
Stop Reading News (2013) - galfarragem
https://fs.blog/2013/12/stop-reading-news/
======
nemild
Ezra Taft Benson: "One must select wisely a source of news; otherwise it would
be better to be uninformed than misinformed."

My own view is that you should reduce consumption dramatically, but still read
some publications. And realize that in software, we have our own form of
“news” that this missive applies to.

Here’s my media literacy guide:

[https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-
media/blob/master/README....](https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-
media/blob/master/README.md)

And one just for the tech industry (including HN):

[https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-
media/blob/master/softwar...](https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-
media/blob/master/software-engineers-media-guide.md)

~~~
musha68k
Very cool. Thanks for sharing.

FWIW sharing my primary global non-tech news source while we are at it: The
Financial Times to me is all the important news without the fluff and very
much worth the subscription price. Obviously there is a heavy focus on
economic news (but not exclusively).

I especially like the News Briefing which I can listen to conveniently with a
"Hey Siri, play the FT News Briefing" while doing my morning routine. These
podcasts as well as Alphaville
([https://ftalphaville.ft.com](https://ftalphaville.ft.com)) are actually
free.

I delved into FT last year through exploration of the Media Bias Chart for the
US: [https://www.adfontesmedia.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/08/Med...](https://www.adfontesmedia.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/08/Media-Bias-Chart_4.0_8_28_2018-min.jpg)

I probably should read more widely but I had been disappointed by traditional
outlets like the BBC or The Economist for a long while now. It also feels like
the world's balance of power is shifting heavily at this time so I'm not sure
where I can get high quality global news without our natural western bias (our
perspective increasingly feels like wishful thinking to me).

~~~
gowld
FT is fine as far as it goes, but it ignores most of the world's news except
for business/finance stuff and the same mostly-useless "headline" stories you
see everywhere else. Unless all you care about is the finance markets, it
doesn't have much to say that is important your life and the world.

~~~
SaintGhurka
That filter is exactly what makes it valuable to me. Financial news still has
to report political news if it has real-world impact on the economy, or a
company or a politician of sufficient import.

So watching CNBC, for example instead of NBC Nightly News, you'll still know
all about the government shutdown or the possible resignation of the governor
of Virginia or a winter storm shutting down half the country, but you won't
have to endure endless, excruciating segments about a kid smiling at a guy
beating a drum.

------
pedro1976
When I realized that "the news" have much more influence shaping mine and my
friends opinion, I was shocked. It passively or they actively distract you
from things that really matter in your life [0] (availability heuristic [1]).

And given that 80% of its content is written by PR agencies [2] you can be
sure, that every possible cognitive bias will be applied to keep you busy.

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-
ro...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli)

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

[2]
[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/nov/17/mondaymediasec...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/nov/17/mondaymediasection3)

~~~
zimpenfish
> Given that a (conservative) estimate of 75% of entertainment stories and 50
> to 80% of news and business stories emanate from public relations

She doesn't cite any sources to back up those figures. Do you have any
available?

------
hardwaresofton
One piece of anecdata: I subscribed to the Economist briefly last year and it
was one of the best things I've done as far as advancing myself as a person.
While the vast majority of what written about wasn't immediately relevant to
me (compared even to a random programming-related blog post), it did a _lot_
to enlighten me on the value of good journalism and broaden my world view as
well as keeping me reasonably informed on happenings in the world. I stopped
subscribing to the Economist because I couldn't find time to read every
edition cover to cover, but I plan on starting again this year.

I also subscribe to [https://lwn.net](https://lwn.net) which brings up another
thing -- supporting the organizations that make the news is important if you
want news that is good (even if it's irrelevant _right now_ ) from being
produced.

~~~
bloak
It is hard to find time to read The Economist from cover to cover. I try to at
least look at each article, and read at least half of them. Even The Economist
has some articles that seem ephemeral: for example, a discussion of whether a
particular merger will or won't happen.

~~~
blunte
The same could be said of keeping up with the front page of HN. I imagine most
of us pick and choose which items to give attention to.

