in america each election is similar to an exam in school. you need to study to pass an exam. your textbook is the news outlets of your choice. hopefully you've been keeping up on your studies so you can vote for the right candidate and pass the exam. you can determine for yourself if you've passed by...reading the news.
News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
31–40 of 245 posts
Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
#32There's also a certain arbitrariness to what the media establishment chooses to cover and how they choose to cover it. It often seems as if the "news" is nothing more than what entrenched political and/or private interests want people to be thinking that day.
That's one of the reasons I'm really enjoying the new Vice show on HBO -- they're covering topics nobody else is touching, they don't censor or clean up the horrific aspects of the human behavior they're covering, and their presentation doesn't try to pretend that their reporters are anything other than human beings who possess their own viewpoints (rather than "objective" beings capable of transcending their own subjective perceptions and beliefs, like poor CNN still claims).
Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
#33See also "I Hate the News" by Aaron Swartz http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews
Seems an odd thing for someone who was involved with RSS to write, considering that it lets you keep up with (selected) 'news' more effectively (sure, it might be the longer form stuff he says is more useful, but ultimately it lets you skim more individual articles which is the root of the problem). I agree that most mass media news is a waste of time since you have no control over the stories or the level of detail.…
When it comes to mass media (and increasingly the web, too, thanks marketers), skimming content is not the problem, the sheer deluge of useless, distracting up to outright BS content is. Hence skipping that, and being selective about what you subscribe to RSS-wise :P
Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
#34"News is Bad For you" by Guardian News. What's their angle here?
It looks like the author of the article wants to promote his book (see the end of the article) and The Guardian will profit since it provides a link to the book in their own "book shop". And they figure that nobody will actually give up their news addiction after having read the article, so there's no risk to the newspaper's business.
For those who like the article, the complete version from which this article is excerpted can be found here, in PDF form:
Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
#35This article irks me. Although most "news" has regressed into banal link bait just plain yellow journalism, and the notion of the "news organization" has undergone an inexorable transition towards the likes of Buzzfeed the the Huffington Post, it's absurd to assert that all news is worthless.
First, his point that no news can be of value to one's personal situation or decision-making is false. News has impacted my life thoroughly throughout the past year. Off the top of my head, some stories that have provoked meaningful consideration and or action from me include: Aaron Swartz, the election, several Supreme Court cases, the Bitcoin bubble (which inspired me to start my first true weekend project this week, http://twitter.com/Bitcoin_Ticker)... There are still valuable and significant things happening in the world every day.
Moreover, there is something incredibly presumptuous in his assertion that "we are not rational enough to be exposed to the press." The fact that many people are not particularly analytical and prefer to consume simple, superficial stories does not mean that every person is necessarily incapable of thinking critically about events and about how we ought to consider the dangers in society. Even if we can't help instinctive, irrational fear or bias, most people can acknowledge the irrational nature of their opinions and still intellectually acknowledge the true nature of the news. It's simply perverse to state that everyone is too stupid and or manipulable to rationally understand the news.
His other problematic assertion, that "learned helplessness" is detrimental, is questionable. Regardless of knowledge, the world will still be filled with misery, poverty, death, bigotry, and fear. Is it better to be knowingly miserable or ignorantly blissful? I tend towards the former. John Mill's famous line, "it is better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied," comes to mind. This is a question that philosophers have puzzled over forever, and I won't get into it, but the fact that he dismisses such a philosophically significant and contentious argument so quickly is worrisome. Maybe it is better to know what the world is like, regardless of our ability to change it.
Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
#36Any suggestions for a good neutral concise must-know news source?
I may be opening myself up to some flak here but I think it is generally accepted that the BBC is one of, if not the, least biased news source (Excepting climate change.) Some of my friends swear by Al-Jazeera for non Middle-East news
Al Jazeera and BBC are both solidly on the left. I'm not disputing the quality of their reporting or the value of exposing oneself to their reporting, but you're fooling yourself if you think they're neutral.
Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
#37I hope I'm not the only one seeing the irony of this post.
I'm amazed to see an article trying to inform me that, indeed, ignorance is bliss. While I think people should watch their garbage intake, I'd certainly not encourage tuning out world events any more than I'd encourage running with both earbuds in. In either case one is likely to be taken off guard.
Indeed. The article seemed quite hypocritical. For someone who decries the public knowing about how miserable the world is and emphatically preaches ignorance, he seems quite keen on informing the world about how much news sucks. (And undoubtedly selling books in the process.)
Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
#38There's a ton of useful news out there. I get it filtered through serious people, or people interested in important things like labor laws, Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, local politics, urban development, civil liberties, and hacker news :). These are things that will affect me, and I can affect (in groups of course).
Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
#39I do like the concept of information obesity, and the importance of budgeting one's attention. The article seemed to borrow it from The Information Diet:
http://www.amazon.com/Information-Diet-Case-Conscious-Consum...
Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
#40 "Out of the approximately 10,000 news stories you have read in the last 12 months,
name one that – because you consumed it - allowed you to make a better decision
about a serious matter affecting your life, your career or your business.
The point is: the consumption of news is irrelevant to you."
Is that an unfounded fear, and I should find ways to get rid of it?
Or is it a valid concern, but are there better ways to feel connected?
I work from home so I don't interact with a lot of people regularly.