[HN Gopher] Do you avoid the news? You're in growing company
___________________________________________________________________
Do you avoid the news? You're in growing company
Author : lando2319
Score : 125 points
Date : 2023-08-08 15:53 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| AmericanOP wrote:
| It is a remarkable phenomenon that all three cable news channels
| in America have dedicated themselves entirely to the individual
| of Donald Trump, all the way from 2016 to 2024 and beyond.
|
| It defies a certain logic that audiences can tire of Marvel
| movies that come out a couple times a year, but daily coverage of
| such an asinine topic for nearly a decade is supported by the
| market?
|
| Certainly this has to be culturally damaging, but everyone sort
| of pretends it's normal for the country to focus on the antics
| and tribulations of one person.
|
| TV runs the country for now but I am optimistic their vapidity
| will drive the next generations to the internet. There appears to
| me a growing number of young people growing up online.
| blakesterz wrote:
| Seems like we're already there. I can't say it's due to
| vapidity, but regular tv news stuff largely watched by older
| people.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/742225/frequency-of-watc...
|
| This one puts the average age at about 60 for all primetime
| viewers.
|
| https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/the-cw-age-average-viewer-b...
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| It's no better on the internet. Can I have a news aggregator
| not give me 20 stories a day about what Trump said? I don't
| care how prolific he is on whatever off-brand Twitter he's on,
| I still don't care about what breathless all-caps rant he's
| delivered this hour.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| I don't avoid the news. If it's important to me it will reach me
| one way or the other. Friends, family, neighbours or someone
| posting here!
|
| I'm okay with the unavoidable news.
| macinjosh wrote:
| The news is no longer a singular source of information and when
| it was, it really wasn't that great anyway. Sure, the information
| sent out was reliably reliable, the problem lied in the stories
| that weren't reported and the inconvenient facts that were left
| in the dust bin.
|
| Today, the news is a battlefield for information warfare. Treat
| it like the adversarial environment that it is. Understand the
| leanings, biases, and agendas of the publications you read (these
| can change over time). One of the most important parts to
| consider is what is left out? Which questions aren't asked? Which
| stories are ignored by one publication but not another?
|
| Only once you understand all that, can you get an idea of what is
| going on in the news landscape. After all that still take with a
| grain of salt.
| omgJustTest wrote:
| When "breaking news" breaks the news.
| ineptech wrote:
| I feel like the news used to focus on things we didn't know, and
| has shifted to telling us what we enjoy hearing. A great deal of
| it is in the form "<person you dislike> did <exactly what you'd
| think they'd do>", and what the reader gains is not information
| but a fresh opportunity to disapprove of their outgroup.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| The product is just worse. The number of reporters has plummeted,
| and you often can't get local news anymore.
| TySchultz wrote:
| I've been able to cut out the news for the most part with a small
| side project. It combines hundreds of sources and thousands of
| articles every day to make a concise digest.
|
| In about 5 minutes I can get caught up without doom scrolling.
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/quill-news-digest/id1669557131
| jackpt wrote:
| I run a cybersecurity newsletter so i find myself searching
| through rubbish for ages, from both a mix of mainstream media and
| people's personal blogs. Most of my issues lie with mainstream
| media which either not have enough expertise to write the story
| or signigicantly dumb it down so they can be applicable to a much
| wider audience.
| MarcScott wrote:
| The time I take reading the news each day (BBC news and The
| Guardian) is the time it takes me to use the toilet each morning.
| I scan headlines, and only read articles of interest. I spend way
| more time each week on this site, than I do reading traditional
| mainstream news, and usually skip articles with paywalls and just
| come to the comments section to get a synopsis.
|
| I used to be an avid receiver of traditional news media. I
| listened to BBC Radio 4 for about three hours a day, particularly
| Today on my commute into work and PM on my commute home. Then Any
| Questions on Saturday, and often The World at One at lunch.
|
| I'm done with it all TBH. This site tends to surface most things
| that I find important or have an effect on my life. I honestly
| don't need to know what is happening on day X of the invasion of
| Ukraine. I much prefer reading about what's the latest going on
| with reproducibility studies of LK-99 than the political
| machinations of random ministers in parliment.
| rapnie wrote:
| https://archive.is/Xuy8c
| jacknobody wrote:
| All news is bad, because human beings find happy stories to be
| uninteresting.
|
| Many stories told for entertainment describe tension and
| release, but very few describe paradise. The difference might
| be, that the news lately has been all about increasing tension,
| and nothing much about the release, or resolution, of that
| tension.
|
| We need good news, especially about topics like Fukushima,and
| the war in Ukraine, for examples. Good news on other topics
| can't cancel that lack of good news.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Me too. And I think it's entirely rational. The newsroom budgets
| at all news organizations have been slashed to the bone. There's
| nearly no well researched journalism being produced today. This
| news content is nearly information free and contains either the
| most basic facts, someone's agenda or blatant misinformation. And
| on top of that, it's emotional nuclear warfare out there, just
| constant rage bait or fear bait.
|
| So yeah, I dropped out. What of it?
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| I avoid the news, I don't follow any news. Not a TV channel, a
| publication, my preferred talking head, the dude on twitter or a
| guy who does commentary on YouTube. Big or small, I don't care
| about the news.
|
| It's not because it's all negative. It's because it's all
| bullshit. Almost all of it is someone who has an interest in
| changing my worldview so that I behave in ways that are
| beneficial to them. Often enough its a thinly veiled business
| funnel. Sometimes it's not like that, it's just noise that is
| inconsequential to me. But in every single case it isn't worth
| actively following; if something is important enough you'll hear
| about it from a person in your life. And probably you'll hear
| about unimportant things too, everyone knows at least one person
| who won't shut up about Trump this Biden that.
|
| I'd say my life is better. I see these news addicts and theyre
| all just bitter, anxious basket cases constantly chewing their
| nails to a nub about some shit that their life would not change
| one bit if they didn't even know about, besides the anxiety they
| get from knowing about it of course.
| notquitehuman wrote:
| I don't find the oligarchy to be a reputable source of
| information about the oligarchy.
| speak_plainly wrote:
| The current state of media seems to be mired in several alarming
| trends that are undermining its integrity and value to the
| public.
|
| First and foremost, there appears to be a conspicuous lack of
| innovation, with many outlets relying on reprinting or
| repackaging press releases, tweets, or even direct government
| propaganda rather than delivering original content. This absence
| of creativity is closely tied to a perceived decline in quality,
| with some journalism bordering on mere repetition rather than
| insightful analysis.
|
| Furthermore, there is a troubling lack of serious investigation
| and critical thought by reporters, which is essential for a
| functioning democracy.
|
| Lastly, some media figures seem to be increasingly out of touch
| with the real issues, sometimes even bordering on activism rather
| than unbiased reporting.
|
| The reluctance of traditional media companies to fully embrace
| the opportunities provided by the internet has led to significant
| consequences. By failing to innovate and adapt to the digital
| landscape, they lost out on revenue streams such as job postings
| and classifieds.
|
| More than that, their continued reliance on outdated business
| models has resulted in products that often resemble mere copy-
| paste versions of their former selves. This lack of adaptation
| has left a vacuum in the market, allowing platforms like Twitter,
| Facebook, and others to fill the gaps.
|
| It's going to take a major shift in thinking for the news media
| to make up for 30 years of lost time in terms of innovation and
| survive as social media matures as a service.
| [deleted]
| avalys wrote:
| The single biggest problem with America today is the presentation
| and consumption of national news, political commentary and public
| policy as entertainment. The media has figured out that America
| is the ultimate reality TV show and they present it as such.
|
| Cable TV and the internet are to blame for this. I don't know
| what could be done about it. But we'd be way better off if "the
| news" was something you could watch from 7 PM - 8 PM if you were
| interested, or something you could read in a printed newspaper if
| you were really interested, and otherwise the general public
| could ignore it.
|
| Instead we talk about the direction of the country and indeed,
| humanity itself, with the same care and thoughtfulness that goes
| into rooting for your favorite NFL team, or voting people off the
| island on Survivor.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I don't think you can really say anything is to blame for this:
| people follow incentives and the incentives are to yell higher
| and higher to be heard over all the noise of everybody else and
| to create the most insane headlines to be hear over all the
| other insane headlines.
