
News is bad for you - vvsanil
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli
======
PsychopompPoet
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads
nothing but newspapers." Thomas Jefferson

"Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the
protagonists." Norman Mailer

"Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident
and the collapse of civilisation." George Bernard Shaw

"In the real world, the right thing never happens in the right place and the
right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to make it appear that
it has." Mark Twain

"I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets." Napoleon

"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are
being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." Malcolm
X

"The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is
worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like
habits, supplies their demands." Oscar Wilde

"The lowest depth to which people can sink before God is defined by the word
journalist." Soren Kierkegaard

~~~
thisiswrong
''Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions,
their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.'' Oscar Wilde

~~~
vojant
It's so ironic to use quotation in this case.

~~~
lukifer
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

------
oskarth
While I agree with the sentiment, Rolf Dobelli himself is a plagiarist. This
whole reasoning is basically stolen from Nassim Taleb.

[http://fooledbyrandomness.com/dobelli.htm](http://fooledbyrandomness.com/dobelli.htm)

[http://blog.chabris.com/2013/09/similarities-between-rolf-
do...](http://blog.chabris.com/2013/09/similarities-between-rolf-dobellis-
book.html)

EDIT: For another take on not reading the news, see
[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews)

~~~
timbro
Of course we can put our heads in the sand.

The problem is: if you do this, you should no longer be allowed to vote.
Because democracy can only survive if the feedback cycle is _encouraged_ , not
_sabotaged_ :

(Good|bad) news => critical thinking by the citizen => citizen votes
accordingly => corruption (and other problems) are corrected.

If you stop reading news, you stop being a responsible citizen.

If you feel bad about the news, there's 1 thing you should do: Channel the
anger and produce _positive action_. It will make you feel good and problems
will vanish. _That_ is how this works.

~~~
marcosdumay
> If you stop reading news, you stop being a responsible citizen.

If the elected actors interfere with the news you read, you also stop being a
responsible citizen. We simply never had a chance.

------
JeffJenkins
For anyone who isn't ready to completely turn off the news spigot, consider
switching to a weekly (or monthly) source of news.

I get all of my (non-HN) news from The Economist's audio edition. It's
released weekly and they have a section right at the start about big things
happening in business/politics around the world in the last week. It's no more
than a couple minutes to scan, and 10-20 in normal speed audio.

The rest of the articles are at least one step back (since they summarize a
week of what's happened). Many others are looking at some larger event or
trend, sometimes with a recent event/anecdote as a lead in.

I like the audio edition in particular since I can put it on while I'm doing
chores or commuting and I'll pick up bits and pieces even if I'm not fully
paying attention. I can also have only the sections I care about included,
which lets me skip the ones I really don't care about.

~~~
furyg3
Is this only a soundcloud thing or is this available somewhere as an (offline)
podcast?

Soundcloud link:
[http://l.economist.com/204894&t=v1g49i1qmlsq6a25ld8r6j8u40](http://l.economist.com/204894&t=v1g49i1qmlsq6a25ld8r6j8u40)

~~~
JeffJenkins
You have to be a subscriber, and then it's available on their website:
[http://www.economist.com/audio-edition](http://www.economist.com/audio-
edition)

If you just want to read The World This Week it's available online for free:
[http://www.economist.com/printedition/](http://www.economist.com/printedition/)

~~~
spenuke
To be clear, since I can't see without being a subscriber, the "audio edition"
is different from the "Economist radio" linked on Soundcloud?

~~~
JeffJenkins
Yes. Audio Edition is a word-for-word reading of the print edition. Economist
Radio looks like it has the random other audio things they do (there's also a
podcast on iTunes with those sorts of things)

------
tokenadult
Whether news is bad for you or not probably depends more than a little on what
the source is. I don't watch television—for years our TV was in a box in a
closet, brought out mostly just for watching the Olympics. But I do look at
Google News and try to train it to give me mostly long-form suggestions about
science and world issues from diverse sources with professional reporting and
editing. That helps.

The claim that giving up reading news will make you happier is a medical claim
in the article that is not backed up by reliable medical sources,[1] so I call
baloney on that. The newspaper opinion writer here (promoting his new book
with excerpts from the book) doesn't report the issue the way a competent
reporter would report it, but just makes a bunch of broad general statements
with no nuance. In other words, the medical claims about happier human life in
the article are just like the made-up opinions we can all easily find on the
Internet, and the article stands as an example of how we can find blatantly
misleading "information" inside or outside the professional news media. I have
no reason to suppose that the full-length book is a medically reliable source
(the publisher of the book is identified at the end of the article).

Anecdote alert: I'm a curious person and I like to learn, and so one of the
reasons I come here to Hacker _NEWS_ is to find out new facts about the
external world that I didn't know before, including facts about current events
("news" in the narrow sense). My personal experience—which, to be sure, may
differ from yours—is that I am a happier and more productive person when I
know, from good sources, what is going on all over the world and the broader
context of expanding human knowledge. But I'm sure you can find an opinion
column somewhere based on a popular book with a different opinion from mine.

AFTER EDIT: Good catch! Another participant here on HN noticed that the author
of the article kindly submitted here has credibly been accused of plagiarism
by more than one published author who works harder than he does. I upvoted
that comment for what it added to our understanding of the article's
background.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:MEDRS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:MEDRS)

~~~
base698
You've entirely missed the point. News is bad because it focuses on the
sensational and misses the actionable. Ie bitcoin articles focus on the
speculative aspect and not that it's a more useful, less friction method of
payment. Business shows focus on day to day movement instead of broad sweeping
trends that are game changers.

The medium is partly the problem.

~~~
tokenadult
_News is bad because it focuses on the sensational and misses the actionable._

I think you've missed the point of my comment, which is that I actively
disregard sources that have that defect, and look for sources that tell me
about verified, actionable information. (I have been wondering about the
pattern of upvotes and downvotes on my comment, and if this is what people
think I am saying, that I like the sensational, they are badly misreading my
comment.)

