
News is bad for you (2013) - tomaskazemekas
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli
======
vonnik
Former reporter here: One of the things many people don't understand is that
news organizations exist for themselves as much as they do for their readers.
They are drama queens crying out for attention. Now imagine putting 10 drama
queens in a room together with 100 innocent bystanders. That is the media
industry. They will tire you out. Media organizations have several proven
strategies to push our buttons: voyeurism, outrage, greed, fear, prurience and
envious aspiration are at the top.

This is compounded by the fact that the world is full of people acting crazy
and doing awful things to each other. News organizations are actually pretty
careful to not bombard us with constant photos of dead children, even though
Syria alone could fill the pages of the NYT everyday with images of their
mangled bodies. (I have sat on the photo desk, and seen the photos stream by
on the AP feed -- they rarely make the paper. )

So news organizations are aware of the fatigue that certain sensations cause,
and they seek to mitigate them. They need their readers to feel just enough
emotion, but not too much. A perpetual state of excitement and irritation.
This is one reason why climate change doesn't get the coverage it deserves.
It's just too depressing, and people stop reading.

~~~
options040
"One of the things people don't understand is that news organization exist as
much for themselves as much as they do for their readers."

What makes you think people do not understand?

Can you relate to us an experience that made you think that?

"One of the things..."

What are the other things that people do not understand?

~~~
roseburg
The answer is probably close to why people view banks as some sort of public
service organization rather than a business. I used to work at a bank, and it
was amazing to hear comments from people.

~~~
options040
Can you share some of the comments?

------
grecy
I travel to places many people think of as traditionally dangerous - I drove
Alaska->Argentina[1] and I'm setting out to drive around Africa for 2 years.

People often feel the need to contact me and tell me about the latest bombing
or kidnapping in a country on my route. I always ask how many people got
married in that country yesterday, or how many people had the happiest day of
their life with a child born, or other celebration.

Of course, nobody has any idea, because the media doesn't tell us things like
that.

[1] My blog is [http://theroadchoseme.com](http://theroadchoseme.com)

~~~
tallerholler
very nice! I like your perspective.. so true also.. if you live your life in
fear of what could happen, you'll miss out on some great experiences.. nice

------
Yhippa
Instead of using going to Facebook first when I'm bored these days I'll check
out the top stories from r/all on reddit, check out Google News, or Hacker
News top stories. I used to take a lot of pride in being current with world
news or my industry news. This all started about 5-6 years ago when news
aggregators started getting better. The first one for me was
[http://newsmap.jp/](http://newsmap.jp/).

In reality I think it made me feel worse and sadly I'm just within the past
few months realizing this. I feel like there's so much content masquerading as
"news" and it's hard for me to tell what is legitimately good content until
I'm a little bit through it. I am leaning to really cutting back but I need to
rely on a few news sources from now on.

~~~
vlehto
I tried to found a subreddit with the idea that if some article is still
interesting 6 moths after it's written, then it's actually interesting stuff.
Most things in the world don't happen in a day. And even those that happen,
are often understood only with time.

But I can't keep a reddit account. The amount of misinformation in reddit and
my tendency to correct people just gets too consuming.

~~~
dingaling
A 'Slow News' service sounds intriguing. Especially if it was covertly
collecting 'data' points for each story on a day-to-day basis and presented
these on a timeline when the story was surfaced. A kind of ultra-modern-
history.

The airliner crash in Sinai is a current example; there's really no pointin
speculating or acting until the investigation team presents their findings,
but every day people and states are taking actions that don't make sense from
the immediate perspective. Looking back six months from now with a timeline
view we might be able to understand.

~~~
HSO
It already exists. It's called "books". ;)

~~~
vlehto
True. That's why I read books.

But books are written by dictator. I'd want something that's ranked like HN or
reddit, without the newness bias. With wide range of topics and varying depth
and length of article.

This only works if the community is cool. But I' have a hunch it would attract
mostly cool people.

------
brightsize
I am reminded of H.D. Thoreau's essay "Life Without Principle"[1] where he has
plenty to say about the ill effects, to the mind and soul, of filling one's
head with ordinary news and other trivia.

 _I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of
attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with
triviality. Our very intellect shall be macadamized, as it were- its
foundation broken into fragments for the wheels of travel to roll over; and if
you would know what will make the most durable pavement, surpassing rolled
stones, spruce blocks, and asphaltum, you have only to look into some of our
minds which have been subjected to this treatment so long._

The entire essay is a wonderful read about, among other things, life and
living it well.