|
| The solution to this tradegi of the commons is to ignore it all
| and read up on the various candidates a few weeks before the
| election.
| zer0zzz wrote:
| I totally agree with this. Except when it comes to new
| platforms and media of the likes of tech we are collectively
| much more willing to examine and be critical of our own
| industry even on HN. However IMHO the thing that makes the
| news industry so scummy is that these are the people that
| still control most of the narratives people read about and
| they seem to almost never be self critical at all and if they
| were then Jon Stewart wouldn't still have a show getting
| laughs off of this truth.
| TheBlight wrote:
| I'd argue the biggest problem is the leveraging of all forms of
| mass media to psychologically manipulate the public.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I have to agree, and some have even said the quiet parts out
| loud... and that there wasn't broad-spread outcry is somewhat
| terrifying to me. I don't care what side you're on, I
| disagree with many on most things. This is frankly a
| terrifying, and somewhat delusional, precedent.
|
| https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
| jwells89 wrote:
| > But we'd be way better off if "the news" was something you
| could watch from 7 PM - 8 PM if you were interested, or
| something you could read in a printed newspaper if you were
| really interested, and otherwise the general public could
| ignore it.
|
| This is how the news was for me as a 90s kid who only had over
| the air channels for TV. 6:00-6:30PM was local news,
| 6:30-7:00PM was World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. Outside
| of that folks weren't particularly concerned with what was
| happening beyond their immediate bubble.
| whalesalad wrote:
| This is still true today, though. I am generally sick of the
| news too but sometimes it is nice to watch local news (WDIV
| channel 4 here in Detroit) from 6 to 6:30 to hear about stuff
| going on around town, and then NBC nightly news from 6:30 to
| 7 to get some more national info.
| jwells89 wrote:
| That's good to hear. I haven't watched cable or OTA TV for
| around 15 years at this point so I don't have a good idea
| of what it's like these days, except for that time ~5 years
| ago when I tried plugging in an antenna to see what I could
| pick up but immediately lost interest after being reminded
| how much time ads take up on OTA TV channels.
| gfdsgvbcd wrote:
| i feel like TV ads get a bad rap sometimes. you dont have
| to actually watch them, they provide a natural pause in
| the action to go get a snack, go to the bathroom, do
| something else, rather than sitting there for 12 hours
| straight "consuming content"
| whalesalad wrote:
| The ads are undoubtedly the worst part. During local news
| it's terrible/obnoxious furniture companies and national
| news is 100% drug commercials.
| gnarlynarwhal42 wrote:
| frankly, the ads are the least bad part. at least ads are
| honest in their intention
| jvm___ wrote:
| "...in rare cases, may cause gangrene of the perineum."
| whalesalad wrote:
| love that the disclaimer has to explain where the
| perineum is on that one lol
| taude wrote:
| Even in the early 90s news started shifting towards our
| modern incarnation. CNN was considered hard news in the 80s,
| but that changed around the time of the Persian Gulf war and
| Wolf Blitzer becoming the Scud-Stud, and all the other shows
| like Cross-Fire becoming news-er-tainment (or whatever the
| proper industry term is), etc...
| JohnFen wrote:
| > CNN was considered hard news in the 80s
|
| I blame CNN for much of the state of news today. TV news
| has always been poor, but before CNN proved otherwise, news
| was not something that was considered a profit-maker. Once
| CNN showed it can make money, then the profit
| maximalization began in earnest, and with that came the
| descent into news-as-entertainment.
|
| That started well before the gulf war.
| cbsmith wrote:
| Oh, that goes way back before CNN and cable, or even TV.
|
| As an aside, 99% invisible had a pretty good podcast on
| how radio (which delivers news to more Americans -and is
| trusted more- than TV) content has changed over the
| years. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-
| divided-dial/
|
| The change has been systemic, and that change shaped CNN
| more than the other way around.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yep. For a decent chunk of my early adulthood, barring really
| major events, my news consumption was ABC World News Tonight
| and maybe This Week with David Brinkley on Sunday if I was
| around--and Time Magazine delivered weekly to my mailbox.
|
| And that was pretty much it.
| vidanay wrote:
| And Frontline for long form.
| cbsmith wrote:
| Not newspapers?
| vidanay wrote:
| Do you consider newspapers as long form? (I certainly
| never have.)
| ghaff wrote:
| While there are/were Sunday magazines, I'd generally
| consider magazines more broadly for deep dives into
| particular aspects of culture, politics, and hobbies.
| cbsmith wrote:
| It depends on the magazine (and the newspaper), but I'd
| generally agree with that perspective.
| cbsmith wrote:
| I was more reflecting on newspapers not being mentioned
| at all as a news source. ABC World News Tonight, This
| Week, and Frontline are all TV sources, and Time Magazine
| is a pretty different beast. Back in the day newspapers
| and radio were pretty significant news sources for people
| (and radio still is).
|
| I don't know if I'd call newspapers long form, as they
| certainly have lots of short articles, but I'd say they
| regularly have "longer form" than Frontline.
| ghaff wrote:
| Certainly a fair number of people got daily newspapers at
| one point. Post-uni, I never actually lived especially
| near a city and never felt the need to subscribe to the
| (in my case) Boston Globe which wasn't especially
| relevant to my day-to-day life. (To this day I don't
| although I do subscribe digitally to the NYT and the
| Economist.)
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _Cable TV and the internet are to blame for this._
|
| Is it a supply issue, or a demand issue? If people didn't want
| want it in the first place, would the producers bother to make
| it?
|
| We've had salacious media for a long time:
|
| > _Scandal sheets were the precursors to tabloid journalism.
| Around 1770, scandal sheets appeared in London, and in the
| United States as early as the 1840s.[4] Reverend Henry Bate
| Dudley was the editor of one of the earliest scandal sheets,
| The Morning Post, which specialized in printing malicious
| society gossip, selling positive mentions in its pages, and
| collecting suppression fees to keep stories unpublished.[5]:
| 11-14 Other Georgian era scandal sheets were Theodore Hook 's
| John Bull, Charles Molloy Westmacott's The Age, and Barnard
| Gregory's The Satirist.[5]: 53 William d'Alton Mann, owner of
| the scandal sheet Town Topics, explained his purpose:_
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabloid_journalism
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossip_magazine
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_reporting
| grantc wrote:
| Definitely a demand issue. Sure, there are secondary supply-
| side effects, but the simple truth is what we see today is
| what captures available demand. There is no other domain
| where you find that Americans are willing, en masse, to eat
| their vegetables before dessert. So the pro-wrestling flavor
| of televised news is going to crush anything more thoughtful
| slash less entertaining with relentless invariance.
|
| To me, the only plausible shift to more fact-based and
| balanced coverage happens via subsidies -- the government has
| to insert itself into the market and put its thumb on the
| scale. This is unlikely to happen for the same reasons we
| make every other stupid choice as a citizenry. Also: picture
| the quality of leaders we vote into Congress and try to
| imagine them doing anything as high-minded as solving the
| problems of the news media fellating them half the time, and
| flogging them the remainder. (Literal extensions of the
| metaphor juxtaposed with contemporary congressional scandals
| are left as an exercise for the reader.)
|
| Take $10B of annual spend out of the US budget. Which will
| never be missed. Fund a public network that only does news.
| The budget is something like 2-3X FOX News' top line; it's
| enough to hire real talent and smart leaders. Give the public
| network one KPI and a new line item: they fund an arm's
| length fact-checking service or some other form of objective
| evaluator to score them every day for remaining factual and
| balanced (and be clear when it's news and when it's opinion).
| I don't know that you can do 100% facts in the real world --
| but can you be balanced, non-sensational, and transparent?
| The media did a yeoman-like job of fact-checking Trump every
| day -- apparently we can do this when it sells, so scoring
| truthfulness isn't impossible.
|
| It seems stupid that we can't take a sub-rounding error of
| opex out of the budget and do something that would have this
| kind of positive societal leverage, so maybe I've got it
| wrong. Even if I don't, we're not smart enough to make
| something like this reality.
| kube-system wrote:
| Both, really. As technology has created new and broader
| reaching mediums, the people operating those mediums have
| changed their target audience to support their existence.
