Don’t watch TV coverage of Covid-19
stallman.org
stallman.org
TV is a terrible, inflammatory medium.
Similar with the web. I am offline by default and have separate machines to go online for specific tasks and predefined periods of time.
Electronic media in general may be inflammatory.
IMO the best source for news is when you pay for it and read it yourself. also multiple sources.
What I find particularly beneficial is that, even if one refreshes it too often, the content doesn’t change unless there is something actually new. Contrast that to TV news, where they regurgitate the same thing repeatedly, or to a social media website, where you’ll see new articles again and again about the same topic, but from different advertisers.
This also applies to the climate crisis where watching 'too much' repeated TV coverage or awareness around its just as bad, but it's better to have some awareness of it for those who haven't heard or don't know what to do about this outbreak.
> Keep calm and carry on!
Exactly! That's the spirit we should have. Keep calm and wash your hands :)
That is what he is saying more or less: "In any a good, general textual news site, you can read the things you really want to know about Covid-19 in 10 or 20 minutes a day. "
They hype you up, yell, state everything in a super serious energised manner that I wouldn't consider appropriate unless I was trying to convince someone to either join me in a riot or a suicide. And that's just when I hear it on when I visit my mother and the biggest news story is some dodgy trady scandal. I imagine everyone involved in the entire predatory fear mongering tv news industry is currently salivating non-stop at the thought of the distress they can cause with a genuine pandemic.
No you shouldn't watch TV coverage of the COVID-19 outbreak at all.
I haven't once seen them show a chart with ratios on death rate per age bracket per country. This is commonly found online for this outbreak with many analyses about how populations and social interactions are different in different countries.
People need facts to calm down. TV news makes money on people not being calm and wanting to watch it endlessly. They craft their programs to pull you in as if there is always some "breaking news" or new development that you need to "stay tuned in".
My friend from Italy sent me an SMS at midnight saying "have you heard from the UK???" (where I live). No, was my answer and I had a quick look on The Guardian.
"Boris Johnson announces 80% of Brits will contract the disease, half a million (500,000) will die in UK only."
That sounds absolutely scary, I read the article and that's the worst case scenario resulting from yesterday's COBRA meeting.
So, I'm furious at:
- My friend for creating an unnecessary panic, I thought there was another terror attack.
- The Guardian for taking the worst scenario information and passing it as if it were the current stage of the pandemic as of 12 March.
- Boris Johnson for announcing such numbers. There's no cure YET, but wait a bloody minute before talking about half a million deaths.
I'm done with the COVID-19 news. I'll catch up with the research, but I'm going to avoid any discussion from friends, TV, news, Reddit and even HN. I guess I still am furious.
So yeah, I am furious because I stopped being rational, thanks to the media to bombarding us and milking an important event even though they have the honest goal of keeping the populace informed.
As you slowly become indifferent to which celebrity farted on which day, it becomes easier to care less about the news in general.
I know that no news channel could be reasonably incentivized to criticize their own sensationalism, but I wonder how the narrative would change if the reports were often proceeded or followed by a government sponsored and mandated warning against overconsumption of "news".
The vast majority of US news sources are engaged in using fear and twisting facts to damage Trump. It has reached a ridiculous scale. The other day a CNN reporter asked guest doctors the same question over and over again to try and get one of them to say one of Trump’s decisions was wrong. When each doctor said, in no uncertain terms, that he made the right decision, this host asked the same question to the next medical guest hoping for an answer that aligned with her objectives.
I watch and read all sources in order to achieve a degree of balance. What’s going on right now with those politically opposed to Trump is nothing less than revolting and counterproductive.