
Avoid News: Towards a Healthy News Diet [pdf] - monort
https://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/2010-dobelli.pdf
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nabla9
> As a result of news, we walk around with the completely wrong risk map in
> our heads.

> * Terrorism is overrated. Chronic stress is underrated

> * Airplane crashes are overrated. Resistance to antibiotics is underrated

News consumption creates channel for political actors to work through
emotions.

If big passenger aircraft goes missing, news channels start 24/7 catastrophe
porn marathon. It competes with TV-series. It's macabre but it's mostly
harmless. If people consume the suffering of others for dramatic entertainment
to fill their empty life it does not harm other people.

Except when it's terrorism. Terrorism as tactics has symbiotic relationship
with the news. Terrorism works trough media and is amplifies it. Terrorist
attacks are political messaging and influencing. Not so different from those
Facebook ads. Making terrorism into 24/7 dramatic entertainment makes it more
effective.

Jihadists and far-right gets free exposure and relevance from creating 'media
events'. Just stabbing few people with a knife, or attacking mosque buys
airtime that is worth of millions. Just reporting the facts, giving basic
information and dry analysis without entertaining dramatization would reduce
the effectiveness of terrorism, and reduce terrorism as a result. People would
be calmer.