| gnarlynarwhal42 wrote:
| as human nature is more understood, human nature adapts to
| better exploit^Wcater to human nature
| tootie wrote:
| There is more and better quality news available now than ever
| in history and people flock to the crappiest options because
| they can't get enough. It's demand.
| selectodude wrote:
| "When you're young, you look at television and think,
| There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb
| us down. But when you get a little older, you realize
| that's not true. The networks are in business to give
| people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing
| thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the
| bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are
| really in business to give people what they want. It's the
| truth."
|
| -Steve Jobs
| tootie wrote:
| Ironic considering Jobs conspired to fix prices with
| media partners including News Corp. Either way, network
| TV isn't the only news. There's plenty of non-profit news
| and non-predatory news in the world besides network TV.
| throw0101b wrote:
| There has always been "better quality" news and worse
| quality news available to people. We simply have more of
| both now.
| tootie wrote:
| Right and people gravitate heavily towards the bad. The
| most watched cable news by far is FOX which has been
| caught dead to rights conspiring with government, with
| campaigns and telling intentional lies in furtherance of
| propaganda goals. And they don't suffer any loss in
| loyalty. That is 100% the faults of the viewers who elect
| to be deceived in ways they enjoy.
| nathancahill wrote:
| My grandparents managed to maintain this way of watching news.
| The TV was off the entire day. They would turn it on at 8pm
| after dinner for the local/national news report, and turn it
| off when it finished. It's possible to do but it takes
| discipline and intention.
| Jeema101 wrote:
| A lot of it isn't actually news at all: it's news
| entertainment.
|
| It's very similar to how professional wrestling isn't real
| wrestling, but actually 'wrestling entertainment'.
|
| I call this the 'WWE-ification' of the news and politics.
| jewayne wrote:
| You have to admit, Missing White Woman is a pretty classic
| storyline. Especially when the husband is the villain!
| clsec wrote:
| I can't even count the number of times Taylor Swift and her
| concert tour have been on the news in the past two weeks.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I assume Taylor Swift's marketing machine is in full gear
| to distract from her getting into a relationship with a
| racist.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| True facts.
|
| And when entertainment isn't recharging our souls, giving us
| time off, isn't wholesome (which all apply to current news) we
| don't get what our souls need, and we become worse people
| individually and collectively.
|
| Watching the 24 hour news cycle as entertainment is just like
| any kind of constant trauma, constant onslaught, constant
| conflict and it fundamentally is rewiring our brains
| individually and collectively
| barbazoo wrote:
| > 7 PM - 8 PM
|
| Back in my day and in Germany, "news" was from 20:00 to 20:15
| with the last 5 or so minutes of that were dedicated to the
| Bundesliga :)
| Izkata wrote:
| Where I was the US, 7pm - 9pm was prime entertainment time,
| and the news would start at 9pm or 10pm depending on the
| channel (which I think was partially so TV would become
| boring to kids right around when they should go to bed).
| Don't remember how long it ran, though my guess would be an
| hour before the late-night shows would begin.
| vidanay wrote:
| In Chicago, there was only a single news broadcast that
| _wasn't_ at 10pm and that was Channel 9. It was part of
| their marketing to have the news at 9 (channel 9, news at
| 9). In the mid-late 80's when Fox came online, they copied
| the 9 o'clock news.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Interesting how it's different everywhere. Even today, most
| movies start at 20:15 it seems: https://www.tvtoday.de/tv-
| programm/
| mikub wrote:
| As far as I'm aware the 20:15 thing here in germany is
| because nobody want's to compete with the "Tagesschau".
| In other countrys where I lived all the channels would
| start their movies whenever they want(7pm, 9pm or such
| strange times), as a german I found that pretty
| irritating, who could live like that? It's pure anarchy.
| :)
| ghaff wrote:
| As I recall in the US, there was typically a post-primetime
| local news broadcast. The network news was pre-primetime
| (and it may have been accompanied with a local news slot
| beforehand).
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > The single biggest problem with America today is the
| presentation and consumption of national news, political
| commentary and public policy as entertainment.
|
| That's a very bold claim but I can't say it's wild. The news is
| supposed to be a critical source of information but I think the
| effect is a net negative. By a large margin. It's a pretty
| perverse situation.
|
| I don't think the government should ban news or anything.
| That's obviously bad. But society would probably be better off
| without it (as-is), as extreme as that would be.
| ashton314 wrote:
| Neil Postman articulates this point in _Amusing Ourselves to
| Death_ , and cites Marshal McLuhan's adage, "the medium is the
| message": TV is entertaining and context-free. News over TV
| will adopt the shape of the medium.
|
| I did a little write-up after reading AOtD for a TL;DR of the
| book: https://lambdaland.org/posts/personal/2020-06-07-amusing-
| our...
|
| (Though you _really_ should read the book and not my dumb
| little write-up.)
| trgn wrote:
| Postman is the sort of public intellectual no longer exist.
| Classically educated and proud of it, conservative in spirit,
| tolerant in action. He also made digestible a lot of the work
| from 60s70s academia on these topics.
|
| Mcluhan, his French counterparts, Deborah, ELlul, all
| understood something 60 years ago. Mass manufacturing and
| mass media are the key determinants of our society. The first
| has commoditized the physical things we surround ourselves
| with. The second commoditizes our dispositions. Political or
| economical arrangements matter so much less.
|
| Taking that view, and the internet is not nearly as much of a
| transformational technology as we think it is. Just another
| means for media saturazition, washing out individual thought.
|
| A salient effect, when everything is essentially the same,
| the only mechanism to differentiate is branding. Hence,
| everything is captured by marketing. Products are
| differentiated by their commercials, people differentiate
| themselves by the identity they assume, everything/everybody
| is thrown in a marketplace where comparison is based on
| image, not substance. Really nothing can be evaluated
| intrinsically anymore, our evaluation of everything gets
| mediated by a story, a narrative, an image. The matrix is
| real, not the living in the computer part, but the unease
| that everything is fake, everything is a projection.
|
| If true, and it also explains why the classic California
| easy-going personality is now the dominant one. It is not
| even cool anymore to be 90s abrasive or cynical, that just
| elicits eye rolls (the rebellion in fight club looks quaint
| now, almost adorable). Better to just bland in.
|
| The logical end point of this evolution is that we all become
| widgets. Essentially the same, responding to inputs,
| participants in algorithm, the only difference maybe the
| skinning, the look&feel. All undifferentiated tough.
|
| May be true, may be not. But it certainly explains a lot of
| the last 150 years, and it makes our current era less
| special. which is comforting, we're not messing up in ways
| grandpa wasn't already doing so.
| chmod600 wrote:
| "with the same care and thoughtfulness that goes into rooting
| for your favorite NFL team"
|
| While true, I can't help but think everyone who says that is
| talking about "other people" (mostly people on the other side
| but maybe a few from my side) or "other news sources" (mostly
| ones from the other side that I don't watch and maybe a few
| isolated examples on my side).
| tracker1 wrote:
| I think most of us realise that "our side" is just as likely
| as the other side... We all recognize the problem, it's just
| that we differ on what we believe are ideal solutions. In the
| end, the breakdown of actual compromise on most issues is the
| result and it's bad for anyone without the pocketbook to
| overcome the issue, politically speaking.
|
| Some of us are mostly adjacent. I'm a right-leaning
| libertarian. I actually dislike when people refer to modern
| progressives as "liberal" as it's pretty insulting to classic
| liberals who also aren't into where progressives have gone. I
| never voted for Trump, don't really like him. I have to
| admit, I did/do enjoy how worked up those with TDS get about
| him though. But it's completely hyperbolic on both ends, and
| there's more dishonesty about the man than from the man.
|
| Many people want the establishment out... the problem is, as
| above, that there are several camps of what people believe
| should prevail in terms of direction... so no traction gains
| and the establishment wins. I'm thinking more people on
| either side should start voting for more anti-establishment
| candidates all around. They may be a bit cooky, but in the
| end, if they're willing to negotiate we could see better
| outcomes overall that at least try to serve the people and
| not the establishment insiders.
| gnarlynarwhal42 wrote:
| i agree 100%, i feel like in the venn diagram of politics
| there is a lot of overlap but its just more
| fun/engaging/dopamine to focus on the outside crescents i
| guess... which serves the divide/conquer goals of the
| establishment.
| runlaszlorun wrote:
| Great description.
