
Pinker: “News is a misleading way to understand the world” - jseliger
http://www.vox.com/2016/8/16/12486586/2016-worst-year-ever-violence-trump-terrorism
======
mjhoy
I've found, for myself, traveling a good portion of the US by bicycle tempers
my pessimism about the world.

Bad things happen, to be sure, and it is good (I think) to stay informed of
the news, but it is also good to see how kind, generous and caring most people
are, and also how people not of your political, religious, or cultural ilk are
not exactly the ignorant or immoral monsters you may have thought.

~~~
harshreality
I think it's misleading to infer too much from that. Most people are nice to
strangers, face to face. Maybe it's that you're suddenly a member of each
other's in-group, and forming a basis to exclude the other person (becoming
enemies) requires some initial behavioral or ideological incompatibility and
enough time for it to germinate into enough of a conflict to sabotage the
automatic friendly social interaction. However, just because strangers
generally get along when they meet randomly, that doesn't say anything about
the major problems that cause people to not get along once they know each
other—incompatible ideologies, behavioral patterns that the other person can't
tolerate, and so on.

To pivot to another realm, a cop can be the nicest person in the world if you
hang out with them at a neighborhood barbecue, and the next week they can be
harassing people and ruining lives over drug possession.

~~~
mjhoy
I agree with you. And yes, in my travels I have met, for instance, racist cops
who are quite nice to me. (I am white.)

Still. I see that the people who are the most afraid, the most angry, the most
surprised that I would trust strangers not to kill me, are the people that
watch the most news. They simply do not trust strangers, at all.

The answer, I think, is somewhere in the middle.

------
chatmasta
"If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the
newspaper, you're mis-informed."

Mark Twain

------
alwaysdoit
The news is a method of attempting to become informed about the state of the
world exclusively through the examination of outliers. It's broken by design.

~~~
betolink
well, IMO news should also cover the issues that affect the masses, yes, an
accident in a refinery is an outlier but a vote on carbon taxes in congress is
something that affect us all.

The problem with today's mainstream media is that they don't talk a lot about
the big issues but those outliers. If we focus on the things that matter well
yes we're not in the middle ages but we're not in the best shape possible as a
civilization.

------
coliveira
It is good to read the news if you have an understanding of what the media is
trying to achieve. There should be a "News 101" class at every university to
help students navigating the deluge of information - especially to help them
understand what the media conglomerates are and how their business works.
Mostly everything that is written follows an agenda that is set by
advertisers, political positions of the owners of the particular media group,
and national interests. If you don't understand this, reading the news is just
like being brainwashed.

~~~
peter303
This analysis is called "deconstruction", i.e. understanding the cultural
background and the advocacy of the author. This not only applies to news, but
any media- movies, literature, art, etc. Supposedly people should learn how to
do this in high school.

~~~
igravious
No it isn't. It's plain old `critical thinking`
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking)

Deconstruction is something else.

~~~
dilemma
It could also be called taking a sociological view on the way the media works.

------
slackstation
Newspapers used to make a healthy profit from tiny ads. Network news used to
be run at a loss by the tv networks. The introduction of CNN made news into a
huge money maker. Craigslist ate the lunch of most newspapers.

Now, the internet (especially social networks) has made everything a race for
attention. Now the New York Times has to compete and worry about Buzzfeed.

All of these trends now just reward attention more than anything. The
standards for journalism are eroded when outlets like Buzzfeed allow anyone to
write content, get it indexed by Google and then track how popular that piece
of content gets and automatically promote it.

In a world like that, we get the loudest, angriest, most emotionally wrenching
things; context, nuance and facts be damned.

