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The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

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Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#301

Post by mikekchar »

joe-collins wrote: post #76
steelframe wrote: post #14

I stopped reading the news about a year ago. I felt like my emotions were being manipulated by a sharply-honed system built precisely to invoke outrage and draw you in to read more and more of it. I've been able to direct my focus and energy to much more productive tasks since I disconnected. Of course I entirely missed that whole Supreme Court thing until after it was over, and I have no idea what people around me a…

At the risk of sounding glib, your presence on this site would seem to imply that you've not, in fact, stopped reading the news.

Not the OP and I haven't stopped reading the news entirely, but actually on HN, I do not usually read the articles (horror!). I especially don't read articles from the major news outlets. I come to HN for the comments and links to blog posts about programming.

And, no, I did not read TFA ;-). I was just curious if anyone had comments on finding slower, better news.

Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#302

Post by rjf72 »

prostoalex wrote: post #272
slg wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because being politically active at any thing but the most basic level requires knowledge of the issues and knowledge of the issues requires following the news. If you are not politically active you are supporting the status quo because you are not putting in any effort to change the status quo.

But most people are politically active once a year (if that), not every 15 minutes.

And I'd also add that it's hardly even a well conceived process. Most people ideologically align themselves one way or the other and then vote that way, regardless of anything else.

For instance Chicago has been exclusively under one party's exclusive control for going on 90 years now. And so this party has had decades to carry out whatever grand vision they could ever imagine for the city. So we'd expect to see what this grand vision would culminate in. And we see a city with a broken school system, rampant crime, tremendous financial problems, horrible inequity, and that is just in general - broken.

Yet the people keep voting for the exact same party and general ideologies. It's just not logical, but it's how most people operate on most topics. They pick a conclusion they want to be true, and then find evidence to support it, instead of examining the evidence to come to the most reasonable conclusion. Perhaps in large part because the latter process often yields conclusion that we very much don't want to be true.

Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#303

Post by cbnotfromthere »

stubish wrote: post #295
Faark wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know whom to vote for? I understand the US doesn't have a lot of choice on the ballot, political news is highly polarized and latest/developing news is probably not worth following. But somewhat keeping up with what your government does so you can hold it accountable seems like a civic duty to me. And what better way to do this than news?

When all the major parties have completely stopped serving your interests, following big media is pointless as it neglects the minor parties. You need to research it yourself or subscribe to fringe media, and you have more time to do that and are better informed if you don't waste your time with big media.

[flagged]

Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#304

Post by iamkroot »

jiggunjer wrote: post #280
timrice wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes time to vote I research each candidate and ballot measure and make an informed decision with the information that I find. I don't need to be plugged into to every daily scandal to know that I fundamentally disagree with Trump's policies, a few minutes of research will tell me that just fine.

You'd be surprised how even fascists can portray themselves as reasonable on their own websites, or how lacking wikipedia is on some parties. Ballot measures only address a small subset of policies, and they don't exist in many places. From what I understand making a 360 turn on them after being elected isn't uncommon either. So your 'informed' decision is probably just as biased as someone who bases their decision o…

I would never use someone's own website as my sole source of information, that's just begging for trouble. I search out as many different sources as I can find, including voting history, town hall transcripts, interviews, endorsements, etc. etc.

I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make. Are you saying nobody can ever know enough to vote responsibly?

Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#305

Post by lifthrasiir »

intertextuality wrote: post #284
bilbo0s wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just took a look at my main "Go to", the BBC. It's difficult to tell, because the front page of BBC has so many more articles on it than the front page of HN, but the "outrage porn" proportion seems about equal to me. Right around 1/4 or 1/5 of the articles I would classify that way. Seems about the same as HN. Just for context, at the moment on HN, I'd say these are the "news"-y and "outrage porn"-y posts on the fro…

For starters, I think you're being extremely cynical. Second, unlike other news sources, HN tends to have moderate to high quality discussion. I come to HN because I tend to learn things and grow here. That's not to say that it's perfect of course, but I think you're being more than a bit dishonest when you compare HN to mainstream media news.

> Second, unlike other news sources, HN tends to have moderate to high quality discussion.

I firmly oppose to this view. What you are perceiving as "moderate to high quality" is actually just the suppression of mean words, that is good by itself but does not equate to the quality.

I too classify about one fifth of the HN front page as "outrage porns"; they tend to be visibly biased and their discussions are significantly worse in my humble opinion. For that portion of HN I believe they are no better than the mainstream media. If you want remaining four fifths, good! But you have to learn to filter the problematic fifth out.

Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#306

Post by dang »

durability wrote: post #274
old-gregg wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. News != politics. In fact, if I replace the "status quo" in your statement with "reality", the meaning will change significantly. I don't need a journalist to tell me that the healthcare situation (to pick an example) is absurd, or that taxation (fed+state) in some states is already at European levels, yet without any healthcare or education benefits. It's easy to be aware of these facts, you just have to…

You are an awful human being.

Yikes, posting like this will get you banned on HN. We're trying to do better than internet default when it comes to nastiness.

Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow the rules when posting to HN from now on?

Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#307

Post by mikekchar »

peterwwillis wrote: post #151
chiefalchemist wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreeing that relevance and importance are important isn't political. Nor is journalism. Nor is transparency. We can't make everything "political" simply because we lack the will and wherewithal to approach it otherwise. The willingness to give "political" that much importance is simply another symptom of the problem. We're lower expectations i instead of raising them. We're rasing to the bottom, for what? To look "p…

Can we agree that the Fourth Estate's most important role in society is to report on politics and the powerful? Journalism may not be politics, but reporting on how politics affects people (and even other nations) is journalism's highest purpose. But it's impossible to completely "cover" all aspects of all politics and be 100% unbiased. Therefore, the most important part of journalism is inherently political. Facing…

> Can we agree that the Fourth Estate's most important role in society is to report on politics and the powerful?

I certainly don't agree. Their most important role is to inform the public on things that affect the public's well being. This might include politics and the powerful, but that's not everything. If a hurricane is coming, you need to know about it and you need to know where to go to get safety. Sometimes politics is important to cover. Sometimes powerful people are important to cover. Sometime they are not. It depends on the impact to society. I feel usually news outlets do a poor job of evaluating the importance of the news they report and rather rely on reporting things that will bring the highest notoriety.

Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#308

Post by erikbye »

rayiner wrote: post #209
enumjorge wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do agree that paying too much attention to the crazy that’s going on is not constructive or healthy. But you can definitely overcorrect. If you completely disconnect you have no data with which to make your decisions come election time. A lot of what’s happening in politics does affect you directly. Changes to tax code, the budget, deregulation of industries (e.g. net neutrality). And some of it may not affect you…

Do you really need to read the news to know who to vote for given your views on those issues?

News is the here and now presentation of events (and basically press releases/packages), which one absolutely does not need to consume daily in order to do informed voting.

What you want to be reading is aggregate analysis, and quality articles of that kind are found on sites which mostly avoid feeding you the other bullshit. Publications like Economist, Atlantic, Politico, etc.

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