| digging wrote:
| Isn't it remarkable how healthy and wise our society was before
| 24-hour news. Nowadays we have newfangled problems like
| "populism", "anger", "Nazis" - say, where does that name even
| come from?
| ToDougie wrote:
| I love this comment. Maybe we wouldn't be in such a quagmire
| if previous generations had paid a little more attention to
| current events.
| bcoates wrote:
| No, we have a problem with the news selling those fictional
| things as real. Turn off CNN or OAN wherever you get your
| firehose of algorithmically generated nonsense from and they
| magically go away.
| zer0zzz wrote:
| Add Apple News and any bundled phone news app to that list.
| basch wrote:
| Cable News may have boiled it down to its essence, but the
| problem transcends tv. The same problem exists in writing, its
| just more spread out.
|
| If you synthesize all that happens in Washington in a day, it
| is a giant soap opera. IT keeps its power by keeping people
| paying attention to it. Even a "just the facts, maam" view of
| the news is largely rabblerousing. I wonder how much of what I
| see on https://www.memeorandum.com/river today will matter in
| 10 years. How much of it belongs in a history book. How much of
| it is needed to make an informed decision in an election. How
| much of it is needed to understand the world around me.
| davidw wrote:
| I started following Jay Rosen on Twitter and that's something
| he often talks about. Coverage is like a horse race, that talks
| about the odds, not the consequences of someone getting
| elected.
| RestlessAPI wrote:
| Cable TV and Internet are tools. They are technologies. They
| are not people.
|
| News companies, specifically news company executives looking to
| sell as much ad revenue as possible, and are willing to produce
| any content that gets viewership, are to blame.
| cbsmith wrote:
| > But we'd be way better off if "the news" was something you
| could watch from 7 PM - 8 PM if you were interested, or
| something you could read in a printed newspaper if you were
| really interested, and otherwise the general public could
| ignore it.
|
| Essentially this is arguing for limited distribution &
| gatekeepers for the news. That would almost certainly be better
| for society, _but_ there 's the problem with disenfranchisement
| & how you select/entrust gatekeepers. I don't think the "old"
| solutions to those problems were particularly good.
| zingababba wrote:
| The problem is speed of information eroding our sense-making
| coupled with the dominant linguistic framework of economics
| which reduces communication to zero-sum competition.
|
| To pine for any kind of quaint return is missing the point
| entirely. The only way through is forward and out.
| damnesian wrote:
| Reinstating the Fairness Doctrine would be the one switch to
| flip to undo a lot of this very destructive mess. Of course all
| of the media giants would throw all the lawyers at it. Now that
| they know how incredibly lucrative news-as-entertainment is.
| But it's what must be done to turn this problem around and get
| a handle on it.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Would it? Remember TV competes with online news. Fox biggest
| competitor isn't NBC, it is Breitbart, The Dodge Report or
| Real truth network.
|
| And you are never going to get the fairness doctrine to apply
| to those that are online.
|
| You could have Facebook set rules for posts on their network,
| but then Facebook competes with Twitter and Tiktok and
| whatever, so if the posts on Facebook are less engaging than
| those on Twitter, people may go there.
|
| Its all broken incentives all the way down.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| Literally illegal for certain with anything non-broadcast
| about with about 90% certainty for broadcast. It's such a
| blatant violation of the first amendment it's never going to
| happen.
| jgeada wrote:
| America's notion of freedom of speech was designed at time
| when we thought humans would prefer truth over
| "truthiness". Turns out none of that was true, or only true
| for a small subset of the population. No other country runs
| with our rules of "freedom of speech == freedom of
| consequences" (particularly for the rich). But then, most
| of the West is running into similar problems with the news.
|
| Not sure there is an easy answer. None of us want to be
| censored, but for sure the market has failed (both the
| demand side and the supply side, and there is lots of money
| to be made from all the fake controversy and scandal)
| SllX wrote:
| Not designed: emerged. Our notions of free speech emerged
| in a world where publishing was under British law a
| licensed industry, and the operation of an illegal
| printing press was a crime which could be punished, where
| there were parts of the New World where the only legal
| printing the press could be used for was for the Bible
| and where there were other parts of the New World where
| the British Crown retained the rights to the King James
| Edition of the Bible and it was illegal to print in
| America.
|
| With the First Amendment we revoked Congress' power as a
| lawmaking body to govern publishing. The market hasn't
| failed, but other people are reading and believing things
| that you or I don't agree with, but the difference is
| that you basically want to make them stop doing that,
| which I guess includes me as I am disagreeing with you
| here.
|
| Don't forget that all elected positions are Offices of
| Power and to seek an election is to seek to acquire
| power. I am more than happy to keep the flow of
| information outside the grasp of the types of people who
| seek to acquire an elected Office and the power vested in
| it, even at the risk that other people are wrong and take
| wrong actions with wrong information.
| jgeada wrote:
| I am not sure we disagree, as I proposed no solution.
|
| I certainly wouldn't trust or give politicians the
| ability to censor what they don't like.
|
| As I said, this is a hard problem. No individual should
| be censored. But, as with most things, scale is a problem
| in of itself. There is a significant scale difference
| when I, as an individual, say whatever I want, vs when
| CNN or FOX (or pick whatever large scaled publisher you
| want) broadcasts falsehoods to everyone for their profit.
| There is significant profit in anger, fear, sowing
| divisions, artificial controversy; but this comes at a
| large detriment to us as a society.
| SllX wrote:
| > I am not sure we disagree, as I proposed no solution.
|
| That's embarrassing. I actually did overstate the
| disagreement upon re-reading your prior comment. My
| apologies.
|
| > There is a significant scale difference when I, as an
| individual, say whatever I want, vs when CNN or FOX (or
| pick whatever large scaled publisher you want) broadcasts
| falsehoods to everyone for their profit.
|
| Even CNN and Fox can be held in check for literally
| lying, but by the people they're lying about, and in turn
| they operate in a space where they report on a more
| powerful entity than themselves when they lie or subvert
| the truth. The American government is also a player in
| the information space, and its chief officials are not
| always telling the truth, or disclosing the full truth.
| So what we have is a wash in which information competes
| with information, and we don't always have good, accurate
| or useful information where we need it or desire it. I
| still wouldn't call this a market failure, people profit
| and lose off of good or bad information all the time;
| it's when we allow ourselves to become tools for moneyed
| or empowered interests who use those programs and
| writings to induce action that we experience a very real
| human or political failure.
|
| The purpose of the news industry _is_ to inform, but it
| has always and will forever be at the behest of people
| with an interest in informing in a manner they prioritize
| in competition with other people with differing
| interests, and it is itself for-profit industry whether
| or not the profits are expressed on the P &L of a given
| corporation.
| SllX wrote:
| What is it you think this would even accomplish? There's no
| shortage of contrasting and opposing viewpoints, but people
| watch and read what they want to, and most often on non-
| broadcast mediums.
| tootie wrote:
| "Cable TV and the internet are to blame for this"
|
| Viewers are to blame. Cable and the internet are just better
| than ever monetizing the garbage people gravitate towards.
| There's more high quality journalism on offer than ever and
| it's audience just keep dwindling in favor of social media and
| purely fraudulent news like FOX.
|
| People talk about media or corporations or government like
| they're from some alternate dimension or alien species. They're
| run by the exact same human beings that exist in your daily
| life. Most people act out of self-interest and are subject to
| bias. Media didn't invent it, it's an extension of human
| nature.
| tivert wrote:
| > The single biggest problem with America today is the
| presentation and consumption of national news, political
| commentary and public policy as entertainment. The media has
| figured out that America is the ultimate reality TV show and
| they present it as such.
|
| > Cable TV and the internet are to blame for this. I don't know
| what could be done about it. But we'd be way better off if "the
| news" was something you could watch from 7 PM - 8 PM if you
| were interested, or something you could read in a printed
| newspaper if you were really interested, and otherwise the
| general public could ignore it.
|
| No, it's _television in general_. People were famously making
| that _exact same point_ in the 1980s, before the widespread
| adoption of cable:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death.
| tl;dr: the medium is the message, and the message of television
| is entertainment, even when the news was only a half-hour a
| day.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| Social media and its manipulation have amplified the problem
| vastly, and what makes it even worse is the consolidation of
| ownership. Nothing like turning on an ABC (owned by Disney)
| news program and getting ten minutes of self-referential
| Disney news.