~~~
MoosePlissken
I think there's some misunderstanding over the meaning of the word "news"
here. The author of the article uses the word "news" when referring to
"sensational, bite sized news articles" (because it makes for a better
headline). He doesn't think all journalism is bad. The article concludes with
this thought:

"Society needs journalism – but in a different way. Investigative journalism
is always relevant. We need reporting that polices our institutions and
uncovers truth. But important findings don't have to arrive in the form of
news. Long journal articles and in-depth books are good, too."

You and the author seem to mostly agree in that respect.

------
nathan_long
The biggest problem with news is that it's about _newness_ and rarity. Whereas
what we actually need to know is mostly not new. Eg, "man eaten by alligator"
is a billion times less important than "decades of data say you will likely
get heart disease."

Another serious problem with news is its schedule. A daily paper must publish
_something_ every day, even if nothing important has happened. An hourly
newscast is worse.

My ideal internet news source would publish infrequently and be filtered to
the specific reader. The second part is very hard. It would look something
like this:

 _Not News_ \- A car accident across town \- A single crime in another state
\- Celebrities \- Scandals \- Daily stock market fluctuations

 _News_ \- A trend of car accidents at an intersection near me \- Crime in my
neighborhood or a trend of crime in my city \- Economic trends and their
underlying causes

~~~
DanBC
News in the UK has several problems.

News papers are either _horrible_ \- I cannot describe just how vile much of
the UK news press industry is. The decent newspapers have tiny distribution
figures. The Guardian, for example, has a circulation of under 300,000 people.
Obviously, more people read it, but still, that's a tiny figure.

UK news allows the agenda[1] to be set by spin doctors. We frequently has
stories about how a politician "will announce" something - the speech has been
released by publicists before it has been given, allowing the speaker to set
the tone of the coverage.

I don't know why that's allowed or why they do it. It's incredibly
frustrating.

And there's very narrow window of what is or isn't news. A blond white girl
goes missing? We'll have wall to wall coverage of it for weeks. A non white
person, or a boy, goes missing? Not so much. Compare, for example, the Soham
coverage (two white girls killed by a caretaker at their school) with Adam
Morrell, a boy who was brutally tortured and killed.

For years I read about agents that would go out and find news items that would
be interesting to me. It still hasn't happened. I would pay money for
something that works for me:

1) Return items that match some search terms I give. I'm interested in news
items about mental health, even if it's poor coverage of a news item that
mention MH in a stigmatising way.

2) Suggest items that I might be interested in based on my reading history,
and what I am or am not interested in.

3) Provide suggested items to break me out of my bubble. This can be things
about what I'm interested in with an opposing viewpoint to my regular sources;
or it can be things that I haven't previously shown interest in.

[1] I don't know if "news agenda" is a peculiarly UK term.

~~~
snorkel
Not to dump on UK, but I also find the UK newspapers to be very mean spirited.
US tabloids gawk at celebrities, but UK tabloids are out to get them. I would
not want to be famous in the UK.

~~~
chestnut-tree
I'm from the UK and I'd go so far as to say the majority of the British press
are toxic. They have an incredibly inflated view of themselves and they
couldn't care less about what's in the public interest (just look at how
they've responded to the recommendations of the Leveson Inquiry which
investigated the repulsive ethics and culture of the British press).

The UK press empahtically follow their own self-interests and agendas (and
that includes broadsheets like The Guardian). There will always be individual
reporters who rise above the abysmally low standard of reporting - but they
are a tiny minority.

TV news is better in my opinion - they at least aspire to some measure of
impartiality. These clips from Charlie Brooker (British TV presenter) give a
good sense of the formulaic way news is reported (strong language in the
videos).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHun58mz3vI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHun58mz3vI)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PezlFNTGWv4#t=38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PezlFNTGWv4#t=38)

------
DanielBMarkham
I've been trying an experiment for the last year or two. I have an app that
collects commentary, tech and science stories from across the web. (Recently I
added news, but that was a mistake)

I find I stay just as informed reading commentary, where I'm purposefully
being manipulated, as I do reading news. In fact the news is better, as
various authors advance various personal theories they've been working on for
weeks or months, using the current events as fodder. Reading a couple of these
from different viewpoints provides wonderful context -- and context is the one
thing critically missing from most "breaking news" reporting. The only
difference is about a 12-hour delay. Trust me, the world does not depend on
whether I know something that quickly. Twitter peeps will annoy me if
something truly incredible happens.

I'm also finding that branding, whether by news outlet, author, or social
signaling, is a terrible indicator of quality. As I continue to flush out the
app, my belief is that a better indicator is statistical clustering around
personality types, but that's still a year or two away.

But one thing is for sure: I've been much happier since I gave up all forms of
news consumption. News is based on emotional manipulation. It's always a
crisis, there's always an argument, and there's always some terrible danger
you've been unaware of. That stuff will rot your mind. It's always been bad;
it's just gotten worse over the last few decades as the news cycle has
shortened.

~~~
spydum
I think this is a great observation that has really only become possible from
the internet: the ability to consume viewpoints from others outside of your
small social circle has been increased massively. Sites like HN, reddit, dig,
slashdot, etc have enabled that dialog on top of the usual one sided article.

Think back to when news was mostly distributed via TV or newspapers. Where
could you get alternative views? Neighbors, churches? These folks won't likely
come from as diverse backgrounds as folks you might find in an online forum.
They will have grown up most likely in the same town you are in, raised in a
similar fashion. These days, I might read twenty different viewpoints of NSA
wiretapping, from twenty different countries perspectives. It definitely
provides the reader with a much richer experience, making the original article
less valuable (except as a catalyst for the discussion obviously).

~~~
normloman
Yeah but the internet has also made it easier to filter out news you don't
like. Back in the day, your local newspaper had to appeal to a general
audience, and contained editorials from people with many perspectives. Now a
days, you can chose to only consume news you agree with. If you're a
conservative, you can read Drudge Report and Fox News Online without ever
having to encounter a liberal viewpoint (except as the target of mockery).
Liberals can get all their news from Daily Koz and MSNBC.com in the same
fashion.

------
admstockdale
This is a rather ignorant stance to take.

I know a lot of people don't like the doom & gloom of news. But it's needed. I
recently discussed with someone who doesn't consume news about the NSA
revelations. They were shocked. They said "why didn't anyone tell me?"

Instead of blocking things out and being happy with our ignorance, we need to
change how news is done. If you whine about something, change it. The Guardian
can certainly make an attempt to change the dynamic.

