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The News Is Information Junk Food (2022)

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Re: The News Is Information Junk Food (2022)

#191

Post by xdennis »

ricardobayes wrote: post #3

I like the system in UK and Germany where taxpayers need to contribute a fee (but not a tax, to avoid government interference) to fund broadcasters and news. I think not consuming news is not a reasonable approach in our day and age, you have be informed in order to make good decisions.

It's a tax in all but name.

It's not fair to the taxpayer to have to pay for a broadcaster which is biased against you. Even Media Bias agrees that the BBC is left wing: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/bbc/ .

State news organizations shouldn't exist because it's impossible to build a one which is unbiased. It will always be biased toward the establishment (which is center left in the UK but varies by country).

Re: The News Is Information Junk Food (2022)

#192

Post by mistermann »

Levitz wrote: post #183
mistermann wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If humans cannot possibly be objective What if we were to try? Humans also could not run a 4-minute mile, or build a machine that can fly.

And in that sense, we can't. One person doing something and that something being the norm are wildly different asks.

I agree: if something requires trying, and we are unable to try, then we will surely not succeed. (And I agree we do not try, but perhaps it requires trying to try, or something weird like that.)

But then look at all we've achieved, and sometimes all it takes is one or two people to try and a new movement is catalyzed, gaining steam over time.

Optimism can also be helpful.

Re: The News Is Information Junk Food (2022)

#193

Post by cfiggers »

gexla wrote: post #119
cfiggers wrote: post #96

The comparison with junk food is an apt one. It seems like for every human desire or appetite or source of value, there exists a quick hit, instantly gratifying satisfaction that is bad for long-term health. And there also exists a slowly-acquired, initially difficult or unpleasant, eventually-rewarding satisfaction that is good for long-term health. Wouldn't a healthy society encourage its members to pursue the more…

> The comparison with junk food is an apt one. I don't know if you used an AI chatbot for this, but this is an often used starting point.

I did not use an AI chatbot. This all-organic cliched human writing comes to you courtesy of my... all-organic cliched human brain, I guess.

Re: The News Is Information Junk Food (2022)

#194

Post by cheeseomlit »

mistermann wrote: post #163
cheeseomlit wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My objection isn't that its good but not perfect, I don't think itd be good at all. So far everyone who's tried to be a neutral arbiter of truth has been a political hack, like politifact and groups like that. Training the public to trust things just because they got a good score from some agency is not going to improve their ability to think critically and be informed, the false sense of legitimacy (and the ability…

What if the agency included a detailed description of the high quality thinking process (assuming they had one, no current sites do) that led to the conclusion, in turn teaching people how to think ? This comment section, in this smarter than usual community, is chock full of lazy, heuristic thinking. We can't even try to not make errors on certain/most subjects, it is our nature , suggesting we do not is socially pu…

That would help, laying out the process used to reach the conclusion in a clear methodical way would be essential. But in general it feels like a technical solution to a social problem- so much of what goes on in the world isn't clear or methodical, so many events that cant possibly be quantified or verified 100% by a third party- and setting the expectation that they can is IMO placing too much trust in the journalistic process. The reader should always have a seed of doubt, always question the motives of the messenger, and I just don't want that doubt to be assuaged while its still warranted.

This approach may work well for reporting that deals with data and science, things that can be incontrovertibly proven, which counts for a lot. But I think that same approach might fall apart when applied to reporting on complex social and political issues.

Then again, the camera has been a technical solution to the same social problem to some extent. Vietnam was a culture shock for a lot of Americans because they could see real firsthand footage of the events for a change, and that increase in awareness through reporting caused a social reckoning. So maybe its just a question of visibility, seeing is believing

Re: The News Is Information Junk Food (2022)

#195

Post by mistermann »

cheeseomlit wrote: post #194
mistermann wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the agency included a detailed description of the high quality thinking process (assuming they had one, no current sites do) that led to the conclusion, in turn teaching people how to think ? This comment section, in this smarter than usual community, is chock full of lazy, heuristic thinking. We can't even try to not make errors on certain/most subjects, it is our nature , suggesting we do not is socially pu…

That would help, laying out the process used to reach the conclusion in a clear methodical way would be essential. But in general it feels like a technical solution to a social problem- so much of what goes on in the world isn't clear or methodical, so many events that cant possibly be quantified or verified 100% by a third party- and setting the expectation that they can is IMO placing too much trust in the journali…

> But in general it feels like a technical solution to a social problem- so much of what goes on in the world isn't clear or methodical, so many events that cant possibly be quantified or verified 100% by a third party- and setting the expectation that they can is IMO placing too much trust in the journalistic process. The reader should always have a seed of doubt, always question the motives of the messenger, and I just don't want that doubt to be assuaged while its still warranted.

I think it would be a good thing if people were introduced to the concept of the unknown, and learned for the first time in their life to be able to reliably identify it.

And it wouldn't be journalists doing this work, this would have to be an entirely new job role, blending skills from several disciplines (philosophy, psychology, geopolitics, etc).