| tivert wrote:
| I think the internet and social media's effects have been
| different than television. Like television, it encourages
| _even shorter_ attention spans and _even more_ superficial
| engagement with things. Unlike television, it tends towards
| anger and outrage (not entertainment) and encourages more
| fragmentation and tribalism.
| standardly wrote:
| I cleansed myself of social media and news about 10 years ago and
| I have no regrets whatsoever. I stay informed via ambient
| snippets of information that are unavoidable just by using the
| internet every day, or from conversations at work, and when I
| want to know more about a thing I specifically search out
| information from different sources on that thing.
| yboris wrote:
| _Stop Reading the News: A Manifesto for a Happier, Calmer and
| Wiser Life_ book:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Stop-Reading-News-information-overloa...
|
| TL;DR: a PDF: https://gwern.net/doc/culture/2010-dobelli.pdf
|
| Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21430337
| ArekDymalski wrote:
| The moment you realize that news is just another form of
| entertainment, not a source of knowledge you're obligated to
| follow, you free to stop wasting your time on it.
| rickstanley wrote:
| I tend to avoid most of the United States related news, to me it
| is like a reality show or something.
|
| I'd rather read _about_ the US from another source, in tagesschau
| (https://www.tagesschau.de/), for instance.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Any time there's been an Israel Palestine flair-up in the past
| 20 years I've had to VPN to another country and read about it
| from publications in countries with less skin in the game
|
| The US news was so unreliable on that topic, no room to learn
| anything or have any perspective aside from what was presented
| verbatim
|
| and then that expanded to more topics and politics, and then
| "everything is political" so its just useless
|
| I just read macroeconomic news and trade sometimes. I feel like
| richer people have been doing that and immune to any
| geo/political outcome for hundreds of years
| robotnikman wrote:
| Yeah I've been trying, it has never been good for my mental
| health seeing all the negativity. Even sticking here to HN trying
| to only stay on top of tech related news, I still run into
| problems stumbling over news of negative things which I have no
| control over
| cafard wrote:
| The Washington Post is itself showing signs of news aversion.
| Their local news is pretty scant these days.
| seydor wrote:
| But isnt this news?
| jcpham2 wrote:
| I'm about two decades removed by mainstream media news/cable tv
| programming. I'm an American but I don't consume any news or
| television programming I watch netflix sometimes? Reddit/HN?
| Whenever we cut the cord many ideas left our household with the
| cable TV box.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > Part of the problem, he says, is that publishers are in hot
| pursuit of news consumers who are willing to pay for news --
| subscription buyers, in other words -- and shape their offerings
| around the perceived needs and interests of customers who are
| relatively affluent, educated and "politically interested."
|
| I wonder what the next trick might be. Manufacture the news!
| Someone goes out at night and spray paints some obscenities on
| the main street intersection, then in the morning they report on
| it "everyone get angry, look at what just happened". I am joking,
| of course...
|
| To be serious though, they reap what the saw. And I guess found
| out that selecting on what to report and how is not too far from
| "manufacturing" the news. They found in the short term getting
| people enraged/engaged (there is only one letter difference!)
| with and divisively selected headlines was great for business. In
| the long term, people become disillusioned because they see
| through the dishonesty, hostility and bias after a while.
| jameslk wrote:
| The irony of Hacker News commenters saying they avoid the news on
| a site called Hacker News...
| shortcrct wrote:
| I get your point, but let's not sit here and convince ourselves
| that the front page of HN is the same as the front page of CNN,
| Fox, or WaPo.
| jameslk wrote:
| This is HN right? I believe I'm justified in my pedantry /s
|
| Jokes aside, I think it is partially disingenuous for others
| to claim they avoid news on this site. It might not be the
| front page of a major news site, but there's plenty of
| politics and doom here too. Perhaps it feels less like news
| to others since it better fits the beliefs/expectations of
| the in-group.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| Yeah but this site isn't about "the news"...
|
| Honestly I click maybe less than 10% of all articles I see on
| this site. Usually I like to read the ones that are about
| interesting new studies or computation breakthroughs, and I do
| like to chime in on some controversial topics from time to time
| when they pop up and I think my input could be beneficial to
| someone reading it.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I don't avoid the news, but I'm pretty selective about my news
| sources. I do mostly avoid discussions about the news, though.
| zerof1l wrote:
| Yep, I can relate. I also started to avoid reading the news. In
| the past, I would read the news first thing in the morning. Now I
| do it only in the afternoon. I also unsubscribed from a newspaper
| and one Youtube new channel which had too many negative news.
| Overall I feel better, less depressed and anxious. And my
| productivity had improved.
| Hoasi wrote:
| Already avoided the news for some years, the Covid era put the
| nail in that coffin for good.
| EatingWithForks wrote:
| I wish I had local news. For example if there's a crazy mom
| trying to get on the school board. Or my local towing company is
| owned by a person undergoing felony indictment. New businesses
| opening that could really use my dollars. My local shop had a 4
| for 5$ sale for kombucha and I nearly missed out on it due to a
| lack of local news.
|
| I really don't want to know what is happening to youth in a
| country that is very far from me as often.
| xormapmap wrote:
| Hate to say it but it just sounds like you're looking for the
| neighbourhood Facebook group.
| [deleted]
| glonq wrote:
| In 2016 (for likely obvious reasons) I broke the habit of
| watching the evening news, and I'm much happier for it.
|
| And I'm still well-informed. I peek at TV news occasionally, and
| glimpse at online news too. But I avoid editorials and sources
| that add a lot of spin. Give me the as-raw-as-possible news so
| that I can decide if/how I feel about it on my own.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| Is there such a thing nowadays? There's too much incentive to
| post polarizing, rage-inducing content. I'd love to see what
| sites you're getting information from.
| glonq wrote:
| I don't visit fringe news sites or echo chambers.
|
| I mostly just eyeball the headlines of various news orgs and
| then try to deduce "what really happened if you strip away
| the clickbait, sensationalism, and fearmongering".
|
| apnews.com is pretty good.
|
| I'll even visit bullshit places like foxnews, not to find
| actualy news or facts but instead to see what is currently
| being planted into the smooth mushy brains of many Americans.
| whycome wrote:
| The definition of what "the news" is has become blurry... Are the
| articles I read on HN considered 'news'? (I mean, it's right
| there in the title!)
|
| Is this article 'news'?
|
| The article talks about 'traditional' sources of newspapers, NPR,
| MSNBC -- is there a certain type of 'news' that people are
| starting to avoid?
| networkchad wrote:
| [dead]
| proleisuretour wrote:
| Most folks can't even access the article because it a pay wall.
| So by design, the pay wall creates avoidance.
| harshalizee wrote:
| Any recommendations for a good weekly or monthly magazine that
| covers the week/month's news well. Bonus for printed editions,
| and one that doesn't involving the most kafka-esque unsubscribe
| process.
| eestrada wrote:
| Thomas Jefferson said "...the man who never looks into a
| newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as
| he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is
| filled with falsehoods & errors."
|
| Disenchantment with the news is not a new thing. More people are
| figuring out how useless it is and are disconnecting.
| UberFly wrote:
| Count me as one of them. I touch an overview of what's new once a
| day and the rest of the time I'm listening to sports radio. It's
| entertaining and means nothing ultimately.
| zer0zzz wrote:
| As per usual the news people writing news articles blaming their
| own failure on phones and the internet. At some point can we just
| get one honest article where the writers and news people that
| work at these organizations own up to their hyper
| sensationalization of content and overdoing these constant news
| alerts and "breaking" headlines.
| [deleted]
| rubicon33 wrote:
| Let's call it for what it is.
|
| News media has had completely dissolved all sense of morality in
| reporting. They've killed the goose looking for golden eggs.
| rlawson wrote:
| Yeah, covid got me addicted to the news - altho I was always into
| politics. Have really made an effort to read less news and am
| much happier.
| cempaka wrote:
| At my last job, maybe a good fifth of the company or so seemed to
| have emotional states which careened from one end of the spectrum
| to the other based upon whether some new COVID variant had just
| been announced, or new developments in the will-they/won't-they
| arrest Donald Trump theater, or whatever. They would occasionally
| be completely unable to do work based on these news items which,
| while sometimes of reasonably high importance, had effectively
| zero chance to change their daily lives in any meaningful way
| whatsoever. It was really quite something to watch.
