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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.
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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.
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2) You were never actually accomplishing anything by watching the newsIf 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.
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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.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday December 13 2016, @07:36PM
Back around the year 2000, I happened upon a little book called How the News Makes Us Dumb [amazon.com].
It was a provocative read, and I haven't really been drawn to watching "the news" on a daily basis ever since. And when I do, I recognize it for it is: entertainment. It's not about being "informed." It's about advertising revenues, and entertainment. Lots of books and stories have critiqued news on that basis as well as corporate and political influence, etc., but what made THAT book unique is the claim that it's the very necessity of a DAILY product that causes the news to make us dumb. It's simply a inevitable structural flaw created by the format, and it's only gotten worse as the 24-hour news cycle has expanded with the internet, blogging, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
TV news in particular is all a sham. It's all about keeping any segments as short as necessary to hold your attention -- any more than a 15-second soundbite, and people's eyes glaze over and they reach for the remote.
Anyhow, the book I cited above talks about how this mentality also infects things like newspaper reporting. Journalists feel like they have to exaggerate to hold your attention, which leads to oversimplifications, and polarization on issues where there actually isn't so much. I put a lot of blame on the media and the "news" for the fact that the U.S. is much more highly polarized today than in the past couple generations -- although I don't think it's necessarily deliberate, as some conspiracy theorists like to think. I instead think it's just a function of that "dumbing down" principle -- every story has to have two clear "sides" to get across in a few paragraphs. And having those "two sides" allows for ongoing coverage, which doesn't have to have any content -- just the meaningless back and forth of polarized folks talking past each other. There isn't room for nuance, hedging, or detailed argumentation.
The book left me with two main takeaways, though: (1) Go look at an old newspaper from years ago sometime. Realize how much ephemeral crap is there that no one cared about a month later. Take a break from the news now, and in a month realize how the "talking heads" are still ranting about the same crap, with no progress. It's all a waste of time. (2) My favorite anecdote was of a major reputable national newspaper editor complaining about a picture of a young Midwestern woman at a fair or something on the front page -- "Next time, be sure to get her tits above the fold!" That's really where the priorities of most news lies -- get the ad revenue by selling you something first... detailed information is only a bonus when it comes at all.
As other posts here have noted, the response is NOT to just abandon all knowledge of current events! But instead of watching that 30-minute news program with 15 superficial segments that tell you nothing and most of which you'll forget about tomorrow, how about reading one or two in-depth articles on a current event that you'll actually LEARN something from and get some nuance? Do that every day instead of watching TV news or reading nonsense in your Facebook feed, and you can choose a different issue each day. At the end of a month, you'll be better informed on 30 topics than the general public is on just about any "current events" topic. And you have a better chance of having developed an informed opinion, rather than just succumbing to the dumbed-down crap you're fed in 15-second soundbites.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 13 2016, @08:15PM
TV news in particular is all a sham. It's all about keeping any segments as short as necessary to hold your attention -- any more than a 15-second soundbite, and people's eyes glaze over and they reach for the remote.
I watch the CBSN streaming news via a kodi plugin. Not only can I watch the livestream, but it also keeps a constantly updated list of topical segments from the last couple of hours. Its quite common for those segments to be 3-5 minutes long, occasionally getting up around 9 minutes. Sure there are the occasional 30 second segments, but those are almost often the goofy feel-good stories. I'm looking at the list right now and "Exxon CEO Picked (for secstate)" is 7 minutes, "Oakland Fire Update" is 8 minutes, "Aleppo in Crisis" is 6 minutes and "Cures Act signing" is 10 minutes.
Also, for now at least, there are no commercials.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Tuesday December 13 2016, @08:46PM
And on a side note about the "talking heads". They used to do that when they brought in "experts" and such from various remote locations, but if you look closely these days it is usually all done in the same studio.
For a while one of the local news channels used their newsroom as the background behind their new anchor, with some frosted glass so you could not quite see every detail.
So one day they were doing some split-screen interview between the anchor and some rather distinctive large sized lady in a very bright red shirt. All with a background that gave the impression of someone important from a remote locate and all that....
They finish and cut back to the anchor and a moment later YOU COULD SEE UNMISTAKABLY THE EXACT SAME LADY WALKING THROUGH THE BACKGROUND!
The weren't even trying to hide it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 13 2016, @10:07PM
I think this rule has been generalised to the extreme. Maybe if the person is high on cocaine, most people see the story, short cut the crap to find the message. If the message was poorly written then 15 seconds is about right. I see that that one statement has had the unintended consequence of re-writing all the news for the lowest common denominator who is also poisoned with lead.
So its their own fault if we all switch off and no longer read the MSM including soylent, because the number of fake news articles which make headlines here is incalculable.