I read every flagged article to know what is really going on.
Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?
181–190 of 262 posts
Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?
#182I live in Ukraine. From 2015 till 2022 I didn’t read or watched news and no social media or blogs or analytics. Then war started. Now I follow news everyday, because I have to take care of my family’s security. I follow analytics of battlefields progress so if I see warning signs I would have to take decisions to move my family further to the western part. I follow news on volunteers who help military so I can take a…
Stay safe. All the best for you and your family.
Slava Ukraini!
Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
What sources of news are reliable on the conflict? I can't find anything which doesn't reek of propaganda: Western or Russian.
The War on the Rocks podcast is good, in particular the regular analysis from Michael Kofman. https://open.spotify.com/show/5ec5TBvVh3w4aobgx0qgYj The Institute for the Study of War aggregates open source intel into daily control of terrain maps. https://twitter.com/thestudyofwar
Listening to their latest podcast right now. They definitely have a much more neutral tone than the others I've checked out.
Thanks.
Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
This seems to be a core problem of a lot of people. The inability to discern that not everything has an agenda and is propaganda. Most western media (Murdock/Berlusconi type oligarch media aside) is fairly factual. It doesn't have 'spin' or 'agenda' in the sense that the journalists conspire to mislead (they don't have time for this).
Well, for months Russia has been losing, and yet they have taken over what, 20% of Ukraine's territory and today I heard The Telegraph say that they have knocked out 40% of Ukraine's energy system. So pardon me for being confused.
That's because you're using the wrong measures. They have taken way more during first week than they have now.
Hitler's empire was far greater than just Germany at the beginning of 1945 and he was still sending V-2s to London and Antwerp at the end of March that year.
Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?
#185Interesting to see this. I’ve been doing this, and wondered if this was part of a larger trend. My daily morning routine is now just 3 things:
1. Check 2 subreddits I am following.
2. Check hacker news.
3. Google chrome new tab , see around 15 articles customized for my interests (yes please have my cookies and show me articles relevant to my recent searches!) Even here I rarely find more than 1-2 articles to read or bookmark.
I have not owned a TV the last 10 years.
Online — I actively avoid news sites, twitter, Google News.
FB? What’s that?
LinkedIn — avoid like the plague.
Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?
#186Why would you even consider fb or twitter or any social media as news? It‘s social media which contains news, but it isnt.
News agencies in contrast share generate and share news. By understanding theyr agenda or political view, you are able to categorize it. For example as inflated or understated.
On social media you are unable to find such a context and thus are unclear about the relevance of the information. You rarely ever know the political view or background of some foreign user account.
Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
> > I tend to feel disturbed by how little it presents as reporting, and instead, how much it appears to have an agenda. > If you don't read the news, then you're at risk of lacking important contextual knowledge about society and social norms. Unfortunately there's very little news that doesn't have an agenda. So I'm not getting the news. I'm getting someone's opinions with various facts spun in a way so as to try t…
As Mark Twain once said "If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed." I guess it's up to the individual to choose what they prefer.
You may note that it is substantially symmetrical to
"To be, or not to be ...: Whether 'tis nobler ... to sleep No more ... [or] in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune"
I.e.: if you want to participate, then some degree of effort is involved.
Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Western media is not controlled by the goverment, so they are free to report on anything they want. I saw them interview pro-russian people in those regions right in the battle areas. On YouTube I follow Denys Davydov, a Ukrainian pilot that reports about the war. A few days ago he showed a video of a Ukrainian helicopter flying close over traffic, and he was critiquing how irresponsibly and dangerous that was. He cl…
> The claim that western media is full of propaganda is just kremlin propaganda. This made me chuckle.
You have to ask this question: How is the government controlling the media?
In Russia's case, it's pretty clear. They have laws to prohibit free press, jail time for claiming things opposite to the Kremlin.
In some other cases, it's more subtle. In Hungary, Orban's influence on the media is very high, and not healthy for a democracy.
But if you claim that the most objective news sources in the west still show straight-up propaganda, I would love to see some evidence of that. Any evidence, like a journalist that is fired over going against a government. Or laws, or some other influence from the government straight to media companies.
Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?
#189Very opiniated answer here : I now rely mostly on Wikipedia, cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events Most news look to me as entertainment, not information. Articles detail what B.Spears has done or what hominous unacceptable sentence has been said by CongressMan X or Y. Spoiler : I don't want entertainment, I don't want to be outraged (most people do and won't really admit it). I want the state of the…
Didn't know this existed, appreciate the insight. Definitely going to give this a try.
Re: Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
What sources of news are reliable on the conflict? I can't find anything which doesn't reek of propaganda: Western or Russian.
Oryx (blog and Twitter) provides good raw open source intelligence data. I've found The Guardian's reporting and FT's analysis to be quite good. They report based on verifiable facts and also claims by both sides, with explicit mentions if there's corroborating sources or not. The Guardian also have a daily "what's new" so that's useful to keep up.
I read the guardian but it's pretty biased l and sometimes the reporting is terrible. It tends to align with my views but it's still super flawed. Recently I've also been reading dw.com Deutsche Welle. They are more straight factual and of course biased to German related news which is interesting.