[1]
[http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER2/thoreau/life.html](http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER2/thoreau/life.html)

edit:formatting

------
1_player
The last few years I was in Italy I stopped reading the news: the bullshit
around Berlusconi and his entourage, the sad state of the politics there, the
obsession with kidnapping or raping or murder or disasters. I was happy being
ignorant, I stopped caring about things one should but can't really do
anything about it. I felt a little out of the loop when somebody asked me "hey
did you hear about the disaster in XXX?" and I had to play catch up.

Unfortunately now my morning routine consists in reading HN and The Guardian,
I spend a lot of time reading about stuff that just feels like wasted time. In
one hour of news reading there's probably a minute or two of stuff that
interests me. I really want to stop that.

Aside: sometimes I catch up on news from Italian newspapers and it's
incredible how depressing the tone of the articles are compared to e.g. The
Guardian. The topic may be the same, but the British site has a much rosier
approach to events. I'm positive that the modern news has the same effect of
living with a slightly depressed housemate: he seems OK at first glance but
slowly brings you down with his unhappiness and gray view of the world.

~~~
Symbiote
An aside prompted by your aside:

A girl from China joined my class in England, when we were 16¹. She mentioned
that she didn't like British newspapers, since they were always so negative
(we had to read and analyse them in class sometimes). Chinese news was much
more positive.

It took a while for her to realise why this might be the case. I think it
helped that the physics teacher regularly said things like "That bloody Tony
Blair…".

¹ It was a private school, so her parents were paying the full cost.

------
danielam
“If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the
newspaper, you're mis-informed.” --Mark Twain

------
lkozma
Before reading the article, one should see this (quite convincing) claim that
the author has plagiarized many of the ideas in it:
[http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/dobelli.htm](http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/dobelli.htm)

~~~
dredmorbius
NB, "this claim" is from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of _Black Swans_.
Pretty credible, generally.

(Authorship matters. Particularly in discussions of authorship mattering.)

------
eloy
Relevant blog from Aaron Swartz (2010):
[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/morebooks](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/morebooks)

------
hkmurakami
Aaron Swartz - I Hate the News (2006)
[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews)

------
ericzawo
Worked in news media for 9 months and can unequivocally say it made me
pessimistic and completely depressed. Staring at 6 newschannels for 8 hours a
day can be tough.

~~~
sparkzilla
It gets better in the tenth month

------
yason
I don't read news but I trust I'll hear about it if something truly remarkable
does happen. You might call that social filtering.

The reason I stopped reading news is that it's mostly noise: nothing in my
life changed whether I knew this or that or not. After reading the paper, I
had absolutely no idea of what I had just read. I can read a book at once and
digest 90% of it on the first time: the news never stuck. I first dropped
reading foreign affairs, then country-wide news, and finally local news, too.

It's not that I'm not interested at all but I prefer a) choose what is worth
being interested in and 2) to digest the information in the form of an in-
depth analysis later in time when I accidentally bump into (or search for) an
article that summarizes something that has been flooding the news for years.
Often even the summary doesn't really affect my life in any practical terms,
so I skim it quickly to the extent of any academic curiosity I might have for
the subject.

------
acd
Reading news is addictive so you keep coming back for more. Reading Hacker
News and using Facebook is also addictive. It's like mental sugar for you
brain you keep coming back for more. I keep saying reading HN its to gather
industry news but how much of it is relevant?

------
snake117
A follow-up article by Madeleine Bunting that I posted:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10526108](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10526108)

------
guelo
It's our duty as citizens of democracies to stay informed. If we don't stay
informed then it is only the special interests that stand to make money that
influence policies. Also it is important to stay on top of your industry
trends to make sure you don't miss some opportunity. I agree that most crime
and tragedy stories are useless information.

~~~
radioheads
I disagree. I tend to think that brain has limit to the amount of information
that can be perceived thoroughly. After going past this limit you are
basically overloading your brain with information, which leads to decreased
performance and such.

I'm not sure if there are any studies in this area (although I won't be
surprised if there are) so I can only tell that from my personal experience
(so this might be very subjective obviously).

------
tinalumfoil
This article is unsubstantiated claim after unsubstantiated claim leading to
an overconfident fear that encapsulates everything I hate about modern news
including things inside the article. I'd hope the author was self aware enough
to see the irony in writing this article but I feel to stick after reading
half of it to find out.

------
dayaz36
Aaron Swartz's take on the news:
[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001226](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001226)

------
userbinator
I suppose the article could be succinctly summed up as "ignorance is bliss."
Also, it's somewhat ironic that this is in The Guardian.

------
nmiller
on the time issue: [https://medium.com/@thusmedia/netflix-for-
news-84b462a2dd50](https://medium.com/@thusmedia/netflix-for-
news-84b462a2dd50)

------
nmiller
on the topic of news organizations... new news startup:
[http://betalist.com/startups/thus](http://betalist.com/startups/thus)

------
berlinbrown
Science is bad for you.

