Why would I pay for something that is actively working against my interests? I'm with Bryan Caplan's position that most of the news can be safely eliminated from one's consumption with zero loss to one's quality of life: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/03/the_case_agains_6.h...
Of course there is still a question of how one would support quality investigative journalism and someone to hold the powers that be accountable, although one wonders how much the news have been truly doing that in the recent years, as opposed to being a mere extension of a political party.
> I'm with Bryan Caplan's position that most of the news can be safely eliminated from one's consumption with zero loss to one's quality of life
I follow one or two very local news sources[1], who post about three to five stories a week. I find those valuable: new restaurants opening, construction going on, what's going on with local organizations & politicians, some local history. It's up to ten minutes a day. And, I choose to pay a subscription to support each of these.
Outside that, I 100% agree with you. National news? Complete waste of time. World news? Somehow an even bigger waste. Reading random vomit on Twitter? Good lord, taking up smoking is a better use of your life than that. No way in hell I'm wasting my life or money on any of that junk. It's despairing to see so many people I know spending hours every day reading national news junk to absolutely no purpose. You can know everything you need to know about the world in ten minutes a day. More than that is just throwing your time down the garbage.
I do get the point that following news constantly all day long is a bit like doom scrolling and doesn’t add much to a good life. However, I would not go as far as saying „complete waste of time“. It is Saturday morning and I just read a long interview with Wladimir Kara-Mursa, one of the Russian opposition politicians who was recently released from prison as part of a prisoner exchange. In the interview, Kara-Mursa talks a lot about his time in Russian jails, Putin‘s system, and being a opposition politician in Russia. Does it to relate my everyday normal life here in Germany? Well of course it does not at first glance. But at second and third glance it does and most importantly it helps me appreciate what I consider my normal everyday life in a democracy and it informs my decision making when it comes to the upcoming elections and the way different parties position themselves towards Russia and the war in Ukraine.
That being said, I don’t think it makes much sense to follow any type of news all the time all day long, but I would really miss it if it was no longer available as it helps me put things / my life into context and make more informed decisions at the ballot box. And sure I am willing to pay for that type of journalism.
> No way in hell I'm wasting my life or money on any of that junk. It's despairing to see so many people I know spending hours every day reading national news junk to absolutely no purpose.
Now imagine you don't have access to those anymore. Overconsumption of news clearly is a problem, but shutting yourself off to the what's happening in the world is somehow worse.
> but shutting yourself off to the what's happening in the world is somehow worse
How?
Russia's doing something stupid in Ukraine. People in the middle east are killing each other again. The Olympics just happened in France. Republicans are running nutjobs for office again. Sweet, I'm up to date in 15 seconds. I can go back to reading a book or playing guitar or cooking dinner or weeding my garden or arguing on HN.
How is this worse than spending 2 hours reading into all the details of the stuff I just mentioned, and then not having any time left over to do the things that actually make my life worth living?
1) Don’t read the news. It IS optional. Personally, if there were a good reason to read it, it would be based on curiosity and interest in knowing about humanity at large.
2) someone should be reading the news, because of economics, politics, and voting.
In the current global economy - your fate is dependent on the fate and actions of others.
The actions of Russia have hampered economies in the EU. This has currently obscured the strength of the underlying EU economy, making the US economy appear stronger.
Simultaneously, Italy, which had a lower dependency on Russian energy, is doing better and hopefully reducing some of its loan burden.
That’s just… fun to know?
Sheikh Hasina’s government in Bangladesh collapsed, the interim / caretaker government which has come in is headed by a Nobel Laureate. Their mandate is to prepare for another round of elections.
They don’t call themselves ministers, but advisors (iirc). I thought that was an interesting wrinkle and potential counter example for discussions on government, which happen regularly.
I don’t know how to frame my point better, but it does feel that this comment thread presupposes only a few narrow options.
Perhaps breaking from news is good when it’s just overwhelmingly negative, and designed to harm you?
But perhaps its great when its a way to address your interest and curiosity ?
