Why We Should Watch Less News
medium.com
medium.com
He suggests going on a news diet by mindfully curating the news content one plans on consuming, and thinking about its relevance to everyday life.
Personally, I can attest to experiencing increased clarity of thought, creativity and productivity once I blocked all of the junky news sites and the ilk out. This combined with practicing mindfulness has had a massive impact on my state of well-being and lowering of stress. My overall happiness has increased as a result.
How Media Fuels our Fear of Western Terrorism https://www.nemil.com/s/part2-terrorism.html
The deaths that are most covered are a tiny fraction (<1%) of the way we die https://www.nemil.com/s/part3-horror-films.html
There's also a fair bit of psychology research on how news coverage of vivid deaths increases PTSD, you can see one link in my first piece above.
This coverage makes sense when you are focusing on newsworthiness and engagement — but is very flawed for good decision making.
You'll see their bias in their curation. You'll read a piece from it and, because of your experience, will have many questions pop up in your head, which will tell you that the piece is missing crucial information. Etc.
Where do I find this? Googling doesn't lead me to what I expect when I hear "weekly brief", so I suspect I'm looking at the wrong thing, which is http://economist.com/briefings.
Just be aware that it's updated only once per week, and you may thus miss out on any fast moving stories.
[0] https://www.economist.com/content/business-this-week [1] https://www.economist.com/content/politics-this-week
I've actually wanted to do this for multiple things too. Ie, I want to spend ~15m a day getting a curated list on various topics that interest me. From tech, programming, etc. I don't want to feel I'm "missing" anything.
My desire stems from not wanting to miss tech related events, and building habits of being on Reddit and HN. If I had a reliable aggregator I hope to reduce my FOMA style addiction. I imagine this would be useful for world news as well.
Frankly, you are merely feeding that addiction. Treat the fear, don't placate it. This becomes easier as the years go by. After you spend a lot of time tracking something (news, Reddit, whatever), do the following exercise:
1. Write down how much it benefited you. You (hopefully) will be able to list a few ways it really helped you. That is what is keeping you addicted. Now try to come up with a marginal value over time. Yes, you benefited a lot, but what did you gain out of it per hour?
2. Look at those around you who are not addicted. How are they disadvantaged by not receiving the gains you outlined in step 1? Are they living a less content or full life? Now re-evaluate all those benefits you listed. What did they do for you (and for your mental well being)?
3. What have you been missing out on because of your addiction? Once your life gets busy (job, parenthood, whatever), then everything has an opportunity cost. What valuable activities could you be partaking in if you didn't feed the addiction?
As a former news junkie, my (perhaps unpopular) perspective: Spending only 15 minutes a day on the news will leave you quite misinformed. There isn't a path of moderation here. It takes a lot of effort to understand and follow current events. You need to read multiple sources, as well as multiple perspectives (for a very simplistic example: 3-5 sources from a liberal perspective, and 3-5 sources from a conservative perspective - for each issue, and assuming there are only 2 sides).
This is very time consuming. Spending 15 minutes a day just populates your mental models with poor information. The alternative is to stop and spend time on other activities. That way you know clearly what you don't know, and at least still have an open mind.
It's very easy, particularly as dormitory commuters, to know more about what's happening elsewhere in the World than on our own doorsteps.
I feel a lot happier that I don't know much what's happening in London, 400km away, but I'm making a difference 400m away.
I have to do this. Have to go on a news diet.
It seems like every time I read political news, I must get out of my keto diet, and consume some sugar. Then my energy goes down, and I cannot concentrate as well, and then my productivity and focus disappear. And my weight, starts climbing back up...
Unfortunately, I guess, the posts on this forum are often quite political, and that makes it difficult to stay indifferent/to contain desire to argue back.
I am finding, topics on lobste.rs are more technical, and without the catchy headlines. So it makes it much more consumable, and in line with my routines.
I would also wish that the headlines stop being that 'screaming/misleading' as they are now.
Exactly. There are four billion people on the planet. We are all connected instantaneously. If there isn't something happening every minute that's completely disgusting and outrageous, the species isn't diverse enough. The question is why we want it delivered into our day-to-day emotional lives -- and who is benefiting from having that kind of transfer happen.
No matter how bad something is, we can accept that it's bad, decide on measures to take (sometimes drastic measures) and continue on with our lives. Humans have lived their entire evolutionary existence like this. War over in Europe? Bombing of Pearl Harbor? I guess we may have to send millions off to war. A lot of people we know are going to die.