------
weliketocode
This article is right on.

\- Avoiding the daily news likely will NOT make you any less informed.

\- Avoiding constant media consumption will NOT give power to a central
authority and reduce your rights.

A lot of the counter arguments here are seemingly from individuals _defending_
the amount of time they spend consuming content.

To those who read the news religiously, what was the last news item that you,
_personally_ , took action on? Can you remember it? Ok. GREAT!

\--> Now, be objective with yourself. What % of news items did YOU take action
on? Did it give you a >0 return on invested time?

~~~
pjc50
If you avoid the news long enough, eventually you will find that your rights
have been reduced without you noticing.

You absolutely can take real action with financial implications for yourself
from news items - I made £1k from a single Telegraph article on how the Royal
Mail IPO was grossly underpriced. I've adjusted my pension allocation on the
assumption that the pound would fall against the dollar and done quite well on
that too.

But for much news it's not so much "achieving a positive return" as avoiding a
negative. It's the Arthur Dent effect: one day you wake up to find aliens
about to bulldoze your planet, and they tell you that you were warned and
should have known about it. There's a _lot_ of that these days. I'm surrounded
by people who have taken Brexit-related actions of one kind or another,
especially all the Europeans who suddenly have to register to avoid
deportation. I factored it in to my job change, not as a major factor, but
it's convenient to be working for a US multinational rather than a company
exporting or importing physical goods from the EU.

I don't even seek out that much news any more, it just keeps leaking in via
social media. I should make more effort to follow local news, because that
really is the place where I can find out if someone's going to put a bypass
through my house or disrupt my bus route, _and_ have a chance of stopping it.

------
stared
Vide "I Hate the News" by Aaron Swartz
[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews)
(news as an overvalued distraction) and recent "The Welfare Effects of Social
Media"
[http://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/facebook.pdf](http://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/facebook.pdf)
(on average, quitting Facebook makes one a bit happier... and much less up-to-
date with news; maybe it is not just an irrelevant correlation).

------
skilled
For the last 4-5 years, Hacker News has been pretty much my only source of any
kind of news outside of the topics that I work with on a daily basis. This is
true.

Before that, I did not read newspapers or follow any kind of journalism. I
still recall being around age 12 or 13 and making a conscious decision not to
watch TV anymore. It has been around just as much time since I last saw a TV
news report.

Maybe it has something to do with mentality? Is the new generation reading
news? I highly doubt it. I think the new generation is caught up in quizzes
that stir up emotions, and psychological tests that determine whether a
giraffe is your spirit animal.

I'm not even sure if that makes sense, but I know that newspapers don't make
any sense whatsoever; despite it being the livelihood of so many folks.

How can anyone justify reading news that only talk about negative things? I
don't have time for that kind of nonsense in my life. I know the system is
broken, corrupt, beyond repair -- why remind me about it every day?

~~~
zimpenfish
> I think the new generation is caught up in quizzes that stir up emotions,
> and psychological tests that determine whether a giraffe is your spirit
> animal.

Given the activism they're showing in, eg, the US, I think if you read the
news, you'd be surprised how wrong you are.

> How can anyone justify reading news that only talk about negative things?

To be aware of them in order to help fix them?

~~~
nailer
A lot of that activism is more performative than practical, judging by voter
turnout.

~~~
js8
Didn't the last US election have the largest turnout in the past century? See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_elections](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_elections)

~~~
nailer
It did, the activists lost.

------
kaffeemitsahne
I would like to add the Wikipedia portal Current Events to the list of
alternative news sources in this thread.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events)

~~~
aboutruby
I like how it's short, to the point and reflects events worldwide uniformly

~~~
virusduck
and the word "Trump" isn't anywhere to be found!

------
elorant
The beef I have with journalism is that every time they write on a topic I
have good knowledge of, I find their coverage to be lame and lacking depth.
Which leads me to a more generalized assumption that this is probably true for
any given subject, except perhaps politics. Most notable example I can think
of is how the media covers A.I. issues. I don't expect newspapers to have book
quality analysis but at the very least I expect some kind of integrity. If I
have to wonder every time whether the journalist knows what he/she's talking
about then I'd rather not read them at all.