Whatever you think of his politics, Donald Trump wouldn't be where he is
without his savvy use of the media. He has exploited the weakness in our
current system all the way to top of one of the two major parties in the most
powerful country in the free world. All to the horror, shock and dismay of the
vast majority of people who work in the media disagreeing with Trump's
politics.

~~~
cylinder
You're disregarding the role of subscriptions in supporting newspapers. The
internet obviously has made print news delivered to your doorstep obsolete.
Even now, subscription-only news outlets are doing okay, such as the Financial
Times, and niche papers.

------
jbandela1
One way to possibly fix this might be to start a #NoBloodMoney movement that
would target advertisers who advertise in news segments about events where
people have died.

People's deaths should not be used by the media company to make money, nor
should people's deaths be used to try to generate interest in your product.

If enough people targeted the advertisers ("Ever since watching an ad for
<your product> during a news segment about <an event in which somebody died> I
just associate <your product> with death and sadness"), I think we could get
the media companies to stop running an excess of these kinds of stories.

#NoBloodMoney - media companies should not profit off of other's misery.

~~~
voidfiles
Human misery isn't something most companies want to be associated with. For
that reason, many companies don't want their ads to run next to content like
that. I've personally had to quickly pull ads off a site because of that fact.

~~~
maxerickson
I've been occasionally fascinated that newspapers don't have a flag in their
CMSs for articles that are crass to plaster with ads.

~~~
CM30
The New York Times seems to do this:

[http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/03/an-ad-blocker-for-
tragedies...](http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/03/an-ad-blocker-for-tragedies-
how-news-sites-handle-content-around-sensitive-stories/)

If a story is marked as sensitive, an option is set and ads aren't shown on
it.

The Guardian has this too. And I've done this on a few sites I've worked with
as well.

------
HillaryBriss
> _There has probably been a slight increase in the rate of violent crime in
> the US in 2015, and I say probably because the FBI figures are still not out
> for that year.

> But even then that wouldn’t even be as high as it was in 2012, just three
> years ago, and that itself is a huge decrease in the levels of '60s, '70,
> and '80s in the US, where violent crime has fallen by more than half. So
> there is probably an uptick for 2015 and 2016. But it’s just a wiggle in a
> curve that’s been going down, down, down._

I'm not a member of the NRA and I don't own a gun. Personally, I'm ok with a
ton of gun-control laws. All the gun-control laws you wanna pass, I'm ok with.
Second amendment rights are not high on my personal priority list.

But, still, I sometimes wonder why there is such a hard push for more gun-
control laws every year given this decreasing level of domestic violence.

~~~
etendue
> But, still, I sometimes wonder why there is such a hard push for more gun-
> control laws every year given this decreasing level of domestic violence.

Another thing to ponder is why the focus on semiautomatic rifles, when 1,
violent crime overwhelmingly uses handguns, and 2, the previous assault weapon
ban was deemed ineffective by the DOJ. And what is the basis for proposing
expanded background checks in response to, for example, the Orlando mass
shooting when the shooter not only passed a background check, but had a
security guard license (which itself has a more intensive background check).

~~~
bbradley406
While I dislike describing these things ("He's a gun nut! He'll kill us!
People like him should be locked up!" are common reactions to simple facts)
there are multiple reasons rifles are lumped in.

\- Any additional regulation sounds like progress to voters in favor of it. It
can be nonsensical, unenforceable, make criminals out of previously law-
abiding citizens (CA magazine size laws), be disregarded publicly by police
departments, and they will still cheer for it.

\- They are mostly used for target practice, hunting, pest control, and some
home defense. People who vote for gun control typically don't do these things.
Questions of the form "Why do you need (X number of rounds | optics | calibers
| forward grips)?" sound reasonable to them; if you have ever faced a bear /
pack of coyotes / intruders it's pretty self explanatory.

\- They are the only real firearms that can present a significant threat to
trained teams. Rifles can be aimed precisely, deliver a good sustained rate of
fire, and punch through body armor, all from 500 yards.

\- With a good amount of practice and .308-.50 rounds, you can take down
opposing vehicles and assets (power stations, fuel tanks, etc), and have
enough distance between you and the target to exit the area safely.

For those in favor of gun control (beyond what we have currently) on HN, let
me ask: How well do you think you would fair in a large riot / national
emergency / civil war armed with only a SAFE Act compliant handgun? These
things do and will happen, maybe not in your lifetime, but certainly in the
future. The laws we enact should not just be focused on making us feel safe.
They should consider those that may have to justly defend themselves against a
larger force.

