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SoylentNews is people

posted by on Tuesday December 13 2016, @05:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the putting-ourselves-out-of-business dept.

This story might be helpful to those tearing their hair out about the news lately:

I grew up believing that following the news makes you a better citizen. Eight years after having quit, that idea now seems ridiculous—that consuming a particularly unimaginative information product on a daily basis somehow makes you thoughtful and informed in a way that benefits society.

But I still encounter people who balk at the possibility of a smart, engaged adult quitting the daily news.
...
A few things you might notice, if you take a break:

1) You feel better

A common symptom of quitting the news is an improvement in mood. News junkies will say it's because you've stuck your head in the sand.

But that assumes the news is the equivalent of having your head out in the fresh, clear air. They don't realize that what you can glean about the world from the news isn't even close to a representative sample of what is happening in the world.
...
2) You were never actually accomplishing anything by watching the news

If you ask someone what they accomplish by watching the news, you'll hear vague notions like, "It's our civic duty to stay informed!" or "I need to know what's going on in the world," or "We can't just ignore these issues," none of which answer the question.
...
A month after you've quit the news, it's hard to name anything useful that's been lost. It becomes clear that those years of news-watching amounted to virtually nothing in terms of improvement to your quality of life, lasting knowledge, or your ability to help others. And that's to say nothing of the opportunity cost. Imagine if you spent that time learning a language, or reading books and essays about some of the issues they mention on the news.

Read on for the rest of the list.


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by nobu_the_bard on Tuesday December 13 2016, @06:37PM

    by nobu_the_bard (6373) on Tuesday December 13 2016, @06:37PM (#440912)

    I do not see how this is a good attitude to have, though I can see why it would be appealing. Maybe if you live or work in a vastly different sphere than that which the news reports on, it won't hurt you, though "News" is a bit of a monolithic term these days. I could see maybe feeling totally disconnected from the sorts of news CNN and the like report on. I don't really follow them much either; I read NPR and Reuters a bit, sometimes National Geographic or a journal. I read a local newspaper at least weekly consistently though.

    Locally, for example, there's been an explosion of interest among teenagers regarding racism. The local news has been covering various incidents. What I've read suggests that the teenagers don't really "get" what they are doing - they are just slandering people and repeating insulting nonsense. Some kids I see on facebook have been dabbling in this stuff too; most of them seem to have stumbled into it because some bad influence from a poor role model or as some kind of attempt to rebel against someone (my super uninformed opinion mind you). This is good to know about as a trend, since I'll be in a kind of "responsible adult" position occasionally with other peoples' kids- I sometimes go to monthly events and run into impressionable teenagers. I'll be less shocked if they say something racially insensitive and, I'll have done a little reading on how to deal with this appropriately (instead of just snapping at them). I don't feel "bad" about this per se - its just something to know about and deal with, like the weather. I think it is an unfortunate situation but I will do my small part to push back against the trend.

    There's also been some local politics stuff- I won't get into details. This affects my work a fair bit. I know which clients might be politically sensitive and worried about waxing/waning fortunes in gov't contracts and such. Even if some of these politics don't affect me directly, they affect my clients, and I like to know what might be troubling them (whether to provide them better service or just understand their possible state of mind, or in one scary past case, get the hell out of town). The national politics cast a shadow over the local ones, so it matters too. Even if I think it's 50% BS, it still matters.

    I could go on about examples but that's the gist of what the other things I'd say would be like, and was pretty dense reading probably.

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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 13 2016, @10:44PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 13 2016, @10:44PM (#441050)

    This is good to know about as a trend, since I'll be in a kind of "responsible adult" position occasionally with other peoples' kids- I sometimes go to monthly events and run into impressionable teenagers. I'll be less shocked if they say something racially insensitive and, I'll have done a little reading on how to deal with this appropriately

    It sounds like you're a fucking automaton, incapable of independent thought.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 13 2016, @11:59PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 13 2016, @11:59PM (#441083)

    Except, as you've found out, there's a difference between paying attention to the news much like an intelligence analyst with a degree of detachment and dispassion, versus how most people seem to ingest it, where it turns into some form or another of "OMG! Did you hear the latest about..." story of the day.

    The funnysad thing is seeing local and national news sources in many ways turned into "legitimate" forms of National Enquirer, People Magazine, etc., but for "serious" subjects. Just look at all the clickbait links they add to their "legitimate" information pages...

    The (all) media is in it for their own lulz, lulz that they can go to advertisers with. So figuring that out should be useful. And it's not even a "bias" per se. it's just trying to figure out what kind of lulz they're trying to generate.

    I listen to the sports radio yak jobs to and from work. Why? Well, it's sports. It can be entertaining to listen to, but I'm not going to get whipped up into some state of depression or angry frenzy. And, most important, it's really not going to affect my day to day life one way or the other, so it's kind of a safe attention sideshow, sort of like an "applied Seinfeld Show" (you know, like Applied Physics or Mathematics? granted, those are not topics about nothing). And, I can get a degree of schadenfreude/self-superiority complex out of the system too - Buffalo Bills or Cleveland Steamers lost again? Oh so sad, sucks to be you... but, good job on pulling down the curve, keep up the good work! But, hey, whatever...that's why you're a fan, right?

    Plus, even in real life, it's easy enough to not be a fan of sports, but enjoy sports. not gonna get a punch in the face for being a San Francisco Dodgers fan going to a LA Dodgers baseball game, say, if you're not a SF or LA fan in the first place.

    Anyhow.

  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday December 14 2016, @02:14AM

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Wednesday December 14 2016, @02:14AM (#441126) Journal

    The few times I had some inside knowledge about a local news story, it was a little frightening how much the local reporting distorted the facts. Their bias was towards drama. A few broken windows gets magnified into Crime Spree Has City On Edge, Packs of Vandals Roaming the Streets at Night or some such. You can't take those papers at their word for anything.

    The major newspaper in our metropolitan area has been messing with their subscription model. They no longer offer any subscription that does NOT include automatic renewal, at, of course, the sky high list price. When I inquired, they tried to tell me that canceling was a simple as making one quick phone call, as if that was some kind of improvement in service and hadn't always been that way. So I canceled it. Seemed a desperation ploy anyway. Didn't miss it much, and as the years went by, missed it less and less.

    PBS News Hour is better than average, but still not worth watching. One story they botched badly was on copyright. They do a lot of debate style stories, in which they invite two experts, one from each side of an issue. On their copyright story, both experts were on the same side, differing only in how extreme copyright should be.