~~~
zazen
This has a name: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-
Mann_amnesia_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect)

Although I think it bears saying that journalists really might be doing a
better job of reporting on the politics that is their own main interest than
on the science stories which are far outside their own interest and expertise,
and which they may well regard as lower priority for accuracy.

------
cleetus
I can only consume so much information, and most of the news is presented as
low-quality information or information pollution.

The 24/7 news cycle makes the quality problem even worse.

Here are two more similar links:

[http://www.raptitude.com/2016/12/five-things-you-notice-
when...](http://www.raptitude.com/2016/12/five-things-you-notice-when-you-
quit-the-news/)

[http://www.dobelli.com/en/essays/news-
diet/](http://www.dobelli.com/en/essays/news-diet/)

------
Chazprime
I don't like the binary choice to either read the news or ignore it. We just
need to be mature enough to curate what we read, hopefully striking a healthy
balance between our personal lives and what's going on in the world outside of
that.

------
charlysl
If you want to understand better than 99% of the population where the world is
heading, you could do a lot worse than reading a few of the titles in the
Economist's books of the year list.

Even better, read Machiavelli, human nature hasn't changed and it will help
you interpret the news.

Also watch the documentary "The Century of The Self"; most news is propaganda,
and this will help you spot it.

And, if you must read the news, aim for a bit of diversity (i.e. both media
from the right and the left, and events in your country as seen from abroad,
and triangulate), otherwise you will easily get brainwashed, censorship in
dictatorships tries to block media it can't control for this very reason.

Headlines are clickbait more often than not, don't believe them, and "breaking
news" is abused so often that it's become a meaningless tag.

Don't use social media as a news source, it's abysmal, even worse than
tabloids.

------
grecy
After spending well over two years all over Africa (and previously 2 year all
over Latin America) I've come to the conclusion that "news" today is no such
thing.

What is sold as "news" today is just whatever dramatic world events some
producer thinks will get ratings which is important so they can keep their
job.

In no way does it give people a well-rounded or informed position about
_anything_ as the word "news" implies.

~~~
gowld
Drop the "today", it's cleaner.

wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

------
Jaruzel
Regarding Brexit, I got so fed up with all the media spin around it, that I
set up a TVHeadend[1] server on my network, and started watching (rather
listening to while I work) BBC Parliament live via a small window on my screen
using VLC. Once you start hearing the de-facto source for news events, it's
amazing how brazen the mass media are in the manipulation of how they reported
those events to support their own agendas.

I've been doing this now for about 1 month, and although some of the coverage
is mundane, most of it is quite interesting. It's also good as background
'noise' as I work from home, which can be too quiet at times.

For technical news, I follow HN, and a few other sources. I tend to cross
reference the reporting and try to see through the manipulation.

Beyond technical and political news (both of which can affect me directly), I
no longer have an interest in other more 'general' news. Sure, an earthquake
in Indonesia may be newsworthy for example, but as it doesn't affect me
directly, why waste my time with it?

We've all been conditioned to suck up all world news as if it is _important_
\- Most of it _isn 't_, and only exists to fill airtime and/or sell adverts.
Calculate how much time it takes for you to consume your daily news, and then
ask yourself if that was time well spent. My guess is that it probably isn't.

Finally, depressing news sells, and good news doesn't. People want to feel
that they have a better life than the sad people shown on the news. The same
thing goes for Soap Operas, they trade on this effect to keep viewers. In fact
the absolute reverse happens - over time, people get more depressed watching
depressing news, than they would if they didn't. The effect is more pronounced
in people who 'catch up' on the news just before bedtime.

\---

[1] [https://tvheadend.org/](https://tvheadend.org/)

~~~
indigochill
>started watching (rather listening to while I work) BBC Parliament live

Sounds like compiling a list of sources like this, Oyez, and others (for
people who just don't know these things can be found if one looks) could be of
immediate practical benefit to society.