------
Hoasi
> As long as media will give endless publicity to multiple murderers, they
> create a niche for people who want to make a difference for a political
> cause or their own ego.

Right on.

------
Retric
News is there to Entertain not Educate. IMO, the steady decline in reporting
has a more to do with other forms of entertainment showing up and gaining
traction than anything else.

~~~
narrator
I think a lot of news is there because it's influential. For example, the
newspapers are totally awful money losing businesses, yet they stick around
because of their political influence value.

~~~
Retric
Historically newspapers where money printing machines. Compared to say
magazine's the industry has done very well over time and some of them are
still rather profitable. However, this is a much broader trend even combining
TV, Newspapers, Radio, and the internet we are simply employing fewer
investigative reporters.

------
phn
The question is, what less misleading alternative is there? Social media?

~~~
brenschluss
Books, novels, non-fiction.

Low-latency mediums are usually event-based ("Breaking News! You can't guess
what _just_ happened!").

High-latency mediums have the time to be understanding-based.

~~~
WalterSear
I've seen this being used by people arguing that it is why they read the
papers rather than get their news online, unaware that the articles are
written to the same deadlines, so they are simply getting the same
information, but late.

~~~
VintageCool
Read news magazines that are published weekly (like The Economist) or monthly
(like The Atlantic or Foreign Affairs).

~~~
WalterSear
Both of those are online.

~~~
slyall
I think you are confusing:

"we must get the story online within 5 minutes of it happening"

and

"Story written over a few hours/days/weeks and then published online"

------
grownseed

      It’s always about events that happened and not about things that didn’t happen.
    

This conversation and the above quote in particular remind me of this article
posted here a while back: "Why the world is not falling apart"
([http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/12/the_world_is_not_falling_apart_the_trend_lines_reveal_an_increasingly_peaceful.single.html))

    
    
      We never see a reporter saying to the camera, “Here we are, live from a country where a war has not broken out”—or a city that has not been bombed, or a school that has not been shot up.
    

I'm all for the right for free speech, but that doesn't mean that deliberate
fear-mongering shouldn't be reprimanded.

~~~
qu4z-2
> deliberate fear-mongering [should] be reprimanded.

By whom?

~~~
grownseed
That's a fair question and, not being hugely familiar with the legal system,
I'm not sure what that would fall under. I'm thinking something along the
lines of intentional deceit or unfair/manipulative representation of facts,
but I'll admit to not knowing nearly enough about the law to point to anything
in particular.

~~~
qu4z-2
As long as it needs to be intentional, I could _maybe_ see it. I imagine it'd
be difficult to prove intent, though.

"Manipulative representation of facts" is tricky, because every representation
aside from raw data has been manipulated in some way or another.

------
hugh4life
Yes news can be misleading, but I think there's a lot of truth in Rene
Girard's idea of escalating mimetic rivalry... and Peter Turchin's fathers-
and-sons cycle of violence.

------
tn13
I highly recommend Pinker's books. They will give you some rather politically
incorrect view of the world. You may feel free to disagree with him but you
will find them interesting read with potential to change how you look at the
world.

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zghst
Hence why I have a great deal of distrust of any media. They always bend the
facts to twist their narrative, it's better to hear from the horses mouth or
watch directly what happens around the world

------
forgottenpass
Remember when Ezra Klien's Vox wasn't going to be just another left leaning
content farm?

I wonder why they don't write about what happened there instead of just
interviewing Pinker about the news?

------
startupcorp
I love Steven Pinker!

~~~
igravious
I love him more! :)

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dschiptsov
Oh, really? Could it also be that advertisements are misleading way to collect
the facts and press releases are misleading way to evaluate performance?

~~~
kordless
Or perhaps it could be people asking leading (biased) questions that have no
answers.

~~~
wamsachel
haha, but if they asked hard questions then their press credentials are
revoked.