~~~
AlexandrB
> I know a lot of people don't like the doom & gloom of news. But it's needed.
> I recently discussed with someone who doesn't consume news about the NSA
> revelations. They were shocked. They said "why didn't anyone tell me?"

So I've been following the NSA news closely. But I'm not American! What
_actionable_ information has following the minute of the NSA revelations
provided me? I can't influence the US government in any way. The most I got
out of it was that I should move to non-US based service providers if possible
- but this was clear when the first revelations hit. Did I really need to
spend (I'm guessing) 10+ hours reading articles about the NSA's revelations?

I could see a case for following local news - where local might mean relevant
to your industry or to your community. The more local the news, the more
actionable the information. Nightly newscasts rarely focus on this though -
they're basically entertainment, _real_ reality television.

~~~
untog
_What actionable information has following the minute of the NSA revelations
provided me?_

Encrypt your data better, perhaps. But that's kind of besides the point - are
you suggesting that there is no point knowing about things you have no control
over?

~~~
aaronem
Are you suggesting there _is_ some point? That there's real value, to oneself
or to anyone else, in repeatedly dismaying oneself over things which one does
not have, and cannot obtain, the power to affect?

~~~
untog
I suppose I just can't imagine being content at being ignorant of the world.
By that principle surely it's also worthless to learn about world history?

~~~
aaronem
Not in the slightest; the mistake there would lie not in studying the dead
past, but rather in taking it personally enough to experience dismay. Taking
sides in the past is pointless; one studies the past to take sides in the
present.

I also want to pick on the fallacy I find in your equation of largely ignoring
journalism and being ignorant of the world. Having in early life studied
journalism without reference to history, and then later studied history
without reference to journalism, I found the former to leave me bewildered in
a morass of facts with no useful means of assembling from them a coherent
picture of the world, and the latter to furnish me with the cognitive
mechanisms necessary to derive a coherent, if of course not perfectly
accurate, model, into which to fit the facts I derive from review of what I am
forced to conclude is the rather slapdash and careless journalistic
profession.

------
vacri
_A car drives over a bridge, and the bridge collapses. What does the news
media focus on? The car. The person in the car. Where he came from. Where he
planned to go. How he experienced the crash (if he survived). But that is all
irrelevant. What 's relevant? The structural stability of the bridge._

This is an amazingly bad example. Most news sources would be leading the
torch-and-pitchfork brigade to either the relevant road authority or the
architect's office.

 _I don 't know a single truly creative mind who is a news junkie_

There is a vast gulf between 'news junkie' and 'don't watch news'. The author
may also want to broaden his social circle, because I'm aware of a few. I also
find it weird that 'physician' and 'scientist' are classified as 'truly
creative minds' \- I've known quite a few of each, and it's a terrible
assumption.

The article is an example of poor quality news - consuming it without thought
is indeed bad for you. Full points for irony, I guess.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Exactly, most are proceeding as if the OP is correct while neglecting that the
basic example is completely wrong.

------
ctdonath
So what source is there for "what you actually need to know" news? Something
that's not afraid to say "today's need-to-know headlines: none." Something
that keeps track of the status of significant long-term stories even while
they're not catchy, knowing that _something_ is happening, and predicting it
will be a big deal again later. Something that dispenses with the "sensational
but not relevant" stories. Something that might have a modest price tag
attached, to dispense with the necessity to grab maximum eyeballs daily to
sell ad space. Thoughts? Future YC candidate maybe?

------
bane
News is terrible for me at least. For stress related reasons I decided at the
beginning of 2013 that I would try and avoid daily contact with news (outside
of anything important enough to percolate up HN, reddit and FB). I'm _much_
more relaxed and less stressed and find that in casual conversation I'm about
as up-to-date on important events as most people I know.

Recently I was looking for information on something and ended up on CNN.com
and was awestruck at how much just absolutely unnewsworthy garbage filled the
pages. Curious I looked around at other new sites to see if they were all
worse than I remember and yes, pretty much they were full of gossip,
misinformation and obvious fear mongering.

No thanks, I like this new system better.

~~~
npsimons
Huff Po links are like this for me. I'm no staunch republican, I just get sick
to my stomach when I click on a link (often from HN!) that might be
interesting and I am assaulted by tabloid gossip on the right side of my
screen. I check the URI, and sure enough it's HuffPo, and it's _always_
something scabbed from somewhere else (ergo, the original article should have
been submitted).

------
chflamplighter
I was raised on NPR and have used/use it as my main source for general news
and find it very informative. Although it is not perfect, NPR seems to focus
on the delivery of information in a balanced (if that is possible) way
allowing me to draw my own conclusions. My problem with the big news outlets
(cnn, msnbc, fox, etc) is that they are clearly a business and focused on
profitability (I have much empathy for them as I do the same when I am at
work). The problem is when editorial decisions are made not by what is news
worthy but by what will draw the most eye balls. For me it feels presenters
are trying to one up each other with outrageous comments as their personal
views become the story at the expense of the news. I am sorry but I want the
news presented in a sterile/factual way. But instead it feels like American
Idol with the presenters angling for a book deal, more twitter followers or
other forms of personal enrichment. Of course there is nothing wrong with
self-promotion, I do it every day at work, but maybe I am old fashion in my
longing for the days of Ted Koppel who for the most part delivered the facts
as he knew them and purposely tried not to show emotion one way or another. So
I don’t think consuming news is bad but the self-promotion/echo chamber
creating delivery of that news is another thing entirely.