| peoplearepeople wrote:
| I'd watch a 5 minute segment of factual-only news. Not an hour of
| filler junk
| ChicagoDave wrote:
| Even the best news has a profit-based incentive system. Headlines
| are almost always clickbait.
|
| Even so, I read the Post, Atlantic, BBC, and Al Jazeera.
| Sometimes listen to NPR, but they seem to have been infiltrated
| by the Koch brothers schemes.
|
| I also try to have deep discussions with a diverse, educated,
| well-traveled set of acquaintances.
|
| All of this leads to, I hope, a well informed perspective.
| brushfoot wrote:
| I not only avoid it, I've added news sites that I used to read to
| my hosts list, redirecting to localhost so I can't compulsively
| check them in the middle of the day anymore.
|
| Personally, I think Aaron Swartz was right [1]: I feel better
| off, emotionally and mentally, reading a monthly magazine or an
| annual book than trying to absorb every tidbit of clickbait
| dished out by the view-driven media. Monthly content is generally
| more nuanced and often more actionable, and whatever social media
| furor accompanied each small part of it, as it developed, is
| omitted for being the tempest in a teapot that it was.
|
| [1]: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews
| landemva wrote:
| > more actionable
|
| Beyond not watching news shows and not having a TV, this is how
| I filter. What action can I take? It has drawn me closer to
| local issues where I can do something.
|
| Maybe I can clean up the beaches in Australia, but I'm not
| there. Becoming enraged about politics 1,000 miles away shows a
| lack of humility and lack of understanding my sphere of
| influence.
| sylens wrote:
| I was recently listening to a podcast recapping a television show
| set in the early 2000s, where a current college aged student
| basically said "I wish I had the experience of being a teenager
| in that time period - it seemed much simpler as you weren't aware
| of every bad thing that was happening around the world"
|
| And that's really the way it used to be. It was even better
| before 24 hour news networks, as your evening news would give you
| the stories of the day, and then you would buy the next morning's
| newspaper if you wanted to read about it more in depth. Sometimes
| multiple newspapers if it's a topic you really wanted to sink
| your teeth into. There was no need to follow the result of every
| individual rocket volley in the Ukraine or each individual
| comment from a politician.
|
| As more people turn away from the news, it seems that they rely
| on their own smaller, informal communities to filter and signal
| boost the topics they really should pay attention to. Articles
| that get shared in a Discord catch my attention more than
| anything on Drudge or even Hacker News.
| tgv wrote:
| > it seemed much simpler as you weren't aware of every bad
| thing that was happening around the world
|
| I strongly disagree with that. I wasn't exactly a teenager back
| then (past 30 already), but in the 80s and 90s, news papers
| over here informed you about happenings in the entire world,
| and social developments in my own country, and neighboring
| countries (what you exactly got depended on the news paper, as
| they ranged from populist-conservative to communist; news could
| be rather biased). I sometimes read the NY Times in that period
| as well, and it had a huge coverage of world events. Their
| Saturday edition was no joke, so it wasn't just a European
| thing.
|
| However, what you didn't read was: American boy assaults
| someone, twitter is outraged. American celebrity did/said
| something stupid 10 years ago, twitter explodes! American
| police officer hurts poor person, twitter has a stroke!! And
| that 10 times per day. All that online clickbait was missing,
| and rightly so. I don't care what some idiot does 6000km far
| from my home. If they start forming a threatening political
| movement, then I'd like to be informed.
|
| The quality of journalism has degraded considerably since then.
| There is too much attention to personal stories, either sobbing
| or ecstatic, never in between, and almost always with an
| implicit political agenda. Some of that is good, because it
| makes the abstract policies and distant wars relatable, but it
| has overtaken the hard news. Even national politics has largely
| disappeared from the news paper. Only when some politician is
| accused of intimidating behavior it gets back in the limelight.
|
| And that's why I am ignoring the news more and more. Not
| because it informs you too much about the bad in the world, but
| because it informs you about trivia, and lacks the things that
| really matter. Journalism has made itself irrelevant.
| tracker1 wrote:
| That assumes you even read the newspaper... when I was a kid,
| I had a paper route for a couple years. Only about 1/3 of
| houses got the paper, and not everyone even read it every
| day. Often only a couple cover articles, and maybe the 5pm or
| 10/11pm news. It was a relatively narrow window into only the
| most pressing issues of a given day.
|
| Today, you look at twitter and see a massive range of news
| from populist minutia of what a celebrity said/wore, or every
| single military engagement in Ukraine. The gulf war in Iraq
| was probably the first 24/7 news cycle engagement in human
| history for any significant number of people.
|
| I also agree on quality degradation. There is both more
| editorialization and lower quality writing all around. In
| addition to personal narratives all around.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| The issue is that political aspects of the news are simply too
| entrenched at this point. My mechanism for changing it used to
| be my single vote (that's useless), but the other was
| expressing views with people I knew to change how they think on
| things. But nobody listens, or it's drowned out, or I don't
| even get to talk to people with other views, or nobody is
| undecided anymore.
|
| I'll try to avoid being political here with Trump. Trump was a
| deconstruction of old guard media and the illusions they put up
| with the political process. He reduced political campaigning to
| almost pure media events and games, with almost no substance
| for the right or the left (except outrage or adulation).
|
| As part of that, old media like CNN that tries to keep the
| trappings of authoritative news delivery have been thoroughly
| "pantsed". Everyone knows you are stupid if you accept what
| newspeople tell you at face value (unless they are telling you
| things you already agree with emotionally).
|
| I'd like to note, I view myself primarily as a
| environmentalist, and the corollary to that is I feel I have no
| political party. The right is outright hostile to it, the left
| is duplicitous and non-supportive of it.
|
| Social media has corralled everyone into echo chambers, and
| then added a massive amount of cacophony to drown out any real
| conversation.
|
| But practically everyone is dealing with this for whatever they
| care about. Social media has highlighted how little we can do,
| yet amped up the education about a lot of shadow stuff that
| used to be completely hidden.
|
| Anyway, now I watch sports "news" and let the social stuff
| bleed in.
|
| The real question is if the internet has made people smarter as
| a whole. I believe the internet of the last 30 years has made
| almost everyone smarter. What will the next 30 years look like?
|
| But it took 30 years for non-internet corporations and
| governments/politicians to "figure out" the internet on a
| fundamental level. IMO the Trump election was the first example
| of that. Control and corralling of information with echo
| chambers has changed things.
| starttoaster wrote:
| > There was no need to follow the result of every individual
| rocket volley in the Ukraine or each individual comment from a
| politician.
|
| This is really it. Who has the time or the emotional bandwidth
| to spare for following all of this? I was talking to somebody
| about the overturning of affirmative action, and their response
| to me was basically "if you haven't read the Supreme Court
| opinions on this matter, we can't have a real conversation
| about this." That opinions pdf on supremecourt.gov is 237 pages
| long. I need to read multiple news articles and then a novel
| just to have an opinion on something now? That's cool, I just
| won't then.
| chmod600 wrote:
| "That opinions pdf on supremecourt.gov is 237 pages long."
|
| That's not comparable to a book. The organization of an
| opinion is quite good and you can get a quick sense of what
| the arguments are even if you skip a bunch of stuff. When you
| find a claim that you don't agree with, dig into that a bit
| more and see why they say that.
| barbazoo wrote:
| I wonder if they meant that you need a deeper understanding
| to have a meaningful conversation. Talking about what "the
| news" presents to you only scratches the surface and only
| covers what "the news" wants you to pay attention to. In that
| sense, only consuming "the news" could be considered a waste
| of time.
| digging wrote:
| > I need to read multiple news articles and then a novel just
| to have an opinion on something now?
|
| Yes. Why do you want to have opinions on things you don't
| understand?
| twelve40 wrote:
| well, this is how real life works. This is how popular vote
| works. 99% of voters will never read any of that crap
| (maaaybe just the tldr from the news) but will happily
| opine, and popular vote is based on that. so not exactly
| uncommon.
| vasco wrote:
| Osho had some deep thoughts about this, best summarized
| in these 30 seconds: https://youtu.be/QFgcqB8-AxE
| [deleted]
| tekla wrote:
| > That opinions pdf on supremecourt.gov is 237 pages long. I
| need to read multiple news articles and then a novel just to
| have an opinion on something now? That's cool, I just won't
| then.
|
| It's incredibly hard to have a conversation on a complex
| legal document if you do not read the legal document.