------
jaabe
I buy the bit about being critical about what news we consume, but I just
don’t see a complete avoidance of news as being a good solution. To me, not
reading news would remove more value from my life than reading too much.

My personal fix for news media was to identify exactly what I wanted from a
news paper and then identify the one which suited my needs best.

This turned out to be a paper, which at the time (2017) only had a printed
version. No online version at all, they do now, but I’ve never visited it.
It’s a high lixcount paper with a heavy focus on society (as in statecraft not
cocktails), culture and arts/literature. It’s basically the perfect paper for
our cultural elite. I’m not really part of that, and I always skip the book
and arts sections, so you could say the paper isn’t exactly a perfect match.
It’s underlying political philosophy doesn’t even align with mine.

The thing is though, it only comes out on Fridays. This means the paper only
focuses on the stuff that’s actually relevant. It also means the articles have
actually journalistic depth. The combination of this means I get to stay
informed without being bothered by all the irrelevant noise in the regular
news cycle.

It’s been truly awesome, and if something critical happens I can always turn
to internet news.

~~~
lystergic
What is the name of this paper?

~~~
jaabe
Weekendavisen, it’s a Danish paper though.

------
roenxi
He could have written a much longer article on this if he wanted to; there are
deeper issues related to this subject. The characterisation of this should be
news-news (company releases a new wossname, generally not a problem) and
politics-news where society decides what is happening and what should be done
about it. The big question is really: How does "the societal discourse" handle
complicated issues?

I don't see much evidence that society at large can take an interest in a
subject and maintain a sophisticated position like "there isn't enough
evidence here to form an opinion". The closest that seems to be achieved in
practice is two interest groups completely at loggerheads, preventing any
action due to their strident opposition of each other.

In game theory terms, is there a system where a consensus opinion and a
focused group of crazies can coexist without compromising in the direction of
the crazies? Because the power of a focused group of political extremists is
so great that it distorts political action and has significant flow on effects
to journalism as political forces vie for control of the public discourse. The
type of discipline to deal with something like that is clearly beyond most
citizens.

~~~
Meai
I think society doesn't purposefully handle it at all currently, issues are
solved by accident through simply waiting for new technologies to make all the
old problems disappear. Sometimes a problem is so gigantic that no amount of
spin and delusion can deny it and then things do tend to get fixed but usually
with a few new problems in there as well. Regarding your game theory question:
One group being immovable in thought inevitably leads to either that group
gaining more members or new immovable groups forming to fight that contender
at the same level.

------
keiferski
I, for one, would love a monthly email newsletter that summarizes the top ~100
news stories of the past 30 days. Things that turned out to be irrelevant
would be ignored, while things that turned out to be important would be
included and briefly commented upon.

Magazines like _The Economist_ sort of fulfill this role, but they are often a
little too detailed for the high-level overview I'm looking for.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I think of something similar but less "news" lead - for example a backlog of
the most "important" global issues (yes we can out climate change at number
one) but it's things like "water shortages in southern sudan" at number 18 and
so on that really will give perspective - when we see things like Brexit at
number 67 that we know we have a proper balance.

I would start with a metric like "estimated number of excess human deaths from
this issue in next year, five years fifty years" and have open transparent
ways to assess the metric