~~~
snorkel
Yes, clearly mainstream news has been turned into an entertainment product.
Agree that NPR delivers the news in depth without all of the cynicism and
noise that makes mainstream news so depressing, except on environmental
issues, that's a topic where the NPR coverage will suggest you should have a
bunker in the mountains.

------
mnw21cam
[http://xkcd.com/1299/](http://xkcd.com/1299/)

I grew up without a television - deliberate choice. My friends couldn't
believe how much cool stuff I could get done because of this.

~~~
LionRoar
I grew also up without a television. That was no deliberate choice, my parents
are orthodox christians. I was very creative in that period and I kinda miss
that now :)

~~~
normloman
So return to that period by giving up the tv again.

~~~
ctdonath
I did. No TV thru high school, minimal later, culminating in full-slate cable
service, then dumped it all for nothing more than an occasional DVD. Have no
idea how any TV-watchers get anything done, as I'm working (home chores
included) flat-out 18 hours a day and feel I can barely keep up with life.

------
joeblau
Already knew this, already did this, already got happy. I generally agree with
the sentiment of this article. If it's really news and really important, I'll
get spammed on Facebook (e.g. NSA, Superbowl Blackout, Healthcare.gov, Paul
Walker, Nelson Mandela, etc..).

I would honestly rather just get my news from HN because the intelligence
level is a lot higher than any news organization. While I may disagree with
certain views on here, it's not a sensationalized conversation. Users on here
generally have concrete conjectures and thought out responses which you
definitely don't get on the news.

------
crazygringo
I agree... but I think there are two important caveats.

1) Some news is important, purely for social (not informational) reasons. When
you show up to the office, you want to know why everyone's talking about Miley
Cyrus! And you need to know who won the Superbowl, even if you have no
interest.

2) News does have explanatory power, but mostly in weekly mags like The
Economist, New Yorker, etc., and occasionally in analysis pieces by the NYT.
Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

But to my first point -- I would _love_ a service that would "curate" the
need-to-know headlines, to send to me every morning/afternoon. Where each
headline had a numerical score or increasing importance (say, 1-5), and I
could choose to subscribe to all headlines of 5, and all headlines 3-5 in
tech, for example. The important thing being that this is not a simple daily
digest, but that I'd _only_ receive it when there was something newsworthy --
plenty of days, you'd receive nothing at all.

~~~
npsimons
_1) Some news is important, purely for social (not informational) reasons.
When you show up to the office, you want to know why everyone 's talking about
Miley Cyrus! And you need to know who won the Superbowl, even if you have no
interest._

No, just no. Maybe I'll sound like a curmudgeon, but that information is
totally worthless, and for people like me, is _exactly_ the kind of thing that
makes me depressed. "Oh, hey, some random sports team recreated a pointless
tribal warfare act! NSA? Who cares what they do, I've got nothing to hide."
There are more important, more culturally relevant things to discuss, and one
should not stoop to ignore them merely to "fit in." One should try to elevate
discourse by ignoring the shallow, vapid happenings that happen to be in vogue
(precisely what this article describes as being wrong with "news"!) and help
to enlighten those around oneself.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Recreated a pointless warfare act ... Man HN has a strong connection to the
real world!

~~~
haukilup
You are able to make the same point you are trying to make without over-
generalizing.

------
seanhandley
I made the decision to quit news broadcasts (TV and radio) some time ago and I
don't consider myself any less informed.

Scientific research publications, local papers, special-interest blogs and
good old fashioned conversation are more than enough to get the useful
information.

It's extraordinarily rare that the TV/radio news ever contains any information
that's directly useful to my life and I have better things to do than pan for
gold whilst being subjected to varying degrees of propaganda.

------
aleyan
I first encountered this line of reasoning in Bulgakov's excellent 1925 book,
Heart of a Dog when a doctor advises one of his friends:

    
    
      If you care about your digestion, my advice is—don't talk
      about bolshevism or medicine at table. And, god forbid—never
      read soviet newspapers before dinner.
    

It seems to me that it has long been known that unactionable information is
not good for you.

Curiously, another HN reader expressed the same [1] feelings about HN.

[1] [http://anton.kovalyov.net/p/soviet-
newspapers/](http://anton.kovalyov.net/p/soviet-newspapers/)

------
gpcz
As it mentions at the bottom of the article, this is a shortened version of an
article Rolf Dobelli wrote in 2010 called "Avoid News" (
[http://dobelli.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Par...](http://dobelli.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Part1_TEXT.pdf) ). The first one was longer
under the immediate challenge that people too mired in news would probably not
finish it, so it's interesting to me that he shortened this prose specifically
to post it on a news site.

------
ChrisNorstrom
I'm a fully recovered Digg, Reddit, Huffington Post, & Perez Hilton junkie.
I've been clean since 2009. It really is an addiction that takes over your
life. It's like a stimulation that you always have to have. I quit cold by
banning the offending websites using my linksys router:

● Go to http:192.168.1.1 using your browser, the default name and password is
"admin" and "admin" (please change the password to a REALLY long one and write
it down on a sticky note next to the router (if you haven't already)

● Click the "Access Restrictions" tab | Enter a policy name and select
"Enable" | ignore "applied PCs"'s edit list | Set Access Restriction to
"Allow" | Make sure the Schedule portion has "everyday" checked and "24 hours"
selected | Enter the URLs of the 4 websites you'd like to block | and click
"save settings" at the bottom.

● Sure you can come back here and disable the access restrictions, but it
requires extra steps, requires you to get up, requires you to type in a long
password. And by that time you'll have realized what you're doing isn't good
and stopped yourself. The whole point is to stop the bad habit of
subconsciously typing in Reddit.com every 5 minutes. It took me a month and
after whatever chemical high I had in my brain that was addicting me to
Reddit/HuffPo/etc. wore off I just disabled the bans and haven't been a
Redditor ever since. I've visited Reddit months later maybe twice but didn't
care and haven't been back since. I'm free.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
I bet you're fun to hang out with. :) Can you give me instructions for Netgear
too?