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| "It's incredibly hard to have a conversation on a complex
| legal document if you do not read the legal document."
|
| On HN, not only is it easy, it's standard operating
| procedure...
|
| /s, but not really...
| gnarlynarwhal42 wrote:
| "nuance" and "exactness" may be decreased, but the ideas
| remain true
| staticman2 wrote:
| If the topic is the correct interpetation of the
| constitution someone who has only read the most recent
| Supreme Court court opinion isn't particularly well read or
| knowledgable on the subject either, you need to read what
| the Supreme Court has historically said about the
| constitution, not just what the most recent group of judges
| is saying.
| boveus wrote:
| People on HN have conversations about things they didn't
| read every day.
| starttoaster wrote:
| You're absolutely right. However, we're not lawyers
| discussing law. We're random people that play video games
| discussing personal opinions in an informal setting. The
| point is we're getting hose fed "news stories" and I'm one
| mere person with a wife who I give much of my attention to,
| a job that I probably work more than my 40 hour share of a
| week at, hobbies that take more of my time, etc. Do you
| think it's reasonable to expect everyone with an opinion to
| have read a 237 page opinion piece on supremecourt.gov?
| Much more likely we're reading some editor's cut to speed
| along the process of absorbing enough information to be
| dangerous. I think it's fair to point out I might be
| missing some nuance of a judge's opinion because I didn't
| read their individual 45 page opinion, but in about 10
| minutes I'm going to be reading a news story about China
| launching a real Death Star into orbit, and I need to get
| my brain ready to consume knowledge on that one, and then
| in about 25 minutes I'll be reading about covid-23.
| koube wrote:
| Lawmakers don't even read the bills the vote on, they have
| legal experts explain the implications to them. Would you
| have a better understanding of a system if you skimmed the
| source code or if you watched a presentation from the
| author?
|
| 237 pages of legalese is way beyond what most people can
| handle, this is why lawyers exist. If you're saying people
| shouldn't have an opinion unless they read complex legal
| documents you're just saying you don't think people should
| have opinions.
| bcoates wrote:
| It's not at all legalese. Part of the reason the whole
| publication is so long is that each of the justices was
| fully aware that it'd be read by law students, interested
| citizens, etc. for decades to come and wrote out in
| longhand what legal scholars could just assume as
| background knowledge.
|
| Each section was written to persuade the reader that the
| author's position is correct, and nobody gets appointed
| to the US Supreme Court without being really damn good at
| putting together a clear persuasive essay. These are
| extremely smart people with a small staff of very smart
| editors trying to convince you their position is the only
| right one; it's not like an insurance contract or EULA
| designed to "baffle 'em with bullshit".
|
| If you've got a few hours to spare and even a modest
| level of background knowledge about American history and
| the current controversy involving racial quotas it's very
| readable. If it leaves you more ambivalent than before
| you started it's probably because they're arguing over a
| genuine public controversy where intelligent people
| operating in good faith can come to very different
| conclusions.
| koube wrote:
| I did some decision reading in college for my GEs. They
| were all incredibly dry, difficult to get through, and I
| don't remember a single thing about any of them.
|
| Depending on how old your kids are you might have an hour
| per day of free time. At an average of 40 pages per hour,
| this could take 6 days. Or I can find a legally versed
| content creator on youtube that will explain this to me
| and be done with it on the bus.
|
| This is a topic that everyone has already moved on about.
| The fact that it's totally doable to spend 6 days on it
| does not make it a good idea to do. I would go as far as
| to say that for such a niche topic, for the vast majority
| of people this is a bad idea to do, and they shouldn't do
| it.
| bcoates wrote:
| It really depends on the decision! For example, the mass
| of pages the Supreme Court has spent on ERISA could
| possibly count as a method of state-sponsored torture.
|
| I totally understand being over the whole deal, but if
| you actually care about the issue the PDF itself is more
| coherent and readable than almost all the pre- and post-
| decision commentary which is mostly predictable,
| information-free nonsense.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| My favorite is when the same lawmaker who voted on a 300
| page bill that they needed to pass RIGHT NOW will
| complain that they didn't have enough time to review a 10
| page bill after a change of majority party.
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| "I was recently listening to a podcast recapping a television
| show set in the early 2000s, where a current college aged
| student basically said "I wish I had the experience of being a
| teenager in that time period - it seemed much simpler as you
| weren't aware of every bad thing that was happening around the
| world"
|
| I'm sad that kids these days did not get to experience things
| like the Sopranos, otherwise known as the best TV series ever.
|
| One hour. Once per week. No binge watching.
| awelxtr wrote:
| This is the reason I receive every morning a notification with
| a link to the pdf version of a newspaper: to get an abridged
| recap of news like in the old times.
|
| Sometimes to keep your sanity you need help from others.
| bcoates wrote:
| Uh, early 2000s? There was very much 24/7 news media back then.
| Mature internet news, immature social media, multiple 24/7
| national news channels for most major countries and
| languages...
|
| I daresay most teens in the early 2000s were aware of such
| minor news events as Sept. 11 and the subsequent decade of
| global war.
|
| Your stereotypical Millennial news junkie that the Wapo is
| crying about moving on with their lives was minted in this era
| of hyper-pervasive media.
|
| Note that the actual non-news media of the early 2000s, and the
| period pieces that remake it, mostly ignore this reality and
| are culturally set a decade or more earlier. This is a sort of
| 'the Simpsons' effect where creators in their 30s and 40s who
| don't realize how much the world has changed produce media
| about their childhood set in the present.
| sylens wrote:
| I recognize there was 24/7 news media then, but it was still
| better than now. And before there was 24/7 news media was
| even better than the early 2000s
| linster wrote:
| In summary: life was better in the 90s because you were
| unaware.
|
| Cue oddly specific example of "The Ukraine" and "rocket
| volley".
|
| Next, the highlight that informal communities that make their
| own echo chambers are more popular as distrust in established
| media is sown.
|
| Finally, a personal anecdote that echo chambers curate more
| attention-getting articles.
|
| Nothing in this post is especially truthy or falsey, yet it
| serves up mild "distrust the media" nihilism.
| shortcake27 wrote:
| Yes, my elderly mother can't stop complaining about how much
| crime there is "these days". Despite the fact crime per-
| capita has decreased, the news reports the absolute value.
| This in turn tricks people into believing something that is
| quite literally opposite from what is really happening.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I don't avoid reading news, I just avoid reading it continuously.
| If there is an ongoing story I am interested in (like the war in
| Ukraine) I check in on it once every couple of days, via sources
| I have some trust in. Eventually, I read a long-form article
| about it, but those take a few weeks or months to be written.
| What I don't do is check social media every 15 minutes, or watch
| 24/7 cable news. I think obsession is the delivery mechanism for
| problems like anxiety, depression, or radicalization, not the
| news itself.
| jader201 wrote:
| The problem with consuming most sources of "news" is that it's
| not actually factual news.
|
| It's heavily filtered and spun stories from a small group of
| heavily biased and like-minded individuals.
|
| This is true of mainstream media, social media*, and even small
| circles of friends.
|
| It's hard to find single sources of unbiased news where there
| isn't bias or an agenda.
|
| *Yes, this includes HN, but I believe (hopefully) to a lesser
| extent, or I wouldn't be here either.
| bowsamic wrote:
| [flagged]
| rabbits_2002 wrote:
| If I try to read the front page of any news website (as opposed
| to an aggregator like this website) I get the feeling like
| someone is trying to sell me a product or convince me of
| something. I think it is the commanding tone of headlines these
| days. I am probably just crazy.
| chmod600 wrote:
| Conservative news sources insult your intellect. Liberal news
| sources flatter your intellect. Both have a payload they are
| trying to deliver.
| webscout wrote:
| [dead]
| gretch wrote:
| I avoid the news because it's often wrong (and I don't
| necessarily blame them, because they are reporting with
| incomplete information as it appears).