Then funny part “stronger US economy” has stock crash not related in any way to events in Ukraine or Middle East. It crashed because finance guys had scheme borrowing Japanese currency and buying stocks with it.
So it is always that you might have illusion of knowing what is going on.
I love talking heads “experts” making assumptions but it is just talking and real stuff is always deeper.
So I rather people voting on their core values whatever those are than “perceived wisdom they are so informed”.
On average it’s not, at least not for the average person.
But not everyone is average, and for some of those who do invest the time in going beyond superficial headlines, the payoff is considerable in terms of power, prestige, influence, and wealth.
There is also the fact that if everyone disregarded the news, society would quickly disintegrate as bad actors leveraged people’s ignorance for the own personal ends. Thus, there is a social responsibility aspect to keeping abreast of current events.
The solution may be to go back when news wasn't some action filled adventure to be consumed every hour. Social responsible news should inform the public and provide the necessary background so people can form their own views and conclusions, rather than current system of news companies that carves an audience to whom they can provide entertainment and engagement.
To make a second reference, Yes, Minister has an excellent sketch over UK news papers, beautifully illustrating how each paper has carved up their own piece of the population and provide entertainment to serve those readers. It almost 40 years old and still fairly accurate description.
It not an uncommon sentiment to hear people saying that Wikipedia is a better platform for news than news organizations, since the content will stabilize fairly fast on that which everyone agrees on, and contentions over facts becomes noticeable. The general resistance to emotional loaded words also helps combat some of the worst aspects of news.
> There is also the fact that if everyone disregarded the news, society would quickly disintegrate as bad actors leveraged people’s ignorance for the own personal ends. Thus, there is a social responsibility aspect to keeping abreast of current events.
Can you provide an example of this? I honestly can't think of a single time when I learned something in the news that fit this description.
There are lots of examples of politicians resigning from press reports about them. Just recently a senator from NJ stepped done because his court case caused tons of negative publicity.
Public shaming has been less of an issue the past 10 years but it’s still kind of a thing.
You can read up on what is happening like once per quarter in like a couple of hours. Following 'this just in' with 'developing stories' is a waste of time.
E.g. I read the wiki entry for Trump's assassination attempt after like a week and saved myself hours of rumours and guesses.
You make a valid point. I live in a small city and something’s that matter (what’s going on with road work: bike lanes). I went to a meeting a few years back and had to explain what was going on to a neighbor, because no coverage and the city didn’t post a lot of good information.
A lot of news is too much analysis or “what might happen next” rather than “this just happened and here’s what it means”.
I keep up with the news, but I can see the point OP made.
The average Johnny McOfficeWorker in the West is unaffected by and has no control over the conflicts, political struggles, or general bad stuff happening halfway around the world. Personal circumstances aside (i.e., a family member in a conflict area), the only reasons a typical person even cares are 1) feeling fulfilled by being an informed voter, and 2) entertainment.
And unfortunately, I suspect more people care about the entertainment value than they do the civic value.
Being uninformed works well as long as the political system is sort of ok. But for the (democratic) political system to work sorta well, most voters needs to be somewhat informed about national and even international issues (since they are connected).
> The average Johnny McOfficeWorker in the West is unaffected by and has no control over the conflicts, political struggles, or general bad stuff happening halfway around the world.
They are greatly affected, especially if the US ends up fighting wars or the international economy is undermined when others fight wars. Their taxes go now to prevent those conflicts (which would be much more expensive later). Other global phenomena, like mpox, climate change, etc. do not respect borders. Foriegn powers do not respect borders, including by supporting their political allies right in McOfficeWorker's own country.
As far as McOfficeWorker's influence, probably nothing is more influential in international affairs than the average American's opinion (see my nearby comment for more about that).
I wonder what the best argument is for a median American needing to watch the news in order to do their civic duty. E.g. how will the average Joe be able to impact a century-long conflict in Palestine?
At what point is it just people living a delusion, overestimating their ability to impact the rest of the world, refusing to accept that they're just an NPC with zero agency when it comes to major issues outside of their immediate neighborhood?
> E.g. how will the average Joe be able to impact a century-long conflict in Palestine?
The 'average' American has so much influence, in fact, that the cornerstone of Israeli foreign policy and national security is the support of average Americans.
How that mechanism works is an interesting question, but not too hard to imagine: Israel is much too small to defend itself, and therefore depends on support from the most powerful country in the world. That support happens largely because average Americans want it. Imagine, for example, if one of the current candidates said, 'if elected, I will cut off all support to Israel' - probably they would lose the election.
The beliefs of average Americans have great influence over many things, which is why powerful people spend so much time, money, and effort trying to persuade them. Look at Fox News and MSNBC; look at Russian and Chinese (and probably other) social media influence operations; look at the near infinite political propaganda; look at Musk, who spent $40B on such influence, and at how much time he spends posting in order to influence people.
Another way to influence average Americans is to convince them to surrender their power and not even try. That leaves the field more open for others to control events.
> but shutting yourself off to the what's happening in the world is somehow worse
I see this point sometimes, never qualified further. Can you elaborate? In what way will my quality of life diminish if I have no idea what's going on outside of my local area? Provide an actual example.
I think not being subject to having your rights removed by legislation is a privilege.
Consider this: a woman in Texas doesn't follow the news. She tries to seek out an abortion. Now she is unable to get that healthcare she previously was able to. Similar things can arise with voting rights, where now people need to bring very specific forms of ID to vote. Essentially, I think my point is not being aware of which groups in power are actively working to limit your rights is probably not good.
Almost all examples end up boiling down to “you might vote wrong if you don’t pay attention to the news” to which I say, well that’s easy enough, I don’t vote.
I have a theory, to the effect that impacts on you are determined by the magnitude of the news as well as an exponential decay of the distance.
To take an extreme example, if Godzilla were to show up and level Tokyo today, that would clearly be terrible but the actual impact on me is much less than that some roads nearby are closed because of a marathon.
Unless I can do something to prevent Godzilla, there is no reason to follow the news from far away, except the leftover limbic system of my brain that still thinks its 10000 BC and we are in a small hunter gather band.
For most of history humanity grew it's food locally, it depended on local items, got killed by local actors as you state. Each locality was its own anti-fragile little kingdom.
But this is no longer true and this is something we saw during covid. If a factory blows up in Tokyo that makes the live saving medicine/device that you depend on to keep surviving, it's no different for you than your city catching on fire. If all the crops die in some foreign place and you live in a food importing country, trouble is coming. If a war is blowing up ships then supplies you need for your business may not show up any more and bankruptcy could be on the menu.
(Daily) news isn't nearly the only option of learning about what's happening in the world. And I'd argue it's not even the best either, by a long shot.
Old enough to remember Cronkite or MacNeil Lehrer - there was a time with more facts less ideology. Ever since the news became a profit center it just isn't as useful. One literally has to follow double digit numbers of outlets to get a reasonable picture of reality. It is simply too costly. The News rooms have become their own undoing.
Old school news anchors were NOT neutral. The stories they chose and the language they used shaped perceptions just as much as now, only they had precious little competition back then. They so completely shaped the population's perception of that era that retroactive analyses using better evidence to reach new conclusions about the events of that time are reflexively rejected by most people, demonstrating incuriosity and close-mindedness out of loyalty to established narratives. That is ideology.
I am not making a "those were the good ole days" argument - the News "business" changed in a fundamental way. The objective became to "make money" as opposed to "deliver news". The profit motive changes everything - taking that thinking to a logical conclusion you end up with 2 minute videos that are chosen specifically to punch your buttons so you will keep watching. The way in which people consume their news now is simply chaos.
In the past, a lot of news outlets were prestige buys by the super wealthy. They would buy a news outlet so they could make sure that they have a place that will say everything they want to hear being said. This often allowed for some objectivity over subjects that the magnate didn't care about, but it put very strict limits on the ones that the magnate did.
Plus, the news has always been majority sponsored by publicity, and news rooms have always been careful to print or broadcast narratives that sit well with the people who give them the money. Few things have really changed in these dynamics.