~~~
ChrisNorstrom
Well, I have started embracing both my masculine and feminine side. I like
watching "How It's Made", "Build It Bigger", "Extreme Engineering", "Ninja
Warrior", and "America's Next Top Model". I'm not familiar with Netgear
though.

------
Aqueous
If knowing the reality of what happens in the world leads to fear and
aggression then perhaps we should be angry and afraid? We can't just shut
reality out if we don't like the emotional state it puts us in.

~~~
protonfish
The reality of what happens is all around me - I observe it directly. What is
on mass media is information that other people want to promote to further
their own agenda. Whether it is for ratings, to get us to buy their product or
to further political aims it does not matter (we all have our own motivations)
but it is clearly NOT reality. The fact that you confuse the two is sad and
frightening.

~~~
Aqueous
There are parts of reality that you can't possibly witness directly because
you are located at a single geographic point. For example, someone suffering
on the other side of the world because they've been gassed by a dictator or a
terrorist group, or wrongly imprisoned, or they are dying of some easily
curable disease. You would usually only ever hear of such a thing through the
news media, and yet it is real

Things are not all one way or the other. The media is very imperfect, but it
is not worthless.

No need to attack me.

------
31reasons
I have stopped reading mainstream news for last 3 years and its the best mind-
hack I ever did.

[http://neurographs.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/news-
diet/](http://neurographs.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/news-diet/)

~~~
dinkumthinkum
What's a mind-hack?

------
iambateman
The irony of reading this article on a news website.

My man Rolf became a journalist, worked his way up to the Guardian, and wrote
a story about how busted up news is.

I look forward to the similar press release from Jony Ive telling us to stop
using those blasted iPads.

~~~
etfb
One could argue that it's not news, so it's not ironic.

------
tunap
RSS Feeds saved me from a life of the bl-ews. I've got my hand-picked sites
ranging from world news to space news to tech news with a little TIL and Adam
Curtis mixed in. It takes me five minutes to see the state of things I am
interested in & bookmark any interesting headlines for perusing later when
time allows. Many days, there is no later perusing, but I get an idea of what
is happening outside my circle of influence.

Now if I could get a continental breakfast one morning without being assaulted
by the talking heads squawking on every TV in every hotel lobby saying the
same shit every same day.

------
robomartin
Perhaps because I've lived outside the US and traveled extensively what really
bothers me about US news is how egocentric it is. You get a horribly skewed
world view if all you watch is US news. Also, when it comes to accidents or
disasters (plane crash, terrorist attack, etc.) for some reason I am really
bothered when the talking heads engage in US citizen accounting. Something
like this: "A plane crashed today in <insert city>, 45 passengers died, 3
Americans". I get it, it's US news, but for some reason it feels really wrong
to me that it is being reported that way. It's almost as if none of the other
victims mattered. I'm sure that's not how it is intended, but it really bugs
me for strange reason.

Also, US news bugs me even more when I am abroad. Watching CNN abroad vs.
watching it at home produces different feelings. When out of the country I
often feel the news is embarrassing. At home, regardless of the source, it
oscillates between politically charged, moronic or down-right egocentric news.
Most of the quality information I get is from non-US news programs or the
Internet. Local and national TV news programs, regardless of network or
political affiliation are deplorable.

I can absolutely see a constant stream of sensationalized and skewed news
being bad for someone, particularly if they don't seek balance outside of
their usual sources.

------
nashashmi
Anyone find it ironic that a news agency (the Guardian) is saying news is bad
for you?

~~~
diydsp
Yup. But like cigarette advertisers and spammers who intentionally misspell so
only uncritical people pay attention, most mainstream news sources have so
effectively created the atmosphere of _learned_helplessness_, they can tell
people in bold letters straight to their faces, "this is bad for you" and
people still pay for it.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness)

------
dayjah
Early this year I switched to skimming headlines and reading editorials only.
In short this was the best decision I've made around media consumption.
Between how much time it frees up and my reduced stress I'm so much happier.

This thread gave me pause to think about what I believed then, in the media
induced state of stress, and what has come to pass. Of the notable ones:

\- twitter would fail and cause the tech bubble to burst. Twitter now sits
pretty on $51/share

\- the euro zone would collapse and riots would rock the world. I actually
skipped out on two trips (a wedding in France and a stag party in Taiwan)
because I thought the world was on the brink of disaster. Nothing happened.

I only list two but there are a half dozen others that haven't happened
either. The thing that really strikes me though, is that my perspective on
others' has changed dramatically. When I see people spinning themselves up
into a state because of some media (and quite often it is not reputable media)
I feel a combination of anger and derision; somewhat akin to the emotional
reflex I experience when a homeless person is drunk.

------
Havoc
Yes, though its not that black & white. The optimal solution in my mind is to
cleverly filter what news you consume.

In my home country "news" consists mostly of bad stuff. e.g. I glanced at a
local news paper _today_...among the headlines "3 y/o baby gang raped". Being
bombarded with that kind of stuff daily can break the strongest soul, so I
just don't read local news anymore.

I tend to focus on finance & tech. Even if there is an absolute bloodbath on
the stock exchange it'll never rattle me like the baby thing does (and I
didn't even read the actual article). The stock exchange is just
numbers...maybe I lost some money - so be it. That I can absorb without
lasting damage.

I'd love a open platform that can process RSS that I know won't
close/change/fail me. Google Reader had some ability in this regard but we all
know how that went. Plus I think RSS might no longer be sufficient...cutting
edge news is now on twitter. Not sure if 140 chars counts as news
though...headlines maybe.

~~~
defective
I am the same as you, as far as focusing on finance and tech. I think there
are reasons why these topics are far less stressful or depressing: Tech news
and reviews are exciting when they are good, and irrelevant when they are bad.
If something gets some bed press, you simply don't buy! Also the tone is often
nice, probably because tech reviewers have a pretty good job. They get to play
with new things all the time and get paid.