Re: The News Is Information Junk Food (2022)

#196

Post by axpvms »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #101
axpvms wrote: post #44

I think most journalists these days are not much more than poorly informed and poorly paid professional sh*tposters/provocateurs who learned how to write an inverted pyramid in j-school. I can easily find poorly informed and attention-grabbing opinions from a number of places, including even here :). Disclosure: I learnt to write an inverted pyramid in j-school but dropped out after a year, I didn't want to work in t…

I think this makes a common mistake that this has anything to do with "journalists these days" or editorial slants or anything else. I mean, go back and read some random New York Times issues from the 1950s and you'll see the same thing. The simple reality is that there is not enough happening every day that is relevant to our lives that people actually need to pay attention to. If you're not actually making some cha…

You're right, "these days" isn't correct, it's something I added without really thinking about it.

After all, the earliest sources of "Journalism" were not much more than PR rags for the local lord. "Yellow Journalism", is over a century old. There is an amount of romanticism for the era around Watergate, and the Fairness Doctrine though which a lot of people harken to for "the good old days"

However I think the situation has gotten incredibly worse for journalism in general because of there simply not being the money in it any more. Journalists are must produce more for less, quality slips even further, the attention economy becomes even more acute (although that aspect was always there to a degree in the tabloid news)

Re: The News Is Information Junk Food (2022)

#197

Post by OJFord »

_rrnv wrote: post #76
OJFord wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the UK it does not improve the quality of available news very much. I disagree, I don't think there's anything better than BBC news for junk food type news, an update on current affairs or the Olympics or something when you do want it. Of course it's not hard analysis or thought-provoking opinion pieces, pay someone else directly if you want that. But if someone mentions riots say and I just want to quickly read…

The problem with this approach is that you think you are getting a high level understanding but in fact you are not getting the understanding at all. You just get an opinion view based on what facts are reported and what facts are not.

True, but for the kinds of thing I'm thinking of, and the level of understanding I want (at that point at least) I'm fine with that. (And as sibling says BBC is hardly awful in that regard.)

Take the protests/riots example, I had no awareness of it whatsoever (I don't follow the news any more, just HN really), but I heard enough to be confused and want some idea. The potential political bias in whether it's described as racist/terrorism/peaceful/righteous doesn't really matter to me, I just wanted 'oh, people are angry about things in the vicinity of X, and there are riot police out'.

If I wanted more, yeah the likes of the BBC aren't going to give me deep nourishing (to continue the junk food analogy) insight, and I'd seek out a broadsheet, an insightful blogger, books on the subject, etc. But I don't, so I can instead move on.

Re: The News Is Information Junk Food (2022)

#198

Post by boxed »

zbentley wrote: post #148
boxed wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't have news be a business. Period. It's really that simple. It's like having schools be a business, or healthcare, roads, regulation agencies, etc. You can't produce a system where the EPA gets its funding from the amount of pollution it stops for example. That's a perverse incentive. These types of organizations are by definition cost centers. And must be treated as such.

That gets tricky fast. News as nonprofit might work, but would likely have even more severe resourcing issues than smaller newsrooms are having today. If news sources were publicly funded like schools, that compromises the very important news function of reporting on the government.

> If news sources were publicly funded like schools, that compromises the very important news function of reporting on the government.

Not necessarily. In Sweden the public service system has independent right to basically tax the population. So it's not the government paying the news, it's the news taxing the country directly. I'm not saying that doesn't have its own issue, of course it does, but it's a smart tradeoff I think.

Re: The News Is Information Junk Food (2022)

#199

Post by boxed »

hackandthink wrote: post #165
boxed wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't have news be a business. Period. It's really that simple. It's like having schools be a business, or healthcare, roads, regulation agencies, etc. You can't produce a system where the EPA gets its funding from the amount of pollution it stops for example. That's a perverse incentive. These types of organizations are by definition cost centers. And must be treated as such.

In Germany, public (öffentlich-rechtlich) media are generously financed with a household tax. Unfortunately, the quality of reporting is still poor. Most of the money is spent on stupid entertainment and sports reporting. The reduction of direct state/party influence (2014) has also achieved little. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rundfunkrat

Yea, Sweden has a similar system and problem. A bit part is that the public broadcasters think they are competing on views. Which is rather wrongheaded I think. They should focus on quality and education, not on just getting views without substance.

Re: The News Is Information Junk Food (2022)

#200

Post by boxed »

morning-coffee wrote: post #154
boxed wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't have news be a business. Period. It's really that simple. It's like having schools be a business, or healthcare, roads, regulation agencies, etc. You can't produce a system where the EPA gets its funding from the amount of pollution it stops for example. That's a perverse incentive. These types of organizations are by definition cost centers. And must be treated as such.

If the news is a cost center, who pays for it? I'm assuming your implied solution is to roll-up news production/curation to be under the federal government? (Assuming U.S. here, since you mentioned EPA.) Aren't the strings of government ultimately pulled by forces leading back to businesses? Isn't lobbying more influential than individual tax payers in how their taxes are spent? Do you really think the end result wou…

The US has basically removed laws and taboos against theft and bribery for corporations. So yea, I agree while that stands the country will have trouble doing anything useful with government.
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