|
| I find that it's much more productive to just ask "what happened
| 2 weeks ago?". All the unverified trash gets filtered out at that
| point. All the outrage bait has simmered down.
| mywacaday wrote:
| 24 hour news stations should be banned along with on the hour
| news. The constant feed of content edited to poke our serotonin
| receptors serve no real benefit. News 3 or 4 times a day should
| be plenty, very very few news stories require blow by blow
| coverage. The news has just turned into another thing to buy/sell
| our limited attention for profit.
| gnarlynarwhal42 wrote:
| I am of two minds on this subject.
|
| I was very politically aware from ~12ish to probably 25 or so,
| and I had very strongly held beliefs and I was more than happy to
| evangelize. At some point I realized that most people really
| didn't care to live or be inconvenienced in furtherance of their
| beliefs (if they even got far enough to _have_ articulable
| beliefs /standards) I just resigned myself to the reality that my
| sphere of influence is extremely small unless I dedicated more
| time than I was willing to activism/evangelism/whateverism and my
| time would be better spent improving myself educationally and
| professionally so that I didn't end up looking back on my lonely
| life, having not changed anything.
|
| At the same time, if collectively "we" want something to change,
| "we" need to be informed from primary sources that haven't been
| focused through some self-serving lens, which takes time and
| effort away from immediate needs. And then further effort needs
| to be expended to turn "we" into "us" but there is a(n) (to some
| extent) artificial standard of living that a person (believes or
| has been indoctrinated to believe that they) need(s) to uphold
| that precludes effectively anyone from gathering enough of a
| common cause to effect change.
|
| The people that make the real decisions have absolutely
| unfathomable amounts of resources/power/influence. The power
| comes from influence, and the influence comes from having the
| resources (money/destructive power) to create a situation of the
| carrot and the stick (blackmail or "bribes") for anyone with
| ambitions of upsetting the status quo. Hence the hubbub about
| epstein/soros or BigCorp, depending on your side.
|
| "The News" is just another top-down adverstisement for one side
| or the other of the same effective outcome. Sometimes I hate
| feeling like I "gave up" but the^Wmy reality is that I realized I
| have zero control or influence over the broader situation, so for
| a good long time I have been focusing my energy on improving my
| own situation, living my beliefs and hopefully passively
| inspiring others to do the same.
|
| I think Carlin (PBUH) said it best - "It's a big club, and you
| ain't in it"
|
| teal deer: news is bullshit, everything that you haven't
| explicitly searched out and verified from first principles is an
| attempt at hypnotic suggestion and the only thing over which you
| have power is within driving distance.
|
| thank you for coming to my ted talk.
| jcfrei wrote:
| The problem is that people don't just ignore the mainstream news
| media. A lot of them also turn to fringe channels that peddle an
| alternative view of the world that's more affirmative of their
| own worldview - without being more truthful. It's going to be a
| huge challenge to every democracy because people will
| fundamentally disagree about basic facts.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| If anything the concept of "facts" or "the truth" is up for
| grabs. You can find any quasi-legit looking source that
| supports just about any version of "the truth" you want. And
| your favorite content aggregator will pick up on that and suck
| you into the vortex. It's echo chambers all the way down!
|
| Considering that even "The Experts" who many claim hold "The
| Truth" are subject to the same echo chambers and powerful
| tribal allegiances that everybody else is... you cannot really
| trust them either. Many will be more than happy to bend things
| to suit their political affiliations or sometimes even lie to
| you face if it promotes their narrative.
|
| The most important skill, I believe, is question everything you
| hear. Only you can determine what is true and isn't.
| Outsourcing critical thinking to others is setting yourself up
| for manipulation. It's sounds ridiculous, but based on the
| events over the last three years I believe that is as good as
| it gets in modern times. There is no such thing as "The
| Expert". It's your brain against the endless tide of
| information and only you get to decide what makes sense and
| what doesn't.
| draw_down wrote:
| [dead]
| djoldman wrote:
| It's interesting to me that many threads here seem to imply that
| lower news consumption by Americans is bad and that the fault
| lies with the news industry.
|
| Ignoring whether it's bad or not, if Americans want mostly
| unbiased news, they have easy access to it on the web:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/
|
| https://apnews.com/
|
| Americans choose other sources for news... they're not forced to
| consume it. The "blame" lies with the people.
|
| Edit: Notice above that I wrote "mostly unbiased" not "totally
| unbiased." If you want to order all news sources by least bias,
| AP and Reuters are usually toward the top [0][1].
|
| [0] https://adfontesmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/MBC-
| Jan...
|
| [1] https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart
| milkytron wrote:
| > Ignoring whether it's bad or not, if Americans want mostly
| unbiased news, they have easy access to it on the web:
|
| I don't think any news is truly unbiased. There is always some
| form of bias and it's up to the consumer to be able to
| determine what that bias is and the impact of it and seek
| altering sources.
|
| It's a skill on its own, but there is always bias.
| tivert wrote:
| > Ignoring whether it's bad or not, if Americans want mostly
| unbiased news, they have easy access to it on the web:
|
| Those might be better than, say, the New York Times or Fox
| News, but they're hardly _unbiased_.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| Thinking that Reuters and AP are unbiased is laughable. They
| just happen to agree with your own biases and don't make you
| uncomfortable. That's not evidence of a lack of bias.
| ecshafer wrote:
| All news has a bias inherently. The news choosing to publish or
| Not publish is itself a bias. There is a difference though
| between having a bias and intentionally pushing a specific
| viewpoint, which is the norm of the day. But this might be an
| overly pedantic point.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| The only actual unbiased news is CSPAN and it's boring so no
| one watches it!
| axus wrote:
| They are funded by the US Cable TV industry, so there is some
| room for bias. C-SPAN radio gets a good mix of callers,
| though you wonder if lobbyists have found a way to astro-turf
| that.
| jrh3 wrote:
| "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this any more!" -
| Network https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwMVMbmQBug
| alberth wrote:
| I've completely cut out watching/reading news, with 1 exception.
|
| https://www.newsminimalist.com
|
| I stumbled across it on HN sometime back.
|
| Someone created an AI model to consume daily, thousands of news
| sources, scores the articles and lists what it's highest scored
| for the day.
|
| ---
|
| Ironically, APNews use to work this way. They provide a
| "relevance score" for every news article they published/reported
| so that other outlets could use that score as a signal on what
| they should report on.
|
| Problem is, all other news outlet are disparate for eyeballs, so
| everything becomes "breaking news" regardless of the news
| relevance score.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| You might also consider the human curated alternative, the
| Wikipedia "Current events" portal [0]. It does not include very
| many topics, but it hits all of the big stories that are likely
| to be significant after the dust has settled.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events
| TySchultz wrote:
| Thanks for sharing newsminimalist. I've unknowingly built
| nearly the same thing but more visual with additions like maps
| and images. Similar to Yahoo News Digest from years back.
|
| I like the "relevance score", it would be interesting to
| implement something similar to that.
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/quill-news-digest/id1669557131
| Dig1t wrote:
| The links are all to biased, bad, sources and the headlines
| already have the bias baked in as well. I don't really see how
| this solves the problem. If this went a step further and
| summarized the articles while stripping out the bias, then I
| think it would be a lot more useful. Very interesting concept
| though.
| r053bud wrote:
| Nice recommendation. I also really like http://68k.news which
| claims to be: "Basic HTML Google News for vintage computers"
| vidanay wrote:
| IDK if using a minimalist aggregator actually solves
| anything. The links all go back to the same crappy sources.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Oof I saw sports as the 4th thing on the list. I consider
| that a failure.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| This head-in-sand attitude is not a good thing either. It just
| furthers the rampant individualism that plagues all levels of
| society as everyone focuses on themselves only. They are "the
| main character" and why should they care what's going on with
| anyone else near or far? The effects of that selfishness are
| detrimental whenever anything collective is required from the
| pandemic to just helping each other out in a local community.
| srhtftw wrote:
| I spend too much time on HN to read or watch the news but when I
| do I generally limit myself to a quick skim of these sites
|
| https://theconversation.com
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events
|
| https://text.npr.org
|
| https://www.newsminimalist.com
|
| https://ground.news
|
| https://sumi.news
|
| https://www.freshnews.org
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-08-08 23:02 UTC)