Finance is usually upbeat as well -- now, I get most of my news from
Bloomberg, if that matters. But since hedge funds can't advertise, literally
everyone in the financial news chain benefits from the stock market going up.
This may tend to color reports to the positive, making for a happier listening
experience. Giving everyone the benefit of the doubt that they would ever
"color" a story, then even in difficult times, the focus is on investment
opportunities and interviews are always with those doing well. Ever since I
switched to Bloomberg news radio and a focus on online tech news, I feel like
I can bear to live in the world again!

------
minusSeven
This is article is very bad rip-off from the book "Art of thinking clearly".
This book goes into each of bias that we face in everyday life. Knowing them
can help you immensely. The articles just takes contents from the book to and
try to infer that NEWS is bad for you.

It is very poor attempt. For every point discussed in the article present so
many counter-arguments that are never discussed. Not just that some of the
arguments are just contradictory. Not to mention there is hardly any research
material pointed that made the author think that way.

Once it says that we don't think about news : "Unlike reading books and long
magazine articles (which require thinking), we can swallow limitless
quantities of news flashes,". This is ironic. The article itself is NEWS. Is
it not making us think. Well if it not making us think this makes this NEWS
itself is useless right?

The author just tried to create an article by combining things he read from
the book. At the end he just presented HIS OPINION. This should not be NEWS !

------
sherman333
If you attach a negative connotation to news then you're obviously trying to
make people hate it. Essentially this article equates reading the daily news
to a quick fix of heroin. But we aren't feeding an addiction when we read the
news. On a high level, we are trying to stay informed. But you must recognize
the deeper connection our minds make with new information.

The psychologist Gary Klein has written about how people make decisions. His
most recent book provides several pieces of evidence that we have good
insights because we can connect irrelevant information/ideas to the problems
we see everyday (whether these problems are at work, at school, in the
laboratory, or on the toilet).

Learning is healthy. Reading is necessary. The news is irreplaceable: not
because of its pertinence but because its insightful value.

------
dschiptsov
It isn't new per se, which supposed to be just accurate reporting of the
recent events and facts, but that unprecedented flow of unimaginable nonsense,
propaganda, brain-washing, manipulations, lies and mere stupidity no mind
could cope with. It is just unnecessary stress (especially from modern
"dramatic" framing of third-rate media) we do not have any adaptation for. So,
just switching off a TV and stopping reading nonsense (about Bitcoin or
Docker) is really a relief. It is like giving up reading /b/ dramatically
reduces the likelihood of developing ulcers.)

The problem is that every fool nowadays could write a blog post or a comment
which would be indexed by a search engine, adding a bit to the total waste.

------
nashashmi
If you were ever part of an MLM network, or quixtar or amway, or anybody who
was ever big on 'selling' things, you would know better than to read the news.
A typical newspaper has a ginormous amount of negative articles. HN is
different though.

~~~
aaronem
You assume, I think without justification, that someone sufficiently ill-
equipped that he cannot avoid being suckered into a Ponzi scheme, is
nonetheless capable of recognizing the deleterious effect of excessive news
consumption. (I've known a few such people myself -- they were decent enough,
mostly, but generally encumbered with a regrettable excess of credulity.)

------
rodolphoarruda
I've been hearing from more and more people each day that they have opted to
receive curated news instead of jumping from site to site. Mainly from people
outside the IT circle. They seem to me -- my impression -- to be less tolerant
to ads then us, and even less to poor quality content. I think we from IT tend
to judge content faster by just scanning headlines -- thank HN for that skill.
Most people just can't do this, so curated news are a good thing for them, to
the point some are actually paying to receive it on a regular basis.

------
mcormier
Interesting article, but it doesn't seem very balanced as it only focuses only
on the negative. Also, it is an excerpt from a dude's book which he is trying
to convince you to buy for £7.99.

------
itchitawa
Here's how missing the news affected me: When I finished my CS degree, I
decided have a go at postgrad in another field. I reasoned that if it didn't
work out, I'd just quit and get a programming job like my classmates had done
easily. It didn't work out. But when I went looking for a programming job, it
was surprisingly hard. That led me to change career direction. Only later I
found out what the "NASDAQ" was and what had happened to it while I was
indecisively loitering at university in 2001.

------
officemonkey
Most major news sources are biased that the only way to get anything close to
a healthy dose is (a) to turn the volume down and (b) turn the gain up.

Increase the number of sources, believe fewer of them, and use critical
thinking. But only pay attention to things you care about.

I may be outraged with recent conflicts between tech carpetbaggers and SF
residents, but I try not to invest any energy in it, because I've got my own
local gentrification vs. crime issues and I only have so much bandwidth.

------
LionRoar
I have done this and I agree. "News" gives a single side view on the world and
it is hardly an uplifting one. Personally I strongly belief that the general
public opinion is negativer then needed caused by negative news-feeding. In
the periods that I decided to not follow the news (opting out :)) I felt
better and more relaxed. In the mean time I did not miss any big news and what
I missed turned out not to be important. Easily to do as an experiment.

------
delinka
Information overload is depressing. No, I mean it can cause depression. Mild
perhaps as opposed to clinical, but you're more stressed when overloaded. My
first thoughts on reading the title, however, went here:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9pD_UK6vGU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9pD_UK6vGU)

"Life is easier and the world is a much happier place when you're dumb."

~~~
nathan_long
Funny, I think news tends to _make_ one dumber. For instance, you get
exaggerated ideas about the dangers of muggings, lightning strikes, serial
killers, etc, and get distracted from things that are actually likely to harm
you.

------
enterx
I generally avoid personalization of the internet but there should be a
service that informs the individual.

It should be a kind of alarm system with editable preferences like topics of
interest also location based warnings with ranking of information importance
consisted of social component plus importance rating given from information
provider.

However, these days news are bad all over the world so not reading them will
truly make you happy. :)

------
dba7dba
I recommend a book by C. John Sommerville, titled 'How the News Makes Us Dumb'
from 1999.

