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News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier

m.guardiannews.com

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Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier

#121

Post by neltnerb »

juusto wrote: post #116
vacri wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the best counter to the faff in this article is simply: Talk to someone who watches the news. Then talk to someone who doesn't. Even if nothing else, watching the news is at least indicative of an interest in the world beyond arms'-length. Besides, there's a world of difference between "read the news being aware that the news-maker has an agenda" and "ignore the news entirely".

I totally agree with what you said, some of my coworkers are blissfully ignorant to anything that happens beyond their household and talking to them feels almost like talking to a child. Sometimes it even gives me a sense of superiority when I see I am way more "prepared" than them. Having said that, I feel exhausted from news. Specially link bait or biased media. Almost like I have a burnout of BS and I am becoming…

Yeah, it's this exhaustion from reading news that I think the article is trying to help avoid. It's great to be engaged in the world, but being engaged by consuming news is exhausting, literally causes constant anxiety, and is bad for you!

That's not to say you should ignore the world, you should just try getting your information from in-depth reporting, long essays on topics of interest, from people who have actually been there, and so on. There's no freaking rush!

If it's so important that I can't wait a month to read an in depth article with context and correct details, I will hear about it from friends.

Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier

#122

Post by jmtame »

How exactly do you define "news" here? Right now, I'm on a news site, because it says that in the top left corner of my screen. I've seen this type of story mentioned before, and in the past the response was "the purpose of news is to give people conversational topics to talk about." On Hacker News, I'm possibly saving myself some time.

I don't have to sift through all of the content out there, the filter exists for me and that of itself is performing a lot of work. Hacker News is essentially a crowdsourced sorting mechanism done by its users. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but I still decide what I'll read and what I'll pass over.

I am reading essays and articles that do a lot of the thinking for me. Sure, I may think less critically by letting someone else do that for me, but I ultimately decide whether I agree or disagree with the point being made. I'll choose the things that I really care about and I'll think harder about those, and maybe I'll contribute my own findings, which other people will find helpful.

I'm not sold that giving up news entirely is good. And how do you define the word? Google News is an aggregate collection of news articles. Am I still reading "the news" if I'm on Google News or Hacker News, or do I need to be on a direct source such as AP or CNN? Does it even matter, since the aggregators and other bloggers will refer back to them?

Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier

#123

Post by nate »

During 1999-2005 I was a news junkie. I was constantly scanning popular news sites.

In 2005 I attended the first Startup School, which is incidental but sticks in my brain of course. I took my lunch break that day and went to the Harvard Book Store. I browsed around and saw a book on positive psychology that looked interesting.

I devoured that book. One of the biggest changes I took from that book was to avoid most of the news. It was for all the reasons mentioned in this article.

I've been pretty good at sticking to this. Not perfect of course. There obviously needs to be a balance. But removing the tie to the news has made me a lot more creative and optimistic about the opportunities in my life.

We should all spend more time creating than reading about other people creating and destroying.

Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier

#124

Post by podperson »

Seems like the article is true for "bad" news -- e.g. Daily newspapers, cable news, and nightly news (which I have gone without for over ten years). Most of the criticisms of news in the article do not apply to the news sources I consume, although perhaps they shouldn't be called news so as to avoid confusion.

My favorite is the New Yorker, which frequently breaks major stories despite being (or because it is) a weekly with long lead times. Similarly, The Daily Show usually does a better job of providing context than "serious" news broadcasts.

Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier

#125

Post by olivier1664 »

vacri wrote: post #76
ruswick wrote: post #35

This 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 li…

I think the best counter to the faff in this article is simply: Talk to someone who watches the news. Then talk to someone who doesn't. Even if nothing else, watching the news is at least indicative of an interest in the world beyond arms'-length. Besides, there's a world of difference between "read the news being aware that the news-maker has an agenda" and "ignore the news entirely".

Your talk experience works as well with football, basketball, cinema, HN, weather... Sharing a common interest with someone make talk a lot more interresting.

Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier

#126

Post by bbbhn »

vacri wrote: post #83
bbbhn wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"reality has a left-wing bias" The ABC (Australian version) gets comments that it's heavily left-wing, yet they have their own internal metrics that watch for evenness of opinion, and these have to match up with an external auditor. Of course no-one can be neutral about a subjective topic, but it's interesting that those news organisations with strong reputations for quality general-news reporting are always seen as…

I don't know anything about ABC, but generally speaking, I imagine that the likelihood of a media company's internal team declaring that their own company's reporting is biased is about as likely as BP creating an internal team that reports offshore drilling creates uncontainable environmental risks.

I don't think it's surprising that the majority of established media companies lean in a certain political direction. People on one side of the political spectrum may be more attracted to journalism than the other side, which would naturally lead to media companies producing journalism more sympathetic to the political arguments that their employees are sympathetic to.

Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier

#127

Post by pinaceae »

great "article" shilling for his own book. news is bad for you.

everything is bad for you. every single thing will kill you in the long term. should write a book about that.

is it important to know about current events in politics? what the sequester is and how it impacts a US citizen? who won the venezulean elections? latest financial news out of europe?

well, it depends on the person. do you have an interest in the world around you? do you feel that a cultured individual should not be fully ignorant what's happening around him?

and then, the business perspective, this is HN after all - shouldn't you know what's affecting your target group or maybe investors? being able to talk with someone you meet from India about something that is going on in his/her country proves you care about what's going on outside of your little tech bubble.

is it necessary to know who won the US masters? No, you will survive without. but it provides context if you meet someone who cares about golf.

Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier

#128

Post by ohwp »

I read the original "Avoid News part 1" (http://dobelli.com/?page_id=827) some time ago and also quit reading news. What occurred to me is that a lot of decisions people make are based or have to do with fear fed by news.

For example: fear for bad weather. Rain is just rain but reading the forecast in the papers sometimes make you wonder if you will survive the next day.

Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier

#129

Post by bbbhn »

podperson wrote: post #124

Seems like the article is true for "bad" news -- e.g. Daily newspapers, cable news, and nightly news (which I have gone without for over ten years). Most of the criticisms of news in the article do not apply to the news sources I consume, although perhaps they shouldn't be called news so as to avoid confusion. My favorite is the New Yorker, which frequently breaks major stories despite being (or because it is) a week…

Are you serious? The Daily Show is no more "news" than Hannity is.
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