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Comment by mrweasel | Hacker News Reader

At someone point in the last two years I stopped watching the news, because it was just an endless stream of useless information about COVID. I’m not sure I felt better, but it certainly saves some time.

Point 3 is spot on, most of the commentators have no idea about what going to happen. At best their guesses a marginally better than my own. Once you realise this, watching debates between journalist and political commentators becomes pointless. I simply don’t see the point in some expert trying guess when Russia will attack Ukraine for instance. Tell me when they attack. Just report whats happening, not what might happen, because your going to get it wrong.

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This is mostly what 6pm news was like, before the rise of 24 news channels.

Out of an hour of news, there was sports coverage in one quarter, local news in another with weather, national and then international news.

Each segment had, after commercials, 12 to 13 minutes max.

There wasn't time for all the speculation, and endless drone on about what if, and blah blah.

24 hours news half destroyed news first, then the internet finished it off.

I don't think the news has changed all that much, there still used to be a heavy focus on the same types of negative topics. What has obviously changed is the large amount of commentary that has sprung up around traditional newsreading.

But you can't fill 24 hours of "news cycle" without lots of nonsensical filler! Sometimes, the world just doesn't agree with that requirement, so they have to make material.

The sad truth is, you totally could fill 24h of news. The sun is always up somewhere. Even in a single country there’s no way nothing interesting isn’t happening somewhere somewhat.

But it’s hard, you need way more sources and accept to broadcast without footage, you can’t filter and spin the messages as much, you don’t have a “voice” and become more of a firehose, it’s less entertaining overall, and you can’t have that on tv.

a lot of news is clickbait or junk. Buzzfeed is the pioneer of that.

there's a reason why trust in media is decline

https://www.pewresearch.org/2022/01/05/trust-in-america-do-a...

> Buzzfeed is the pioneer of that.

Ironically, BuzzfeedNews is pretty good.

Unironically, no it's not.

Given their strong track record, that opinion would seem to lack a solid foundation.

It's not an opinion, it's an objective fact. They don't have a strong track record.

Remember when BuzzFeedNews was peddling such fake news garbage that Robert Mueller's team had to call them out on their bullshit [0]? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

[0] https://apnews.com/article/north-america-donald-trump-robert...

Buzzfeed is hardly the pioneer. Cable TV news has been doing it since the 1980s with constant "shocker!" bait segments and constant bullshitting between talking heads who make any banal thing they feel like sound like a impending disaster.

And as was mentioned, it's no small irony that Buzzfeed's investigative journalism, while a limited part of their impact, is pretty good.

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