~~~
asdff
How do you apply discrete metrics to topics that people value differently?

~~~
lifeisstillgood
the same way newspaper editors do - they apply a set of curated values - and
people buy the set of values they think matches theirs most closely.

at least this way we are transparently surfacing the issues and there is
ability for people to apply different curation criteria

Basically I would love to get the weekly report from the US national security
advisor - that's basically what I think Inam trying to create.

------
anonu
The 2 principles of anonu apply here:

1\. Moderation in all things

2\. The devil is in the details. There's a bit more nuance to the situation.

Your attention is yours. What happens in the media, Facebook, etc... Is an
attempt to take your attention. For the most part your allocation is spent
where the biggest dopamine hit can come from. If you start valuing your
attention based more on an ROI calculation where your return is "did I learn
something useful from a balanced source that can help form my world view?"
Then you quickly start to cut out the BS.

Here are my tips for high ROI consumption:

Read long form articles about a subject. Skip over them if needed so a as not
to waste time.

Call BS early. Poorly written books or articles should be nixed immediately.

Avoid the sugar: low ROI stuff like Instagram, Facebook, Reddit

------
nkozyra
Do not stop reading news. Be selective with your sources. Be a discerning news
consumer.

An uninformed populace is a malleable one. Controlling and limiting
information has long been a strategy for despots or worse.

> The point is, most of what you read online today is pointless

Don't read that then. Read sources you believe are important to you and
deliver information that is important.

Be a discerning news consumer.

> Being well informed isn’t regurgitating the opinion of some twenty-two-year-
> old with no life experience telling me what to think or how outraged to be.

This isn't news, it's opinion. Don't read this.

Be a discerning news consumer.

> Read from publications that respect and value your time, the ones that add
> more value than they consume.

In other words, be a discerning news consumer.

> Read fewer articles and more books.

This is a weird argument.

Look, people hate the media, so an argument like this is an easy sell. But
rejecting information from the media is a concession to power.

~~~
birksherty
I don't read news, don't use social media. I find it working fine. Although
hacker news kind of works like a news source to me.

I find almost everything in news noise now. Don't following any of that on
purpose makes me feel calm.

Now if there is something that I should really know, it comes to me. I meet
people all the time and then they tell me if something important is going on.
I don't have to go after news. I adopted this after going through all the
political bs in last few years. It works like a filter and I enjoy it.

~~~
prossercj
This quote from Thomas Jefferson seems relevant:

"I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus & Thucydides, for Newton &
Euclid; & I find myself much the happier." [0]

[0]
[http://tjrs.monticello.org/letter/280](http://tjrs.monticello.org/letter/280)

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Jefferson was 80 when he wrote that, so the context is a little different than
what people are discussing here.

------
smoe
Although not directly mentioning it, the post seems to imply that things were
better in the past. I like this 2013 article from the Guardian better because
it goes deeper into fundamental issues with news, independent from the
"internet age".

[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-
ro...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli)

Key points for me:

 _News has no explanatory power. News items are bubbles popping on the surface
of a deeper world. Will accumulating facts help you understand the world?
Sadly, no. The relationship is inverted. The important stories are non-
stories: slow, powerful movements that develop below journalists ' radar but
have a transforming effect.

[...]

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._

I stopped reading news around 2011, while I was working at a big news site,
within a building complex of about half a dozen more publications including
online, print, paid, free, weekly and daily. Seeing how the sausage is made
has overall increased my respect for journalists, but decreased the one for
the process of publication and the business behind it. It easy to blame
corporate overloads, but the pressure for almost real time news comes in part
from the readers.

At first I sought to solve the potential problem of being uninformed of not
reading news technically. Thinking about building an aggregator with a more
objective way to judge news-worthiness and relevancy than the existing ones
and news sites. But then I realized there is already a good enough solution in
place: If something is important for me to care about, it will eventually
reach me in some way or another trough social interactions (mostly offline
since i don't use social media much). And because of the delay of information
getting to me, I'm way more likely to get actual useful insights when I then
dig deeper than when trying to keep up with everything live.

------
platz
If you didn't read anything about the Panama papers or pfas, etc.. how will
you know who to vote for in the next primaries and elections? Or will you vote
how you did the last time?

------
rimliu
There is an amazing book written in 1925: A Heaf of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov.
And there is just as an amazing movie based on it. There is an exchange about
not reading soviet newspapers if one cares about digestion.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOE_3_Ws4y0&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOE_3_Ws4y0&feature=youtu.be&t=1718)
(English subtitles are available).

------
jimhefferon
A surprising percentage of what is up as news is placement. You'll see an
interesting article about the Boer War, then a couple of days later you'll see
another, which is a bit strange, and then a couple of days later you'll see an
ad for a movie with a couple of big name stars that is set in the Boer War.
Then you realize that you've been tricked into an ad campaign. That's
discouraging.

