11–20 of 239 posts
I know a lot of people don't like the doom & gloom of news. But it's needed. I recently discussed with someone who doesn't consume news about the NSA revelations. They were shocked. They said "why didn't anyone tell me?"
Instead of blocking things out and being happy with our ignorance, we need to change how news is done. If you whine about something, change it. The Guardian can certainly make an attempt to change the dynamic.
I've been trying an experiment for the last year or two. I have an app that collects commentary, tech and science stories from across the web. (Recently I added news, but that was a mistake) I find I stay just as informed reading commentary, where I'm purposefully being manipulated, as I do reading news. In fact the news is better, as various authors advance various personal theories they've been working on for weeks…
What does 'rot your mind' mean in this context? I agree, and intuitively feel there's value in avoiding short term distractions, but what's going on there? Is it just opportunity cost, spending time watching TV instead of thinking and learning so you miss out on the mental benefits? Or do certain types/durations of distraction make you less able to do complex mental tasks when you go back to them?
This makes the reporting itself really bad, since the only context the reporter needs to fit the event into is some off-the-shelf political bullshit, and it makes the outlets try to drive up viewership by having presenters who more and more have these recurring populist rages. Every night on TV there's somebody getting mad about something. So the reporters dig up enough to fuel the machine -- usually fed by the political parties, PACs, or other interested groups -- and the pundits and reactionaries do the dance. The viewer is left constantly seesawing from topic to topic. Are HMOs out to kill people? Will a child molester living five miles take my kid? There's no context to any of this because nobody gets paid to provide context. They get paid to make viewers frightened and angry, which drives up ratings.
That's unsustainable, in my opinion.
In printed media, without the branding or signaling, authors are required to provide a thesis and support it with an argument. The reader can choose to engage or not. There's no "if it bleeds, it leads" nonsense. I can read great commentary that I disagree with -- and not feel angry or somehow moved to outrage. Or I can read commentary I agree with that's a piece of junk. I'm no longer taking sides. Instead, I can separate my consumption of events from my characterization of the reporting itself. That's the critical piece that's missing for most news consumers.
Just guesswork on my part, though.
What is the motive for a newspaper to tell people not to read news? Reverse psychology?
I know I do, sometimes.
This is a rather ignorant stance to take. I know a lot of people don't like the doom & gloom of news. But it's needed. I recently discussed with someone who doesn't consume news about the NSA revelations. They were shocked. They said "why didn't anyone tell me?" Instead of blocking things out and being happy with our ignorance, we need to change how news is done. If you whine about something, change it. The Guardian…
The claim that giving up reading news will make you happier is a medical claim in the article that is not backed up by reliable medical sources,[1] so I call baloney on that. The newspaper opinion writer here (promoting his new book with excerpts from the book) doesn't report the issue the way a competent reporter would report it, but just makes a bunch of broad general statements with no nuance. In other words, the medical claims about happier human life in the article are just like the made-up opinions we can all easily find on the Internet, and the article stands as an example of how we can find blatantly misleading "information" inside or outside the professional news media. I have no reason to suppose that the full-length book is a medically reliable source (the publisher of the book is identified at the end of the article).
Anecdote alert: I'm a curious person and I like to learn, and so one of the reasons I come here to Hacker NEWS is to find out new facts about the external world that I didn't know before, including facts about current events ("news" in the narrow sense). My personal experience—which, to be sure, may differ from yours—is that I am a happier and more productive person when I know, from good sources, what is going on all over the world and the broader context of expanding human knowledge. But I'm sure you can find an opinion column somewhere based on a popular book with a different opinion from mine.
AFTER EDIT: Good catch! Another participant here on HN noticed that the author of the article kindly submitted here has credibly been accused of plagiarism by more than one published author who works harder than he does. I upvoted that comment for what it added to our understanding of the article's background.
My man Rolf became a journalist, worked his way up to the Guardian, and wrote a story about how busted up news is.
I look forward to the similar press release from Jony Ive telling us to stop using those blasted iPads.
http://fooledbyrandomness.com/dobelli.htm
http://blog.chabris.com/2013/09/similarities-between-rolf-do...
EDIT: For another take on not reading the news, see http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews