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Comment by pipeline_peak | Hacker News Reader

What’s the difference between news media that adds/doesn’t add benefit?

I think he was being kind. While not everyone would agree with this, my lived experience is that the "news" or news media is rarely useful, often stressful and significantly more bad than good in terms of its impact on my mental well-being and focus.

Having said this, there are two areas that keep people attached to the news: a concern about become uninformed or being (or being perceived as) apathetic to the problems people face in the world.

Afraid of being uninformed? Read books on current topics.

Afraid of becoming apathetic? Donate to the non-profits that are positioned to do the most good in the areas of your concern.

Boom -- now you are informed and helpful while also undistracted and undisturbed by unhelpful, advertiser-driven news media.

What if it is government sponsored media and there are rules that it must be independent from politicians?

I think you are speaking about accuracy. My point is that I don't benefit from a continuous stream of information about current events interspersed with advertisements -- it just doesn't serve me whether it is accurate or not.

I find it relieving to be living in a world where things are not static. So I read as much news as I can, every day. I also recognize that I have very little impact on whatever is being reported on, and that it has very little impact on me.

I think a lot of people have to let go of the idea that they will somehow save the world. Embrace your insignificance. It's just as much a blessing as a curse.

No news adds benefits. It was designed and refined to trigger your outrage and voyeurism. Unless it's hyper local news (that mostly doesn't exist anymore) it's junk and will make your life worse.

General tech news adds no benefit. However, news specific to your industry segment can add benefit.

For example, knowing a gas pipeline is shut down leading to temporarily high gas prices is useful if you are in logistics. However knowing that Intel just made a faster chip is not so useful. Similarly, the political stage of Belize is only useful if you have work or family that is impacts by that.

Just knowing it otherwise is only useful for fun conversations.

News about politics is also helpful. You can decide who to support, or to run for office yourself, or to campaign on behalf of others, or at least donate.

Society does foment a favorable environment for you to exist in without effort. And if it does, then you are lucky to be in the right place at the right time, and assume the favorable environment is temporary.

I agree on that. If you’re going to be involved in the political process you should a minimum keep track of the politicians on what they’re doing at any given time.

News about politics is extremely addictive. Rather than checking daily, or twice a day, or 50 times a day, you could block off a few hours once per month and get whatever the benefit is a person gets from keeping track of political topics.

To be honest I am bad with this, but I think really the only time it's actually useful is at any point you can do something about it, else the rest of the time you can avoid. Even a few hours a month seems wasteful to me, there will be a lot of stories playing out and speculation that doesn't mean anything to you right now.

Really only at elections is when it seems important to me, do your research and go deeper than most and then make your choice, but avoid the news the rest of the time seems the optional thing to me.

You tend to hear about things anyway, everyone has an opinion on this thing and they love to share it, no matter how much they know about the topic, the best way to not get suckered in, is not to follow it at all.

I've in no way managed to apply this to my life yet though, but it is my goal.

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