and it's valid, but I believe that tuning into the noise makes people stupid. Ignorance can be resolved much more quickly and on-demand than stupidity can.

It's worse than noise. It's usually a propaganda. Which is basically a noise with malicious intent.

Thank you. I recommend Orwell Rolls in His Grave http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_lYGyIaK80

A great 3-hour documentary on media censorship, consolidation and propaganda.

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