It's only when we get the direct, back-and-forth, highly-charged emotional interaction that we become more-and-more angry, make irrational choices. We try to up one another with displays of our outrage and pain. Become unhappy and emotionally unstable. Then, guess what? We can share that emotional state with millions of others through the net!
My advice to people who are beginning to wake up to this, but still want to know what the current political discussions are? Read well-constructed opinion columns. Good ones are required to have thesis and supporting arguments. So you get bias, facts, and a look at somebody's reasoning. I scan opinion columns from all sides of the political debates. I find I lose about 24 hours on learning what current events are. And I'm okay with that trade-off. A serial killer 1500 miles away doesn't require me to gear up and go out with a SWAT team. It can wait. 99% of this can wait.
There is actually almost 8 billion, now.
Maybe he meant 4 billion electronically connected people on the planet.
(X may be something like "local pickle farmers protest new holiday". The topic doesn't matter, oddly enough, it's audience size that counts)
If you scan the first column, it's very weak. There not much of an argument or factual substrate. Then scan the second. Completely different opinion. Same crappy argument quality. Sometimes you can go nine or ten columns like this.
I'm left with opinion on those days that not much of anything has happened regarding X. But folks still need views!
Consuming news in this fashion is a great way to disconnect emotional manipulation from actual news. When they're directly trying to manipulate you, you begin to learn the rules of the game.
In a strange way it validates how well off we are, particularly in the U.S., that outrage needs to be manufactured in this way. Of course the impacts are extremely negative and no journalist ever gets views or prizes for "hey it is important but society won't collapse and we are pretty well off..."
In the end it is a number of factors and cycles between the public and the media:
1) News is now a entertainment with eyes to attract.
2) The public loves death, destruction and crisis. "We like to watch things die from a safe distance; better you than us."
3) Journalists don't get any personal or professional benefit from covering important but "mundane" things. Look at who wins the Pulitzer.
4) On an individual level, people will still find things that are problematic regardless of how well off they are (see "First-World" problems).
5) Knowing of 4) there is a typical over-reaction to actual things of importance; but the reaction is hysterical.
"A kid was kidnapped today, that could happen to mine!"
6) Now that every individual, isolated event can be distributed to millions; every single crisis abstracted to be systematic and endemic (based on 4) and 5) above); it is not that bad things happen, it is that there needs to be a solution and we need to solve for it.
"We've got to do something about this kidnapping crisis, I see it on the news all the time!"
7) Realizing 6) the media can now take political positions and feed into this need to produce more stories that satiate that.
A year later...parents are charged with neglect after letting their kids walk home from school alone. Turns out it was a relative who kidnapped the kid. Also turns out there were only 10 of these this year in your community and the chances of this are much smaller than they were years ago, but all of them hit the news, so...
The internet has made everybody a brand. Reporters are learning to be brands instead of data sources.
Probably a minor quibble, as I do agree with the thesis to some degree, but the quote from Marcus Aurelius is utterly false. There is no such quote in Meditations at all[0], though Aurelius is a huge proponent of moving away from external distractions to concentrate on building yourself up.
Indeed, he would probably agree with the article ("make time for yourself to learn something worthwhile; stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions" (Book 2:7)), but would rail against putting in a false statement ("The human soul degrades itself... when it puts on a mask and does or says something artificial or false." (Book 2:16)
I will say that I also know people who watch the news too much, multiple times per day. These people live their lives based around what the news told them. Their interests, their fears, it all comes from the news. They don't think for themselves, they think what the news tells them they should think. I've seen their gradual change in thinking. They used to be a bit more out going, but now some of them are petrified to even leave their neighborhood because they think death is around every corner. The news has them so scared that violence is a foot away at any time. I have a few family members who take it to the extreme. The news has them convinced that almost everyone in the world is out to get them. The only people they aren't scared of are people they already know. If you're a stranger and try to talk to them, they automatically assume you are out to scam, harm, or otherwise 'get' them. All because the news focuses so heavily on violence and negativity anymore.
What have you read this year that you think others should read as well? Here's a few of mine that really stand out.
