I hate the news

I haven't watched television for like 10 years now and I only spend time on news sites. But recently I realised how much time I just waste on the news instead and how little I gain.

I could have learned more about python or read a good book about an important subject. News is like junkfood for the mind. Very short topics that are not relevant to my life.

Sometimes I read articles about rape or other injustice and those topics just infuriate me, but I'm totally powerless. News exhaust me.

It has no value for me whatsoever. I can't recall that I ever made any important decision based on it.

This article is so true. When journalist write about a topic you know a lot about, there are often so many errors, that you wonder how many errors there are in topics you don't know about.

If you read the news as a hobby, sure, be my guest. But that's something else.

Events typically don't become book material until several years after they occur. You might say that by the time you read about an event in a book, it is already history.

News coverage is more immediate. And while 95% of all news is useless bullshit, there is still stuff in there that is useful and relevant for shaping one's understanding of the current times.

related, possibly of interest:

[1] R. Dobelli. Avoid News. Aug 2010. --> http://dobelli.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Par...

[2] C. A. Johnson. The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption. O’Reilly, 2012.

i myself am conflicted about the news. i agree with most of the negative points both by OP and the above; but i also feel i actually do learn something from the news, esp. as i have a relatively organized note-taking system, file and reference articles above a certain threshold of interest in bibdesk, etc.

i think the reason i learn something is that i take the 5 secs to take a screenshot or copy-paste the relevant snippets of information in my system. over time, you can see interesting patterns. sometimes, i run across a reference to some other, deeper source of information (presumably the background material the high-level news article was based on), and file a to-do to check it out in my task manager. usually i wouldn't have thought of this source or reference if i hadn't seen it cited in the news. last but not least, just scanning the headlines and summaries can give you a sense of what the hivemind of "the market" (or "the public") is preoccupied with at the moment.

so, at least to me, it's not all bad and yet i agree that it often feels like a waste of time and mental energy. i haven't figured out a solution yet but completely quitting the news is not going to cut it for me.

I think it's important to look at some events as they unfold, vs. in retrospect, even if only to train yourself.

Pick a historical event (say, the assassination which kicked off WW1). Read news in chronological order, as it came out. See how different things seem at any point in time vs. how they look retrospectively a century later.

I think it does do more. It ads another degree of accountability to people with power. It might not be much, but it's something. One small anecdote; a development in a local suburb is hitting a brick wall because the media has revealed a relationship between the developer and the council. That development was going up on public land without proper oversight or tender.

Couple of bigger anecdotes;

- Watergate. A president's criminal behaviour was dug up by a newspaper, forcing him to resign.

- Vietnam war coverage forced the US to reconsider their attitudes to weapons with high collateral damage, conscription and large scale land wars in general.