Anyone find it ironic that a news agency (the Guardian) is saying news is bad for you?
News is bad for you
41–50 of 239 posts
Re: News is bad for you
#42http://xkcd.com/1299/ I grew up without a television - deliberate choice. My friends couldn't believe how much cool stuff I could get done because of this.
I grew also up without a television. That was no deliberate choice, my parents are orthodox christians. I was very creative in that period and I kinda miss that now :)
Re: News is bad for you
#43This 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…
> 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?"
So I've been following the NSA news closely. But I'm not American! What actionable information has following the minute of the NSA revelations provided me? I can't influence the US government in any way. The most I got out of it was that I should move to non-US based service providers if possible - but this was clear when the first revelations hit. Did I really need to spend (I'm guessing) 10+ hours reading articles about the NSA's revelations?
I could see a case for following local news - where local might mean relevant to your industry or to your community. The more local the news, the more actionable the information. Nightly newscasts rarely focus on this though - they're basically entertainment, real reality television.
Re: News is bad for you
#44If knowing the reality of what happens in the world leads to fear and aggression then perhaps we should be angry and afraid? We can't just shut reality out if we don't like the emotional state it puts us in.
Re: News is bad for you
#45If you were ever part of an MLM network, or quixtar or amway, or anybody who was ever big on 'selling' things, you would know better than to read the news. A typical newspaper has a ginormous amount of negative articles. HN is different though.
Re: News is bad for you
#46I should have not read this news... i feel i little bad already
Re: News is bad for you
#47Whether news is bad for you or not probably depends more than a little on what the source is. I don't watch television—for years our TV was in a box in a closet, brought out mostly just for watching the Olympics. But I do look at Google News and try to train it to give me mostly long-form suggestions about science and world issues from diverse sources with professional reporting and editing. That helps. The claim tha…
> Google News and try to train it Does this work? Does it work better than looking through TrueTrueReddit and hubski?
Google News is most definitely trainable. NO WAY would I visit Reddit for news (I was an early adopter of Reddit, and with Hacker News in my portfolio of news sources already, I don't see enough value-add in trying Reddit again.)
Re: News is bad for you
#48I would have read this article, but according to the title... I probably shouldn't.
not all articles can be classified as "news"
Re: News is bad for you
#49I have done this and I agree. "News" gives a single side view on the world and it is hardly an uplifting one. Personally I strongly belief that the general public opinion is negativer then needed caused by negative news-feeding.
In the periods that I decided to not follow the news (opting out :)) I felt better and more relaxed. In the mean time I did not miss any big news and what I missed turned out not to be important. Easily to do as an experiment.
Re: News is bad for you
#50The biggest problem with news is that it's about newness and rarity. Whereas what we actually need to know is mostly not new. Eg, "man eaten by alligator" is a billion times less important than "decades of data say you will likely get heart disease." Another serious problem with news is its schedule. A daily paper must publish something every day, even if nothing important has happened. An hourly newscast is worse. M…
Another comment mentioned the economist's weekly digest - this gives a good summary of the important world news, but won't help with your local news.
As an example, it covers the riots breaking out in Ukraine but completely skipped that Paul Walker died..