Factfulness, by Hans Rosling
The Ethics of Ambiguity, by Simone de Beauvoir
Designing Delivery, by Jeff Sussna (re-read)
The Cooking Gene, by Michael Twitty
Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor
The Philosophy of Spinoza
The Silk Roads, by Peter Frankopan
EDIT: Thanks for the list. I think I'm going to check out The Silk Roads - seems like my type of book/topic.
I recently deleted social media apps from my phone, and replaced most of my social media diet with reading books again, like I did in the good olde days before the internet.
I feel... healthier. Smarter, for sure. After reading a ton of philosophy and history recently, the day-to-day political debate on the internet looks like nonsense most of the time now. And when I see someone is wrong on the internet, I can just let them be wrong on the internet. Because it doesn't matter, it won't last.
Reading the classics, books of deep thought and proven quality, is wonderful.
Friends sharing news/propaganda from various outlets. Fake users astroturfing on reddit/twitter/HN/facebook/insta.
I dont know what the future is, but I'm positive its going to be first-hand sources. At least that way, you are going to be skeptical the entire time and that persons reputation is at stake.
But in general, the problem with first hand sources is credibility. How do you know you can trust a first hand source you've never heard of? Are they giving us a complete or fair picture? Or are they either unintentionally or intentionally misleading us with incomplete/incorrect information?
I'd like to say the future is in credibility and integrity, but I fear that's actually the past. Now, people just believe what they want to believe, and pick and choose their facts to fit their internal narrative. It's nihilistic and terrifying, and I have no idea how society can resist it.
that's existed for 150 years at least
i.e. https://yorkblog.com/yorkspast/read-the-actual-article-next-...
Why do you think it won't last?
But a thousand years from now, people will still be reading Spinoza, because his philosophy will never become irrelevant.
When we're home, we like to think there is this whole wide world "out there". Behind the walls that surround us, is this world full of events and good things and bad things.
Yet in actuality, it is all mind. And much of this mind (ie. memory) is not of having actually visited those places or experienced those events -- it's information that we were just fed (images, videos, myths and beliefs).
It got me thinking about this saying "your body is what you put in it". Likewise then, "your world (and thus all your hopes and dreams) is what you put in it".
I mean, I used to think this was some kind of New Age / pop psychology, like "positive thinking".
But it isn't. By acknowledging the actual nature of this world right now, which is mostly in my mind right here as I type this message... then the validity of this becomes more evident. Everything I think, everything I do, comes from this internal map of self and of the world...
Rather than get distracted by news trivia, learn something from these books that have stood the test of time.
Hope many will concur.
I stopped reading "news" at around 2011, from being a news junkie before. Including news about tech, music, movies, books, etc.
Now I have the general mentality that either:
- If something is really important enough for me to care, it will reach me eventually in some way or the other.
- There is absolutely no reason to immediately start reading up after events like terror attacks, air plane crashes etc. For the first days it is pretty much pure speculation and hearsay. If I'm interested what happened, I will take a mental note to read up about it two weeks later when actual information starts becoming available.
So basically I don't keep myself updated on general news anymore. I investigate specific topics.
Ironically I changed my habits, while working at a big news site, which was part of the reason for doing so.
Or NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday: https://www.npr.org/programs/weekend-edition-sunday/ Available in most radio markets or online.
I started subscribing to "slower" news media like Time Magazine, which gives me the important highlights but only after they've had some time to develop. The content quality is much higher.
I find news worth it as read and more in depth to the point it is more history say covering the hysteria over the VCR or past moral panics. Which I suppose sort of agrees with the article's point - seeking insights instead of ephemera.
The ephemera is relevant however if one is involved with activism in some way even if it is just to donate twenty dollars to the defense of someone subject to some injustice.
More to the point, you're not the customer. You're the product. Advertisers are the customer. So the news isn't really meant to inform, but rather to encourage sticking around to see what happens next. Appeal to baser emotions works well for that.
Think of it that way, and people asking for cute kitten pics online because they're having a bad day is functionally the same thing as crazy talk radio.
I don't think it's healthy to avoid news, but be selective about how you get it and don't rely on a single source.
For many of us, we use media to make important decisions — and a lot of the coverage isn't well suited for that purpose.
In this social media era especially, so much of the news you see covered is a function of what will get engagement. It even applies to things like which wars will be covered in the US (one NY Times reporter makes this point in coverage of Yemen vs Syria).