~~~
sametmax
What's discouraging me more is that people that do this find it harmless. It
says a lot about the state of our society: we still think a little bit of bad
is ok, forgetting what happens when everybody is doing it.

------
samcday
As an uneducated ignoramus, I'm somewhat ashamed to admit I only recently
discovered JSTOR Daily ([https://daily.jstor.org/](https://daily.jstor.org/)).
Marrying current events / open policy debates / political trends to hard
research is really doing it for me lately.

Surface level "on the ground" reporting of who farted 15 seconds ago in the
White House has its use, certainly. But I much prefer to read a thoughtful
piece on the frequency at which people have historically farted in the White
House. That way I can contrast it with the behaviors of the current ruling
party. It can also be supplemented with analysis into how society's view on
White House farts has evolved in tandem with the so-and-so Revolution or the
such-and-such cultural shift. All of this being sourced from research steeped
in hard evidence.

Aside from JSTOR Daily, what other recommendations can people provide for this
kind of quality journalism?

------
barrad0s
As far as TV goes, I made a choice about a year and a half ago to stop viewing
any news on TV and haven't looked back. I like to think I'm informed, I will
read certain things, or pursue things I think necessary or interesting, but I
have abandoned all the nonsense on TV.

------
Eli_P
If I just want to catch up, there're River5[1] and NewsBoat[2], or build-your-
own-aggregator apps. The latter is a console app with a UI like Vim's; I like
its fast filtering with '/'. The downside of apps is there's no grooming in
comments.

[1] [https://github.com/scripting/river5](https://github.com/scripting/river5)
[2]
[https://github.com/newsboat/newsboat](https://github.com/newsboat/newsboat)

------
samdung
Takeaway line from this article (for me): _" The only thing it’s really doing
is altering your mood and perhaps your behavior."_

------
therealdrag0
A neat way of getting a high-level view of current events (news) is the
wikipedia page. The headlines here change much less frequently that most news-
outlets.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events)

It's also more of a log of what's happened instead of political headlines.

------
therealdrag0
This Freakanomics episode is what got me thinking about this: "Why do we
really follow the news" ([http://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-do-we-really-
follow-the-...](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-do-we-really-follow-the-
news-a-new-freakonomics-radio-episode/)).

------
krylon
Part of me feels kind of bad about this when I think about it too much, but I
have substantially improved my well-being by drastically cutting down my news
consumption. It's not about time management per se, but so much of the news
either makes me feel sad or angry.

On the other hand, what news I do consume these days, I do consume more
deliberately.

------
dagaci
If you don't read the news then how are you supposed to make a judgement about
who to vote for or understand current trends or be alerted to issues with
products recalls or where the great bargins are?

I stopped reading newspapers very a long time ago too, haven't watched TV in
several years, and because of this i miss out on most of the above.

------
robohoe
[https://www.allsides.com](https://www.allsides.com) is a good news site to
get news concerning America from more than just one (presumably biased) side.
It is interesting to see how various news sources spin news using catchy
titles pandering to different types of folks.

------
minikites
>The point is, most of what you read online today is pointless. It’s not
important to your life. It’s not going to help you make better decisions. It’s
not going to help you understand the world.

That's an awfully privileged position to take. I'm going to guess the author
isn't likely to have their status as a person invalidated, their religion
declared illegal, or their citizenship revoked any time soon. I'm going to
guess he's of a race that isn't likely to be a target of a government endorsed
hate crime.

\---

I purposefully wrote that paragraph before I looked up the author:

>Shane Parrish has become an unlikely guru for Wall Street. His self-
improvement strategies appeal to his overachieving audience in elite finance,
Silicon Valley and professional sports.

