

Ignore the news - cstross
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/04/psa-ignore-the-news.html

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bpatrianakos
This "No news"/"News is bad for you" fad needs to end. New is not bad for you.
News is good for you. Knowing what's going on your world and _the_ world is
important.

What isn't good for you is getting sucked into the manufactured drama and
drawn out 24 hour news cycle.

The correct attitude would be something more like "be an intelligent consumer
of news" rather than "news is bad, stick your head in the sand and ignore it".
If you understand that news is entertainment then that's just about all you
need to know to be able to pick out the relevent information and go about your
day. The news media may do a lot of terrible things but journalists themselves
still exist and are still ethical. It's just that they're beholden to their
bosses who turn their reporting into something other than a report of the
facts.

News is not bad for you. The inability to think critically about what you see
on the news is bad for you.

~~~
joshkaufman
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to assume that mass media news
consumption can (or should) be an entirely rational process, in which a person
should be able to exert enough willpower to ignore the emotional content of
news stories.

It doesn't work that way.

Our cognitive threat detection systems create very real biological responses
to the information we receive from the news, prompting shifts in cortisol,
adrenaline, and other stress hormones. That automatic threat response has very
real effects on your short and long-term health and mental/emotional well-
being. [1]

The potential for sudden, dramatic, unexpected loss of life or property
(called Loss Aversion) is one of the most attention-pulling things in the
world. Once you start paying attention, it's extremely difficult to stop, even
if you can't do anything with the information.

It's easy to be sucked in by modern news media, and spend way too much time
and energy ruminating on situations you can't influence or control. You're
burning the limited amount of attention, focus, and energy you have each day
on something that ultimately provides zero value.

I'm all for being informed about what's happening in the world at a baseline
level, provided you focus on information you're in a position to act upon - by
avoiding a local threat (weather/earthquake/wildfire/etc), donating to a non-
profit in the event of a disaster/tragedy, educating yourself before an
impending election, etc.

Otherwise, the best way to handle most news media is not to pay attention to
it at all. Treat it as a tabloid: best to be avoided if you want to preserve
your focus for more important matters.

[1] See "The Science of Fear" by Dan Gardner,
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0452295467/>

~~~
bpatrianakos
I'm very much opposed to this idea of completely ignoring the news. Eating too
much meat has negative effects on your health so do we suggest we all go
vegan? No. Just because something has it's downsides doesn't mean the solution
is to avoid it entirely. The suggestion that we should all ignore the news is
such a broad, black and white solution that doesn't really solve the problem.

I don't think it's healthy for anyone to have a full on "let's not ignore
news" or "let's totally ignore news" attitude. A lot of what you're saying is
true and they're valid points but they're not compelling enough of a reason
for anyone to stop consuming news. It's impossible to live a life where you
avoid anything that would negatively affect you. You mention loss aversion.
That could be considered a bad thing. But it can also be quite helpful. After
the bombings in Boston yesterday we had a noticeable increase in security in
Chicago where I am. Because I paid attention to the news I knew something had
happened and was a little more aware of my surroundings on public
transportation than I would normally be. Now, did anything happen? No, but
having that awareness didn't hurt me either.

Ignoring the news means being ignorant of the world around you. I understand
that no one is immune from the emotional impact of what they see on the news
but it doesn't mean they also cannot pull themselves away from it or that it
will necessarily lead to some kind of depression or other negative.

People like us don't need to be told to ignore the news. It's the people who
watch Fox all day long and can't discern opinion from fact and are looking for
someone to validate their world view that need to be told this. The rest of us
I think can take it in, learn a thing or two, and see the rest for what it is.
If a few of us get emotionally invested in a story for an hour or two then so
be it, is there really any serious harm done?

This entire "ignore the news" idea is way too black or white to be realistic.
The vast majority of things in this world, including this idea, are far more
complex than a simple "do or don't do this or that" answer can provide. There
are things you shouldn't do - don't eat Uranium, don't jump off tall
buildings, don't stick your tongue in a light socket... this isn't one of
those thing.

~~~
trhtrsh
What's wrong with going vegan?

------
jkldotio
This is why I am trying to build a non-profit news site with no adverts. I
don't believe there is a real way around the corrupting influence of trying to
maximize clicks when there are ads.

My site is looking to bring in the underused resources of think tanks,
academics, NGOs and partisan blogs to put flesh around the bones of the core
journalistic reporting on politics and economics.

As the old proverb goes "small minds discuss people, average minds discuss
events and great minds discuss ideas". We can select against people
(celebrity) with classifiers, and surround events (broadsheet news) with
deeper discussion of ideas (policy, research, philosophy).

However, if you don't have ads you don't have money. So my project,
<http://igg.me/at/jkl/> , is largely unfunded. You can see a very basic
prototype here as well: <http://jkl.io>

~~~
andyking
> This is why I am trying to build a non-profit news site with no adverts.

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/>

~~~
lvturner
BBC is only entirely 'non-profit' within the confines of the UK.

Flip on a VPN and you hit the BBC World version of the BBC news, complete with
adverts.

Besides which, competition is healthy - so I applaud the creation of another
another non-profit news site.

------
Tosh108
He's making some valid points. But it's far too black and white. And insulting
for a lot of journalists who do care about their work.

~~~
cstross
I speak as someone who spent several years as a freelance magazine columnist
and got quite a close look at how the news is made. What makes you think I'm
insulting journalists?

Moreover, a short sound bite isn't the place for nuanced analyses of how the
media works. But it _is_ maybe the right place to try and help people who're
feeling overloaded right now by the glut of bad news spinning up around the
bombings in Boston. Not to mention the other bomb deaths of April 15th -- Iraq
(55), Afghanistan (37), Somalia (30), Syria (18), and Pakistan (4).