Here's a media literacy guide I wrote:
https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-media
(BTW, media literacy is esp critical for engineers, given how much thinly disguised marketing well funded tech companies put in front of engineers, esp in cryptocurrencies. See this media literacy guide for software engs: https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-media/blob/master/softwar... )
Would the results be different if the same news was delivered in text form as opposed to visual?
In light of all the problems, why do we compel ourselves to continue watching more?
RCP has headlines from both sides of the aisle, equally bombastic. I can see at a glance how each side is spinning some issue and I can read neither or both if I want.
It seems a good way to get some semblance of balance in the news.
I turned to podcasts more and now listen to podcasts on policy, politics, technology and economics and I feel much more informed than the average citizen and intellectually stimulated. I think we should work on increasing the quantity of quality news as opposed to telling people to stay away from it.
Full disclosure, here's my current media "diet"
- Hacker news of course.
- NYT subscription
- NYT The Daily podcast (news of the day)
- NPR Politics Podcast
- Marketplace Podcast (economics)
- Vox's Ezra Klein Show (wide range of policy experts interviewed)
- Vox's The Weeds (conversations on political / economic policy)
- Vox's Worldly (foreign affairs)
- Marginal Revolution (economics)
Admittedly it's a left leaning viewpoint and I'd like to find more conservative outlets but haven't been able to find interesting ones. I listened to Sam Harris for a while but over the past year he's shown a deep flaw w.r.t his views on race and unwillingness to be challenged.
Fear losing your time and sanity more than fear of missing out.
The sad thing was that she felt like she was making a difference and was actively engaged in the political process, much the same way that a rabid football fan feels like they are actually affecting the outcome of the games through their fandom.
The amount of vitriol spewed toward Clinton in our house was nothing short of obsessive and in hindsight, pretty unhealthy. Looking back, one would easily wonder, "why? What was the big deal?" To this day any mention of the man will provoke a look of disgust and some derogatory remark from my mother.
Realistically Clinton's presidency actually had very little effect on my family's life, and if we were completely ignorant of who was president at the time nothing would be different other than the constant level of angst.
I live in a blue state now so I witness other people do the same thing my mother did but focused on Bush (the next Hitler!!!!) and then Trump (Uhhh...what do we call him now that "next Hitler" is already taken? I guess we'll just call him that but louder and angrier). I'd imagine that Obama got the same treatment in various other parts of the country. I also see this kind of reaction seems to replace rational thought and productive action that actually would make any sort of difference in the world with well, just hate.
Makes me dread what the next president will be like.
bush launched a war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. sometimes, strong negative reactions are justified.
This is an awfully privileged point of view and you may want to examine your own privileges to think about why that might be.
Example:
I'm willing to bet the author and many people reading this don't have to worry about their voter registration information getting purged/invalidated or their polling place closing because that happens more often to lower income people who live in impoverished areas. If you have no awareness of current events, you could be unable to vote and it's likely that you would find out too late to correct it. Consuming the news will give you a chance to correct or protest these issues before registration deadlines pass.
Yes, aware of problems with vote access. But those problems are fundamentally legislative, and won't be solved by treating the symptoms. Go to a state with sensible voting laws (my beloved Minnesota), and the system is immune, thanks to same day registration and provisional ballots. Even a concerted purge effort would crash against the well-designed system. These short-term election issues are a product of fundamentally bad design. Focus on fixing the design, not "protest".
Moreover - and speaking of privileged perspective - there is nothing that says you can't pay attention to the news and read novels, memoirs, self-help books, and of course the classics. There is no plausible political situation where you can't squeeze an hour a day off your Twitter feed in order to spend it reading, say, American Nations, or The Cooking Gene, and learn some of the historical roots behind the news that's ruining your blood pressure today.
There's a real distinction between urgent and important. I can recommend multiple good books on exactly that.
Voting for new legislators isn't the way for citizens to address legislative issues?
But that ignores my other point... that nothing about this is actually a matter of privilege. Reading books for education and/or pleasure does not interfere with keeping up with current events. And to the original article's point, the constant news feed drives anger, outrage, poor decisions, and a skewed and usually incorrect view of the facts.
May I suggest a good book on this topic? Read Factfulness, by Hans Rosling. His takedown of all the ways our brains lie to us, and how the media feeds those inherent flaws in our thinking, blew my mind and significantly focused how I look at the world. As he points out, even the smartest and best educated people in the world - business and political leaders, graduate students, etc - actually perform worse than random chance on simple factual questions about our world. It's amazing. Read it!