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News is bad for you

theguardian.com

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Re: News is bad for you

#81

Post by _wp3r »

tokenadult wrote: post #47
marmaduke wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google News and try to train it Does this work? Does it work better than looking through TrueTrueReddit and hubski?

Google News is most definitely trainable. NO WAY would I visit Reddit for news (I was an early adopter of Reddit, and with Hacker News in my portfolio of news sources already, I don't see enough value-add in trying Reddit again.)

It has gotten harder to train Google news due to the big uptick in the 300 word reprint practice that is playing out in media recently. Even if you manually block all the major outlets, so many sites reprint their stories that I still end up with Miley Cyrus news in my feed.

Re: News is bad for you

#82

Post by thisiswrong »

PsychopompPoet wrote: post #77

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." Thomas Jefferson "Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists." Norman Mailer "Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation." George Bernard Shaw "In the real world, the right thing never happens in the right pl…

''Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.'' Oscar Wilde

Re: News is bad for you

#83

Post by normloman »

nashashmi wrote: post #45

If you were ever part of an MLM network, or quixtar or amway, or anybody who was ever big on 'selling' things, you would know better than to read the news. A typical newspaper has a ginormous amount of negative articles. HN is different though.

I'm curious. What does Multi Level Marketing have to do with news consumption? Why do MLM people know better than to read the news?

Re: News is bad for you

#84

Post by jakub_g »

nathan_long wrote: post #29

The biggest problem with news is that it's about newness and rarity. Whereas what we actually need to know is mostly not new. Eg, "man eaten by alligator" is a billion times less important than "decades of data say you will likely get heart disease." Another serious problem with news is its schedule. A daily paper must publish something every day, even if nothing important has happened. An hourly newscast is worse. M…

> Another serious problem with news is its schedule. A daily paper must publish something every day, even if nothing important has happened. An hourly newscast is worse.

Totally agree. OTOH many e-newspapers have unlimited capacity of producing news like "man eaten by alligator", "bus crash in Bolivia" etc., every hour, updating their homepage and moving all the articles down the list (including the important ones). Here the newness is taken to its extremes. Some solution is the "most read" list, however it also often consists of the sensationalist stories.

A good e-newspaper which updates just once a day would be a great thing.

Re: News is bad for you

#85

Post by user24 »

JeffJenkins wrote: post #8

For anyone who isn't ready to completely turn off the news spigot, consider switching to a weekly (or monthly) source of news. I get all of my (non-HN) news from The Economist's audio edition. It's released weekly and they have a section right at the start about big things happening in business/politics around the world in the last week. It's no more than a couple minutes to scan, and 10-20 in normal speed audio. The…

Read the economist a lot while I was studying for my undergrad. Never felt more informed, and have never found a more balanced presentation of things, imho.

Nowadays I read the guardian website and watch RT sometimes. But I think I'll go back to the economist soon.

Re: News is bad for you

#86

Post by untog »

aaronem wrote: post #63
untog wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What actionable information has following the minute of the NSA revelations provided me? Encrypt your data better, perhaps. But that's kind of besides the point - are you suggesting that there is no point knowing about things you have no control over?

Are you suggesting there is some point? That there's real value, to oneself or to anyone else, in repeatedly dismaying oneself over things which one does not have, and cannot obtain, the power to affect?

I suppose I just can't imagine being content at being ignorant of the world. By that principle surely it's also worthless to learn about world history?

Re: News is bad for you

#87

Post by normloman »

spydum wrote: post #7
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #2

I've been trying an experiment for the last year or two. I have an app that collects commentary, tech and science stories from across the web. (Recently I added news, but that was a mistake) I find I stay just as informed reading commentary, where I'm purposefully being manipulated, as I do reading news. In fact the news is better, as various authors advance various personal theories they've been working on for weeks…

I think this is a great observation that has really only become possible from the internet: the ability to consume viewpoints from others outside of your small social circle has been increased massively. Sites like HN, reddit, dig, slashdot, etc have enabled that dialog on top of the usual one sided article. Think back to when news was mostly distributed via TV or newspapers. Where could you get alternative views? Ne…

Yeah but the internet has also made it easier to filter out news you don't like. Back in the day, your local newspaper had to appeal to a general audience, and contained editorials from people with many perspectives. Now a days, you can chose to only consume news you agree with. If you're a conservative, you can read Drudge Report and Fox News Online without ever having to encounter a liberal viewpoint (except as the target of mockery). Liberals can get all their news from Daily Koz and MSNBC.com in the same fashion.

Re: News is bad for you

#89

Post by anoncowherd »

protonfish wrote: post #70
Aqueous wrote: post #44

If knowing the reality of what happens in the world leads to fear and aggression then perhaps we should be angry and afraid? We can't just shut reality out if we don't like the emotional state it puts us in.

The reality of what happens is all around me - I observe it directly. What is on mass media is information that other people want to promote to further their own agenda. Whether it is for ratings, to get us to buy their product or to further political aims it does not matter (we all have our own motivations) but it is clearly NOT reality. The fact that you confuse the two is sad and frightening.

The mainstream media is a tool for controlling us. As a random example, a tragic school shooting happens, and the media will be chock-full of people demanding more gun control, with maybe a couple of voices of moderation in between.

It only takes a moment's thought to realize that guns don't actually kill people - people do, so why are they whipping people into a gun control frenzy? I believe there was something about a militia in the Constitution..

Re: News is bad for you

#90

Post by JeffJenkins »

spenuke wrote: post #67
JeffJenkins wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to be a subscriber, and then it's available on their website: http://www.economist.com/audio-edition If you just want to read The World This Week it's available online for free: http://www.economist.com/printedition/

To be clear, since I can't see without being a subscriber, the "audio edition" is different from the "Economist radio" linked on Soundcloud?

Yes. Audio Edition is a word-for-word reading of the print edition. Economist Radio looks like it has the random other audio things they do (there's also a podcast on iTunes with those sorts of things)
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