One interesting paragraph on backcover: 'news began to make us dumber when we
insisted on having it daily'.

As anyone who's tried to make or create (even just writing something about a
topic) something would know, creating takes time. Now when something needs to
be created daily or even hourly, you end up putting out junk.

------
FrankenPC
I disagree. Without news, I wouldn't be able to determine which organizations
are legit and good for humanity. Armed with that knowledge, I join the
appropriate orgs (i.e. EFF), donate money, and send nasty-grams to the proper
senator/congressperson when needed.

The caveat is that it's necessary to know which news is garbage and which is
meaningful. Clue: meaningful news is not typically popular.

------
pbhjpbhj
Ostensibly I gave up the daily news a few years ago when The Times [of London]
put up their paywall, 4-and-a-half years ago [according to Wikipedia].

I do read a lot of tech news however and more recently have taken up reading
the headlines on the local newspaper websites.

For me it's an effort to help me be more positive about life as I have
struggled with negativity and sometimes intrusive thoughts.

------
sarreph
I'm unsure whether OP's intention was to highlight HN's potential for being a
well of unhappiness (as the article would suggest). However, it must be made
clear that this headline does not apply to many (if not the majority) of HN
posts, which are simply more than just current affairs or news; that's why I
love HN — it's more than simple news.

------
yodsanklai
Totally agree. Actually a few months ago, I blocked the news websites that I
was used to reading. I really see news as a form of noise rather than
information. Especially all those low quality sites such as the Huffington
Post and so on...

Not only they don't provide quality information, but it seems to me they
trigger our worst sides (jealousy, hatred...).

------
ChristianMarks
There is an opportunity here to create technology that will facilitate
thinking instead of fragment it. Imagine a distraction-free internet. Our
machines are programmed to exacerbate hyperbolic discounting, to replicate and
encourage the so-called monkey mind. We much teach our machines to meditate.
We must quiet their computations.

------
octo_t
Like the old proverb goes, ignorance is bliss.

------
aestra
Why TV News is a Waste of Human Effort: One Example Worth a Trillion Dollars -
by C.P.P. Grey

[http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/why-tv-news-is-a-waste-of-
human-...](http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/why-tv-news-is-a-waste-of-human-effort-
one-video-is-worth-a-trillion-dollars)

------
hspain
[http://goodnewsgopher.com](http://goodnewsgopher.com)

I made a news crawler that automatically filters out bad news articles using
sentiment analysis.

I like to think it offers a good reprieve from all of the negative, depressing
news you get inundated with from the major media.

~~~
olegkhr
The first "positive" news today on our site is about execution in north
korea... I guess automatic filtering is not ready yet to such kind of
tasks....

------
coldcode
Happier at the moment but possibly a lot madder when you find out how terrible
the future might become.

~~~
aaronem
Which is an excellent opportunity to study the practical application of the
valuable old saw: "What can't be cured must be endured."

------
thinkersilver
This news article summarises nicely why I went on an extreme news diet over
the last 4 months. I broke that streak today by reading the article on the
guardian about why I shouldn't be reading the news. I couldn't resist because
of the articles obvious reflexivity.

------
nelmaven
I don't watch TV news anymore, it's always same thing ever and ever: economy
is bad, protests, war, that team won that game, here's the weather, a disaster
just happened and thousand died and in the last 2 minutes is when they show
something cheerful.

------
johnchristopher

      s/journalist/commenter
    

Any journalist who writes, "The market moved because of X" or "the company
went bankrupt because of Y" is an idiot. I am fed up with this cheap way of
"explaining" the world.

------
pkhamre
What is the motive for a newspaper to tell people not to read news? Reverse
psychology?

~~~
gorner
Strictly speaking it's not "the newspaper" saying this, but an op-ed
contributor:

> This is an edited extract from an essay first published at dobelli.com. The
> Art of Thinking Clearly: Better Thinking, Better Decisions by Rolf Dobelli
> is published by Sceptre, £9.99. Buy it for £7.99 at guardianbookshop.co.uk

Newspapers don't necessarily agree with the views they publish – though
presumably they found this an interesting piece regardless.

------
ErikSlagter
Nobody sees that this is just an advertisement for the essay?

Why would a news outlet suggest that news is bad for you. Thanks to hacker
news, the article will get thousands of extra reads and the guardian is raking
in the cash!!!

------
robbyking
I understand the author's point, but as a long time SF resident, I would say
local news is very important to me. Many of my day to day decisions are
dictated by what I read in the news each morning.

------
pshin45
It's pretty ridiculous to make a blanket statement like "News is bad for you",
which is akin to saying "Food is bad for you". Certain food/news is definitely
bad for you, especially in large/excessive quantities, but that doesn't mean
we don't need it.

The amount of bad food/news in the world has increased exponentially in recent
history due to the ease and low cost of production and distribution.

But like we've seen with food, the more unhealthy options proliferate, the
more of a premium there is for e.g. home-cooked, organic meals. I like to
think that Hacker News, on most days, is my source of healthy and nourishing
news, and it's up to me to discern and sift through the junk that might
occasionally get mixed in.

------
kabisote
While it is wise not to believe everything we read in the news, it does not
follow that there is nothing we can trust. The key may be to have a healthy
skepticism, while keeping an open mind.

------
adrianmig
I should have not read this news... i feel i little bad already

------
davvolun
Yeah, ignorance is bliss, but, while the premise _is_ fundamentally flawed,
I'll direct you to Idiocracy about what happens with an uneducated populace.

~~~
seanhandley
Pssst. Here's what idiocratic actually means :-)
[https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=define+idiocratic&oq=defin...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=define+idiocratic&oq=define+idiocratic&aqs=chrome..69i57.293j0j9&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=119&ie=UTF-8)

------
ExpiredLink
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5549054](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5549054)

------
rwhitman
News is also highly addictive, I've tried to kick the habit since I read the
original article a while back but its been nearly impossible.

