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Comment by 0des | Hacker News Reader

> Opinion pieces are strewn throughout regular news links

Sometimes I wonder if some folks want news, or just something to confirm their biases.

Sometimes I wonder if folks want nutritious food, or just potato chips.

It's the same sort of thing, I think. There's what we say we want, and there's how we behave, but (what is often lost on advertisers) how we behave is not always an indication of what we actually want. I'll eat potato chips, but I really do want nutritious food.

99+% of news is useless or redundant to most people so it’s only really consumed as entertainment either way.

Imagine if they keep reusing headlines “Trump made a tweet that offended someone news at 11” could have been run hundreds of time slanted to the left or right but was it ever actually important for either side?

There is plenty of news that is relevant and important. It's just that people simply don't care. How many people here know the name of their state representatives or city councillors, let alone what they vote for? I certainly don't.

If people don't care, then by definition it's not relevant...to them. This lack of interest may not be in their best interest, but that's on them.

I'm not anti-news but at the same time acknowledge that you can ignore 99% of news without it directly affecting your life. Even if you'd go on this news diet, anything of real importance will find its way to you anyway.

> I certainly don't.

Are you a physicist? Because surely you're joking.

Dear downvoter: Your book collection sucks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surely_You%27re_Joking,_Mr._Fe...!

It used to not be this way...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

Fairness doctrine made sense at the time because broadcast spectrum was a very scarce resource. When cable and Internet are available to disseminate a broad range of viewpoints, it's no longer necessary for the FCC to be involved in regulating speech.

> When cable and Internet are available to disseminate a broad range of viewpoints, it's no longer necessary for the FCC to be involved in regulating speech.

This opinion is more modern than the legacy "ill listen to any news even if it offends me"

FCC Fairness in boardcasting was not regulating speech by the way, it is closer to defining guidelines for the meaning of libel in the context of authoritative news broadcast on airwaves that at the time were federally regulated.

Human attention is still a scarce resource.

That brings in the assumption that there will be a perfectly heterogeneous and broad range of viewpoints and not perhaps just a handful of viewpoints that serve to enrich a few people. Looking at the world today we really don't have that broad of viewpoints despite all of our connectivity. Comment sections play out identically when a given topic comes up on different forums. You can predict what the positions will be without even opening the thread, and if you offer an opinion that runs counter expect to be snuffed out by the majority opinions that have real marketing dollars fueling them.

> we really don't have that broad of viewpoints despite all of our connectivity

If anything, it is now easier to chop down any tall poppies or non conformists.

To be honest, the fairness doctrine mostly meant that:

1. Every issue had exactly two sides (same as current dogma).

2. Every "bad" take from the "wrong" side would be aired to nobody, in the middle of the night.

It was a political weapon just as much as removing it was a political weapon.

Way back then there tended to be the same news, more or less, on every channel. Sure, you might prefer or avoid Walter Cronkite's "unhinged" op-eds on Vietnam, but that was about as different as it got.

Here's a liberal view of Cronkite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCdXVWsTpSM

Then there's also what's readily and apparently available to us... We know we don't want potato chips all the time, but we only have one store, and it offers two brands of potato chips, and no other food.

So not only can we choose to eat potato chips while saying we want better, but we can be forced to either eat it or starve.

This is a great analogy. I'd like to unnecessarily add that the store then tells us that potato chips are from potatoes, which is a vegetable and therefore healthy. It's important to stay informed! (with our product). Democracy dies in darkness! (buy our product to prevent democracy from dying?!).

I think this is the difference between two kinds of "wanting", the id kind and the superego kind. We want the chips because they taste good. We want the nutritious food because we understand on a conceptual level that it is healthy. What we choose to eat in the end depends on how we balance these desires in the moment.

Insert analogies for the news as appropriate.

A lot of advertising and AI would just soon as believe that behavior is all that matters, and that akrasia doesn't exist.

It's funny, I would phrase it as I really want potato chips, but I'll eat nutritious food.

I swing violently between the two, and it has little bearing on what I actually eat.

True and what we want is in part conditioned by what is produced.

Actually, I think the real reason there are so many opinion pieces is because they're much cheaper. They don't require resources for discovering the story. Personally I skip right past opinion pieces that are labeled as such, but I find so much of CNN's stories are so slanted they all read as opinion pieces.

I don't watch CNN much, but the format typically is, "story story story," (this is ok), then it's followed by, "here's so and so for more information." (this is a cut to opinion right after the story). I stop there.

Most political positions are really about group membership and we want to read things that re-affirm that we belong to those groups. The easiest way to do this is to attack some "other".

It's really just exploiting our biological tribal mentality. It'll never go away.

The most uncomfortable of ignored truths

This is a platitude that gets parroted way too often. It's like saying the highest function of humanity is eating and shitting

The point of a political position is catalyzing political change, developing consensus, and holding interest groups accountable. Reducing news or politics in general to sensationalism just encourages disengagement

>> Opinion pieces are strewn throughout regular news links

> Sometimes I wonder if some folks want news, or just something to confirm their biases.

Many people just want their biases confirmed, which is pretty clear if you ever take a look at newspaper comment sections.

To complicate things further, CNN customers are not necessarily a cross section of "folks". So what works for CNN may not work for Fox may not work for the Wall Street Journal may not work for your local news.

Well if it confirmed someone else's biases it wouldn't be news, would it? It would be "propaganda."

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