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News is bad for you

theguardian.com

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Re: News is bad for you

#101

Post by DanBC »

nathan_long wrote: post #29

The 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…

News in the UK has several problems.

News papers are either horrible - I cannot describe just how vile much of the UK news press industry is. The decent newspapers have tiny distribution figures. The Guardian, for example, has a circulation of under 300,000 people. Obviously, more people read it, but still, that's a tiny figure.

UK news allows the agenda[1] to be set by spin doctors. We frequently has stories about how a politician "will announce" something - the speech has been released by publicists before it has been given, allowing the speaker to set the tone of the coverage.

I don't know why that's allowed or why they do it. It's incredibly frustrating.

And there's very narrow window of what is or isn't news. A blond white girl goes missing? We'll have wall to wall coverage of it for weeks. A non white person, or a boy, goes missing? Not so much. Compare, for example, the Soham coverage (two white girls killed by a caretaker at their school) with Adam Morrell, a boy who was brutally tortured and killed.

For years I read about agents that would go out and find news items that would be interesting to me. It still hasn't happened. I would pay money for something that works for me:

1) Return items that match some search terms I give. I'm interested in news items about mental health, even if it's poor coverage of a news item that mention MH in a stigmatising way.

2) Suggest items that I might be interested in based on my reading history, and what I am or am not interested in.

3) Provide suggested items to break me out of my bubble. This can be things about what I'm interested in with an opposing viewpoint to my regular sources; or it can be things that I haven't previously shown interest in.

[1] I don't know if "news agenda" is a peculiarly UK term.

Re: News is bad for you

#102

Post by sarreph »

I'm unsure whether OP's intention was to highlight HN's potential for being a well of unhappiness (as the article would suggest). However, it must be made clear that this headline does not apply to many (if not the majority) of HN posts, which are simply more than just current affairs or news; that's why I love HN — it's more than simple news.

Re: News is bad for you

#103

Post by joecurry »

oskarth wrote: post #20

While I agree with the sentiment, Rolf Dobelli himself is a plagiarist. This whole reasoning is basically stolen from Nassim Taleb. 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

The rebuttal from Dobelli >> http://www.dobelli.com/book-corrections/taleb

Re: News is bad for you

#104

Post by vojant »

thisiswrong wrote: post #82
PsychopompPoet wrote: post #77

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." Thomas Jefferson "Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists." Norman Mailer "Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation." George Bernard Shaw "In the real world, the right thing never happens in the right pl…

''Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.'' Oscar Wilde

It's so ironic to use quotation in this case.

Re: News is bad for you

#105

Post by admstockdale »

normloman wrote: post #59
admstockdale wrote: post #11

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…

I'm willing to wager many people who do consume news don't know about the NSA revelations, or don't care, because they're too busy reading about the tragic vehicular manslaughter of an attractive teenage white girl who lives 1000 miles away, or about this one weird old trick for increasing productivity at the office, or about the 10 new indie releases you should be listening to right now. Junk news can cause as much…

I agree we need to consume better news. Instead of clicking on the link-bait headlines, take some time and read that long-form article that took months or years to research. If we tell the media that's what we want, that's what we will get. They need/want to make a profit.

Re: News is bad for you

#106

Post by infinotize »

PsychopompPoet wrote: post #77

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." Thomas Jefferson "Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists." Norman Mailer "Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation." George Bernard Shaw "In the real world, the right thing never happens in the right pl…

What is the point of this post? To say that journalism is a worthless endeavour? It would be just as easy to go cherry pick some quotes that say just the opposite without providing a substantial argument.

Re: News is bad for you

#107

Post by flanbiscuit »

nossim wrote: post #91
jweir wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He mentions Taleb in the article, and is it Taleb who came up with the idea that news is bad?

I don't think so this idea is in Neil Postman's book "Amusing Ourselves to Death" (1985). A must read.

Thank you, I was just about to mention this book. None of this is new and I can only imagine what he would think of the today's media. He died in 2003 and even though the internet was going strong back then it has greatly surpassed that since then.

Re: News is bad for you

#108

Post by admstockdale »

AlexandrB wrote: post #43
admstockdale wrote: post #11

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…

> 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 an…

No you don't need to read 10+ hours of news about the same story unless there's new information and it has an effect on you. I didn't make that point so I'm not sure what you're getting at.

There's plenty people can do: develop a means to protect ourselves from the governments spying, activism, find out who was responsible at the top and try and get them removed.

I used to work in television news. I agree with you that some of it is just entertainment. The problem is that's what people want. Not everyone. But a good portion who never speak out about the news don't mind the entertainment part.

There's also reason to educate yourself about the world and culture without having to directly apply it. But that's another philosophical argument.

Re: News is bad for you

#109

Post by jmagoon »

untog wrote: post #86
aaronem wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting there is some point? That there's real value, to oneself or to anyone else, in repeatedly dismaying oneself over things which one does not have, and cannot obtain, the power to affect?

I suppose I just can't imagine being content at being ignorant of the world. By that principle surely it's also worthless to learn about world history?

It's probably hard to have a general rule about something like that. My take away from the article was that much of the current news that we consume isn't particularly useful to us--it doesn't improve the way we think or act, it just makes us sad and afraid.

Like, say, watching a report about a kidnapped child. Or reading about the trial of a serial killer.

Re: News is bad for you

#110

Post by oskarth »

joecurry wrote: post #103
oskarth wrote: post #20

While I agree with the sentiment, Rolf Dobelli himself is a plagiarist. This whole reasoning is basically stolen from Nassim Taleb. 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

The rebuttal from Dobelli >> http://www.dobelli.com/book-corrections/taleb

That's not a rebuttal. Look at the diffs for Taleb/Dobelli and Chabris&Simons/Dobelli for yourself. This is textbook plagiarism.
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