When a member of an elite class gives you advice, consider if the advice is
truly in your best interest, or if it serves to cement their elite status in
society. The elites benefit from keeping "the proles" in the dark.

As a member of the elite, trying to sell to other elites, Shane represents the
ultimate in privilege: the type of person who is going to be just fine no
matter what the government or any company decides to do. Some of us aren't so
lucky.

------
fsiefken
teletext for me provides the most informative news per byte. For the Dutch
'teletekst' I use nostt on the terminal (or with geektool on the mac desktop).

[https://github.com/sjmulder/nostt](https://github.com/sjmulder/nostt)
[https://github.com/zevv/termtekst](https://github.com/zevv/termtekst)
[https://twitter.com/Teletekst](https://twitter.com/Teletekst)
[https://nos.nl/teletekst#101](https://nos.nl/teletekst#101)

Listening to the radio news once a day works as well (5 minutes or so). I
would like to have a podcast feed for that!

------
stunt
It has been a couple of years that I only read news after having my lunch.

My only rule is to not start and finish my day with news. I do it right after
lunch because I'm still distracted.

------
Red29
Totally Agree. I think everyone should go through a 6-12 month period of not
reading newspapers and see how you feel. I did that and I felt much happier,
and more knowledgeable (instead reading science,math, literature).

The problem with newspapers (even high brow newspapers) is that they encourage
negative emotions (anger, fear, envy), are irritatingly political / full of
identity politics or are full of repetitive facts (another uniformed brexit
article etc.) or plain old hot air gossip.

Instead of daily newspapers take a long term view and look at the news once
every quarter or two from a quality publication such as the Economist/
financial times etc.

Newspapers are bunk

------
ajuc
Not reading news is like constantly taking painkillers. Yes you don't feel the
pain but the problems remain.

Reading news more often than once a day is masochism.

------
jstewartmobile
Bloomberg terminal is $24K/yr.

Mainstream news is practically given away. The hidden cost--whatever that may
or may not be--I leave to the philosophers.

~~~
lwf
Doesn't most/all news on Bloomberg Terminal make it to the public sites, with
some delay? The cost of the terminal includes expensive hardware, high quality
support, multi-language API bindings, etc.

c.f. [https://www.quora.com/What-is-so-special-about-the-
Bloomberg...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-so-special-about-the-Bloomberg-
terminal)

------
abbiya
If you want to reduce hn time, visit 8hrs.xyz

------
pasta
Also from 2013:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6894244](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6894244)

And from Aaron Swartz (2006):
[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews)

------
amelius
I can't wait for the day that we have AI that can tell whether the user really
wants to know X.

------
jychang
Ugh, why can't rational people see how this is an instance of "black and white
thinking" cognitive distortions?

Life isn't a binary black and white, as much as software engineers would like
it to be. One side says "don't ever read the news, it causes negative moods"
and the another side says "you should always read the news to keep up to date
with the world".

The proper way to approach the issue is to strike a balance between
consumption of news or not. The aim is moderation of information and
distraction, while still keeping touch with the world.

~~~
darkerside
Agreed. The whole point of news providers should be that they're filtering the
"new" information down to what's actually important. But because of the
engagement economy we've built, the goal is instead to make EVERYTHING sounds
like critical breaking news, even when it's not.

I really hope there is some kind of replacement for the 24 hour news cycle,
because otherwise society will continue to polarize.

------
m0zg
“To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. [....]
The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to
feed the mind with canned chatter.”

― Aleister Crowley

~~~
oth001
Interesting quote coming from him

~~~
throwaway8879
I heard a very interesting talk on Crowley by Robert Anton Wilson once.
Crowley did have some rather far-out ideas. Also, I seem to recall him being
in cahoots with the British Intelligence services at the time.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt8TZ0hYHiE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt8TZ0hYHiE)

------
lazyjones
I try not to read such self-help/life advice articles, which are just as bad
as news. Why are they so popular on HN?

