231–240 of 375 posts
Wish people could turn back time, and get back the time spent reading news/politics articles. Such a waste of time. Nothing ever happens. And if WWIII happens, nothing you can do about it reading articles.
I read far too much news/politics articles and I'd like to read more books instead. How do I go about doing this? The novelty of news and perhaps the uncertainty of rewards (slot machine syndrome) makes it appealing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
PBS is essentially corporate media, getting ~15% of its budget from government. NPR is even less at ~2%. Corporate vs. public ownership matters a lot less than institutional standards and the org's cultural commitment to a rigorous journalistic mission. BBC has a relatively strong commitment; NPR (my favorite whipping boy for bad journalism packaged as Thinky Stuff) does not.
That's a pretty facile analysis. PBS and NPR both have affiliate models where the dozens of local public radio and tv operate independently and are funded separately utilizing the affiliate network to buy and sell content. They are mostly funded by membership, by government indirectly via CPB grants, and sponsorship.
Corporate sponsorships are, at an average 39% during the same period, the largest source of funding. Contributions (what we'd call donations) are 12%.
Put another way: Local donors may (or may not -- I don't know) form the backbone of funding individual stations. But corporate sponsorships fund most of the content that appears on most of the stations, and also funds its distribution.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
PBS is essentially corporate media, getting ~15% of its budget from government. NPR is even less at ~2%. Corporate vs. public ownership matters a lot less than institutional standards and the org's cultural commitment to a rigorous journalistic mission. BBC has a relatively strong commitment; NPR (my favorite whipping boy for bad journalism packaged as Thinky Stuff) does not.
Totally agree wrt PBS & NPR. To the shock and horror of most everyone I know. Since you're an expert: How do you find and consume news? If you were made King/BDFL, how would you "fix" investigative journalism? A la the documentary "Fit to Print".
* Reading rather than watching/listening.
* Going out of my way to consume content from authors/publications whose worldview I disagree with. Ditto for non-U.S. sources.
* Filter based on seriousness rather than passion. The whole information ecosystem is full of people and institutions ready to be passionate about almost any topic; the number willing to be serious is a lot smaller. This, more than any other filter, will improve your news-consuming experience.
* Read what the journalists are reading to get their story ideas. That means niche-y Substacks, newsletters and industry websites.
Investigative journalism: There are some nonprofits doing an very good job, like ProPublica. But too often, those newsrooms are political/cultural monocultures. To use the ProPublica example, you're much, much more likely to see stories about evil billionaires and how government should have done something(tm), than investigations about how, say, government is holding people back.
Some of this stems from hiring trends in journalism, which have skewed more and more to hiring coastal, degree-holding (relative) elites compared to the more blue-collar newsrooms of the past. Hire for monoculture, get monoculture results.
But the other part is funding diversity -- left-leaning donors have embraced nonprofit journalism in a way right-leaning donors have not.
When the right gives to journalistic efforts it tends to take the form of local investigation (and there are some GREAT reporters doing local-market work with that model), open-the-books efforts aimed at government transparency or, these days, own-the-libs clickbait. This reflects the growing delta between how much the right and left trust the press in the U.S.
About a year ago, I stopped consuming news cold turkey (save technology and movie news [the former work-necessary and the latter a personal vice]). I took the extra step of banning Twitter and Memeorandum at the router level, so that I couldn't revert easily. I didn't read a single political news story in the ensuing six months. Some of the happiest months of my life. These days I will read the section headlines on M…
About a year ago, I stopped consuming news cold turkey (save technology and movie news [the former work-necessary and the latter a personal vice]). I took the extra step of banning Twitter and Memeorandum at the router level, so that I couldn't revert easily. I didn't read a single political news story in the ensuing six months. Some of the happiest months of my life. These days I will read the section headlines on M…
One of the most common bit of wisdom I've heard from older folks is to ignore the news. Don't read the newspaper, don't watch TV news, don't listen to radio news, etc.; they all say nothing in them is worth our time. It's among the most useful piece of advice I've ever had.
The vast majority of what is offered as 'news' isn't news at all, it's gossip, schadenfreude, arbitrary drama, and frivolous feel-good stories.
'News' has a ring of plausible importance. I wish we had a more accurate name reflecting its mostly unimportant, worthless, and destructive nature.
It's always obvious in the Google news aggregation where the top article group is saying one thing and the Faux News headline is spinning the completely opposite direction no matter how tenuous the position is so long as it's owning the libs.
Maybe Google News is just great at serving you articles that aligns with your viewpoint? If people don't find biased articles at least weekly in their favorite newspaper, then I'd argue that they aren't critical enough.
What is the evolutionary basis for us being so biased towards negativity?
Back in the late `70s early `80s I lived in Los Angeles and I'd grab some fast food after work and go home and sit down and watch the "News". There was only one channel we could get using an antenna. They had 3 half hour news programs back to back. They started out with local news, then National news, then World news. Basically they scraped up every bit of "Bad News" they could find. Murders, robberies, car wrecks an…