To me it always seemed that reading a good, weekly news paper would help. The lack of real time news would make it focus on broader trends and I would not be distracted with the breaking news that is not important. For a while it seemed the Economist was close. But they have breaking news, what happened today and they publish articles that appear in the weekly edition already during the week. Is there something bette…
Maybe force yourself to only read the Economist in paper form?
The News Is Information Junk Food (2022)
91–100 of 205 posts
Re: The News Is Information Junk Food (2022)
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Multiple studies over those years showed that The Daily Show watchers were significantly better informed on issues than cable news viewers. Cable news is the junk food, and TDS showed it to be so bad that even a parody news show could do a better job of informing people, a point made very often by the host. Using it as an example of junk news is missing the point by a rather wide margin. > Better to simply turn off y…
> Multiple studies over those years showed that The Daily Show watchers were significantly better informed on issues than cable news viewers. This comment only makes sense if you're trying to imply the Daily Show increases how informed people are. It seems plausible that causation runs the other way: more informed people are more likely to watch the Daily Show, because then they get all the jokes.
And TDS is not a great example of that, because from the start it was an explicitly self-aware reaction to the awfulness of corporate news.
Re: The News Is Information Junk Food (2022)
#93The more I think about the state of news, the more I'm convinced that we need independent rankings of news sites and journalism. Something similar to a health inspection score. With considerations like: - News needs to be verifiable. Direct links to data sources. - News need to have history of modifications to their article. - Factual errors will cause dings to their score. - Revenue sources/tax forms need to be publ…
Whoever does the scoring will do so based on whether they agree with the sites bias or not instead of any of those criteria. So you're back to square one but now with a false sense of legitimacy
1. Bias is not all or nothing.
2. There is a large degree of commonality about baseline ethics and quality of life. Polarization accentuates wedge issues disproportionately.
3. There are classes of statements which can be factually assessed.
4. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. A step in the right direction combined with other forces can make a positive difference.
Re: The News Is Information Junk Food (2022)
#94Re: The News Is Information Junk Food (2022)
#95"To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week's." -Nassim Nicholas Taleb, "The Bed of Procrustes"
I had this moment during the prelude to the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. First the experts were confindent that the troop movements in Russia were just posturing and saber rattling, there's no way they'll do anything. Next, once they'd entered Ukraine, it would be over in a few weeks. The Russians would win. When the Russians were getting their asses kicked and it looked really bad, the Ukrainians would win by the en…
News would be accurately reporting on where the Russian troops were and what they were doing at that moment. News isn't supposed to include prediction. That's why Opinion sections were traditionally kept separate from the rest of the paper.
Re: The News Is Information Junk Food (2022)
#96It 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 stable, initially uncomfortable, initially difficult, but long-term good option on as many axes as possible?
We should seek out and eat nutritious, wholesome food rather than eat junk food non-stop every day. We should read books and articles rather than consume infotainment and social media. We should go to the gym rather than sitting on the couch and doing nothing. We should commit to real relationships instead of participating in infinite hookup culture. We should find real social circles to belong to and become loyal to them instead of embracing abstract political tribalism that tickles the "belonging" nerve but leaves us with no one who personally knows or cares about us when we're in actual need. We should buy things when we need them and when they're a good value rather than spending impulsively as a therapeutic exercise. The list goes on and on.
I'm concerned that the currently-most-common set of societal norms across pretty much every Western culture I'm aware of seems to encourage the opposite of all that. And I think it's gotten that way, not least at any rate, because sad, scared, addicted, unhappy, immature, overstimulated, overmedicated, physically and spiritually unhealthy humans are simply easier for corporations to make money off of than the alternative. Which suggests that this situation didn't just happen by accident—there's pressure coming from influential people and groups to make it this way. And that means there's systemic resistance to be expected when trying to swim against that current, whether for oneself or, for e.g., for one's kids.
Re: The News Is Information Junk Food (2022)
#97The blending of comedy/entertainment with news, going back to the GWB era with the Daily Show is a good example of this problem. People consuming junk food thinking they are getting their vegetables. Better to simply turn off your brain and honestly watch real junk without the false sophistication.
What's your opinion of John Oliver? I just watched a YouTube video of his show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqK3_n6pdDY . It seemed pretty good, but I'm also very ignorant. What's the best way to become informed about a topic? Or, is it better to stay ignorant?
There are basically 3 grades of reporting - trashy lies, very biased and informative. Misreporting what people actually said is a strong tell of the first two - which can still be fun to read but ultimately they're trying to sell you on something that is probably against your interests.
Re: The News Is Information Junk Food (2022)
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you think about political cartoons in newspapers and elsewhere? https://firstamendmentmuseum.org/exhibits/virtual-exhibits/a...
I'd prefer people still had the attention span to read the news, including the cartoons.
This is where preferences meet reality. How do you influence the world to work the way you want it to?
Re: The News Is Information Junk Food (2022)
#99I started my career as a reporter a decade ago. I can't tell you how many stories I filed that an editor twisted into something different to fit their narrative. There were also stories I was directed away from because they would alienate our audience. It's a narrative business.
I've been working in a PR-type space recently. That narrative is the subject of war between so many different actors. The worst thing is watching everyone around me, even very intelligent people, get so angry over a space that is so heavily fabricated, optimised even for that very same outrage.
Non-profits give away billions and billions for non-economic reasons, they'd probably fund these loss making news outlets, and they indeed fund many non-economic advocacy organizations because they help them change the widely believed narratives to support their respective missions.
Re: The News Is Information Junk Food (2022)
#100The blending of comedy/entertainment with news, going back to the GWB era with the Daily Show is a good example of this problem. People consuming junk food thinking they are getting their vegetables. Better to simply turn off your brain and honestly watch real junk without the false sophistication.
What's your opinion of John Oliver? I just watched a YouTube video of his show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqK3_n6pdDY . It seemed pretty good, but I'm also very ignorant. What's the best way to become informed about a topic? Or, is it better to stay ignorant?
"Between the years 1939 and 1945 more than 6,000,000 Jews died amid a global surge of fatal diseases." is roughly the level of factual accuracy in that specific episode.
In general, I think even without familiarity of the topics discussed it is easy to see how in every episode John Oliver cherry-picks statistics, presents the opinions of individuals as facts or as widely held opinions and slathers the whole show in adjectives so you know exactly what is the correct opinion you are supposed to hold.
I quite enjoy the show as entertainment, but I would not turn to it as a source of truth or to become better informed about a topic.