No News Is Good News

have you heard the good news of Jesus Christ..

 

haha you really think being informed is done by watching the news?

 

I don't usually watch the news on tv very often. I see and hear it in passing but I listen to NPR every day and I have a few online sources that I think are pretty decent. I don't think it makes me uninformed at all. In fact, I think I am very much more informed than a lot of people I talk to every day.

 

Mostly by reading traditional print media.

I scan through about 4 or 5 newspapers every morning with my coffee every morning, read the Economist Saturday mronings for more in-depth analysis, and read Foreign Affairs when it is published.

But beyond laughing, please suggest an English language alternative for keeping informed.

 

i cant. i follow twitter accounts for my news mostly anon or politic blogs. Russia today used to be really good but i honestly don't trust a word of the printed press or msm

 

Ok. So your detailed understanding comes from 140 character tweets and bloggers who read traditional print media and then comment on it (because they simply don't have the resources to do primary investigation).

What exactly makes a blog or a tweet more trustworthy than a newspaper.

 

er no i follow informed people who are telling the truth people on the ground, democracy now is a great site too. why would i read media or watch media owned mostly by conservatives bigots who wish all to keep people dum.

 

Confirmation/selection bias. People tend to select information that already conforms to their own beliefs and values, and this confirms existing prejudices/values.

If you take this to the extreme, you wind up Pressed Rat.

 

i read the newspaper most days, but it's just for entertainment value, not for the news. i mean really, i don't feel any more informed after reading that it snowed a lot yesterday, or that someone recently saw bigfoot in a field just outside of town.

 

It doesn't matter whether or not you watch the news--or even where you consume your news from--if you have critical thinking skills then you'll be able to get the information that you need from most news sources, mainstream or alternative. A lot of people can listen, but they lack the motivation or ability to analyze what they see and hear.

I don't watch the news because I don't have regular access to television. I do have a fairly long commute, so sometimes I listen to news radio. I read a lot. I've noticed that most of the conspiracy theories, and many of the mainstream news sources are absolutely ridiculous and sensational, in equal and opposite directions.

 

I take the opposite view

By absorbing as much news as I can from multiple sources I can uncover the truth by wading through the minutia of lies, exaggerations, deliberate misrepresentations, and biases.


Hotwater

 

information that's actually useful doesn't sell advertising space. that which does, is almost invariably too long distance to be of real personal use, unless you're some kind of high rolling ceo, and even then most of it is questionable. (and if you didn't have your own inside sources you probably wouldn't be in that position) sure its kind of fun to ferret out what probably really did happen, but that's still a long way from being personally useful.

 

This article will make you think twice about how you consume news....


http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli

News is bad for your health. It leads to fear and aggression, and hinders your creativity and ability to think deeply. The solution? Stop consuming it altogether









News inhibits thinking. Thinking requires concentration. Concentration requires uninterrupted time. News pieces are specifically engineered to interrupt you. They are like viruses that steal attention for their own purposes. News makes us shallow thinkers. But it's worse than that. News severely affects memory. There are two types of memory. Long-range memory's capacity is nearly infinite, but working memory is limited to a certain amount of slippery data. The path from short-term to long-term memory is a choke-point in the brain, but anything you want to understand must pass through it. If this passageway is disrupted, nothing gets through. Because news disrupts concentration, it weakens comprehension. Online news has an even worse impact. In a 2001 study two scholars in Canada showed that comprehension declines as the number of hyperlinks in a document increases. Why? Because whenever a link appears, your brain has to at least make the choice not to click, which in itself is distracting. News is an intentional interruption system.

 

journalist have an obligation to tell the truth about the world that is true freedom of press. instead they are told what they can say think and write. look at the bbc heavy basis reporting on gaza? look at 50 percent of British newspaper who when genocide was being committed. kept only showing the Israeli side. MSM is nothing but organised propaganda. and i dont think people watch it because they think its the truth. i think they watch it because there condition to believe that is the truth. for example in England we have a tv debate coming up where the 3 main parties will discuss there policy. now they have aloud UKIp a racist bigoted party to be part of that debate but will not be asking the green party to take part. why is that? and where is the freedom in press there?

 

Wow, PressedRat is so fucking obnoxious.
I am going to be nicer to people, just because seeing someone so meanspirited and just so awful in general is so damn annoying.

Edit: And to be on topic, I like to watch and read news. I like to know what's new in the world.

 

This has been an excellent discussion so far, I hope I can do it justice. I read a couple of dozen news sources every day. Sometimes that shifts because blog-type sites may not update on the weekends. I read so many because it's the only way to get a possible clear picture of the events that shape our world. Thankfully they don't affect me much. But I drill down to a local set as well. I was like this with printed news, but not to the same degree.

The national news is part of why my wife and I didn't go after a bigger house. Instead of having our paid off, we'd be way upside down on a McMansion in a development that is nearly 50% unfinished concrete slabs today. It didn't take a genius to see the train wreck that mortgages had become. We could have had a $400K house on a signature. We'd surely have lost it or would be holding it under bankruptcy protection. Screw that. It's greenback slavery.

 

I am not sure how anyone who discounts new sources can then claim to be informed. I do feel that you do have to use discretion when researching news or current topics but to form any opinion without a variety of sources seems rather limited.

 

rather limited is putting it politely. i would call believing any one source explicitly something closer to a form of complete blindness and something less then being in touch with reality.

 

Heard of it. The better news is the good news of Gods kingdom which is now in place