------
mariusz79
This article together with Snowden revelations, makes me think that the
Guardian is probably on of the last news sources that can be trusted.

------
Newky
What is hilarious is that this article was Number 1 on Pocket Hits Best of
2013.

A reading app's top read article was an article about giving up reading.

------
jdstraughan
This is exactly why I wrote NoNews.

You can check it out at [http://www.nonews.info/](http://www.nonews.info/)

------
seanhandley
I'd rather be uninformed than misinformed!

~~~
niamh
I'm with you on this. Upworthy is my news source of choice.

------
jerkywez
News has its uses but at the end of the day its usually negative. Simple as
that. Live happy, live longer ;)

------
satyampujari
because of the fact that we discovered the news that news is bad on hacker
news, I think (hacker) news is actually cool. This should make another news.
Too much news for the day or may be its the lambdas on my screen: lambda f:
(lambda x: x(x))(lambda y: f(lambda v: y(y)(v)))

------
sgt
Just stick to reading HN. If outside news is significantly important, then
it'll reach HN too.

~~~
Thrymr
That's only (arguably) true for issues of national or global importance. It is
also important to be an informed citizen and voter on state and local issues,
and many local news sources are woefully inadequate. Many states and towns
have local referendums and elections held at times of no national election,
counting on apathy, ignorance and low turnout to be able to more easily sway
the vote.

------
tibbon
I would have read this article, but according to the title... I probably
shouldn't.

~~~
markyc
not all articles can be classified as "news"

~~~
diydsp
Excellent point. I've been debating with my gf a lot lately about the diff.
b/t "information" and "observations." I find many articles are simply
observations... like molecules in bloodstream, they float around, but only
rarely combine into anything worthwhile, as compared to controlled chemical
reactions in which ideas and structures combine meaningfully.

------
thomasahle
"Why I've stopped [perfectly normal thing] and you should too!"

------
xacaxulu
News is bad for you, except for this bit of news explaining how news is bad.

------
luckysahaf
good one! But I assume its hard to completely banish news. It comes
everywhere, on Facebook and daily routines.

------
Kluny
Way to devalue yourself, The Guardian.

------
eam
tl;dr Ignorance is bliss. :)

------
alecdbrooks
I am often frustrated by news and think much of it is worth ignoring, but many
of the points are not very well-supported.

"News has no explanatory power": I'm not going to argue that most mainstream
news is even that good, but to suggest that "the accumulation of facts" is
inconsistent with forming deeper knowledge is too sweeping. Readers of news
can observe patterns, which hopefully they will check against more in-depth
research.

Much of news' task to not the "how?" but the "what?" and on that measure, it
does a decent, if inconsistent job:
[http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2011/knowless/](http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2011/knowless/).

"News is toxic to your body": The author cites a case study involving the
limbic system that doesn't mention media or news at all. It may well be that
"Panicky stories spur the release of cascades of glucocorticoid" but do they
do so at noticeable or unhealthy levels? I'm not convinced.

"News increases cognitive errors": News is not an ideal way of challenging
biases, but it seems much better than not reading news and getting information
about filtered through friends with similar biases to you. (Reading carefully
filtered news and books is probably best of all.)

"News inhibits thinking": This section only applies if you read news
intermittently and let notifications interrupt you. Concentrating on a
newspaper (or news site) for 30 minutes would not have the same effect. But
continually leaving work for chatting co-workers would.

"News works like a drug": This section is one of the most plausible, but once
again, it doesn't cite any evidence. Cal Newport has a similar line of
reasoning, but he actually has research to back it up:
[http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/06/10/is-allowing-your-
child...](http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/06/10/is-allowing-your-child-to-
study-while-on-facebook-morally-equivalent-to-drinking-while-pregnant/). (It's
about Facebook, but the same principle of distracting activities ruining focus
applies.)

"News wastes time": This is all about habits and boundaries. Like "News
inhibits thinking," this problem could emerge with any activity engaged in on
a whim during working hours.

"News kills creativity": The theory that younger mathematicians are more
productive is actually unfounded. See
[http://www.slate.com/articles/life/do_the_math/2003/05/is_ma...](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/do_the_math/2003/05/is_math_a_young_mans_game.html)
or [http://privacyink.org/pdf/myth.pdf](http://privacyink.org/pdf/myth.pdf).
And this last part is pure argument by anecdote:

"I don't know a single truly creative mind who is a news junkie – not a
writer, not a composer, mathematician, physician, scientist, musician,
designer, architect or painter. On the other hand, I know a bunch of viciously
uncreative minds who consume news like drugs."

The points about most news being irrelevant to day-to-day life and story bias
are worth pondering, but otherwise this article overreaches. It is a series of
interesting conjectures about the effect of news, but often presumes a certain
way of reading or watching news. The evidence for each point is slim. I'm
forced to conclude his warnings of "panicky" news with "no explanatory power"
are hypocritical.

------
squozzer
theguardian.com excepted, of course.

------
amerika_blog
Modern media is a good way to make yourself neurotic. Fear sells and misery
sells. Everything else is not of interest.

------
LekkoscPiwa
Of course. The news are depressing in the declining empire of the USA, how not
to get depressed watching them? It's not like things are going into the right
direction and each year is better than the previous one. The things goes in
wrong direction and things are worse every year than they used to be. And
pretending it is not happening by just simply turning off the news is exactly
what NSA and the USG want you to do.

------
kimonos
I agree on this because most of the news I hear today are bad news..

------
kingkawn
I do not believe that news itself is bad for you. Reading about horrors and
then doing nothing to follow-up is bad for you. But these days I do not have
to do that. I am not helpless. I can see the Philippines being destroyed and
donate money, donate time, talk to people I know who are from there or who are
there now. This is true of any event. We are ruined by inaction, not by
information.

I can consume any and all news and have it be beneficial to me. Not because I
now know facts, but because I can understand each of the stories as a glimpse
into the lives and processes of other people in all disciplines and all walks
of life. In doing so I can create equality where, in my own mind at the least,
it may not have already existed.