Forgive my cynicism, but I do not believe you, and I do not believe the linked article. Profit is not the only incentive to deceive. Power, legacy, and prestige (which the article claims was the ultimate goal) are all incentives to deceive, mislead, or otherwise engage in narrative craft.
The objective was always "make money" - it never changed. What changed was the means of making money - originally journalism, now advocacy and activism.
The New York Times, in particular, clearly now is an advocacy organization instead of a news organization.
Which do you think is cheaper to produce, agitprop or deep investigative reporting? If no one pays for news, which do you think will grow in proportion to the other?
What is passed off as "deep investigative reporting" is actually agitprop, especially when reporters interface with and are concerned with maintaining access to the national security apparatus.
Yet, at the same time, the same journalists think they're "defending democracy from darkness."
I hate that propaganda has become a thought-terminating cliche. First of all, it's not necessarily a bad thing. "Agitprop" is literally what brought the deeply isolationist Americans to finally act in World War II. Also, just because you suspect that some journalism from a publication is propaganda doesn't invalidate the usefulness of all journalism from that publication like the Washington Post's opioid database.
> "Agitprop" is literally what brought the deeply isolationist Americans to finally act in World War II.
I thought it was Pearl Harbor.
>just because you suspect that some journalism from a publication is propaganda doesn't invalidate the usefulness of all journalism
Usefulness for whom? If by useful you mean to manufacture consent to do whatever businesses and governments would have done if it weren't for the pesky public getting in their way, then yes, sure. We wouldn't have had the second Iraq war, or the first for that matter, if it weren't for the hard work of the journalists at the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
Japan wasn't stupid enough to rouse a sleepy giant for no reason. It's no coincidence that the majority America's western fleet was docked on tiny islands thousands of miles away from any then states. The US had also implemented an embargo and provided significant aid to the Allies through Lend Lease. If they didn't attack America during Pearl Harbor, they would attack a ship that's blockading critical oil shipments. Propaganda played a huge role in American's acceptance into these escalations [1].
> We wouldn't have had the second Iraq war
Yes, I knew you were alluding to this, which is why I brought up WWII as a counterexample. My point is that just because you think their geopolitical reporting was counterproductive doesn't change the value of their opioid coverage [2] which lead to multi-billion dollar lawsuits against CVS and Walgreens.
I understand your desire to connect the propaganda industry with the "last just cause"—83 years ago—but lying to the public is not virtuous.
Was it virtuous or justifiable for Jeffrey Gettleman at the New York Times to fabricate, out of whole cloth, stories of rape [1] to soft-shoe the genocidal policies of a foreign government? Who benefits?
Just because an author of the New York Times article made some angry tweets and some people disagree with her narratives doesn't mean that they were fabricated. That's besides the point though. If you're happy with the Intercept's reporting that gets heavily cited by the article you posted, does that mean you're happy to pay for it?
> Just because an author of the New York Times article made some angry tweets and some people disagree with her narratives doesn't mean that they were fabricated.
No, the fact that even the families of the victims say they fabricated stories about their daughters, and that they had no sources outside government propaganda mouthpiece, is what makes the stories fabricated.
Not sure that paying would make things better anyways. If everyone was paying then there would be enough revenue for the news to produce the real/biased reporting/agitprop that their customers demand.
> there is still a question of how one would support quality investigative journalism and someone to hold the powers that be accountable
I don't think there is: You pay for it, since it's in your best interests to. I'd pay for that. Unfortunately, in my country, there aren't any outlets like that that I know of, everything is government propaganda.
In Romania we have YouTube channels that do only investigative reporting and people fund them through YouTube membership, super tips and Patreon. Can look up recorder Romania if you are curious
Yeah sometimes people advocate for it but might end up making problematic decisions when it comes to voting. Many people may vote after all but if it's not based on news it can be problematic. Solely relying on Wikipedia or History might not give full context and could overly rationalize the decision making. After all, people want their policy makers to make their inhabitants happy (irrational) and not just optimize a (simplified yet rational) metric.
I don't think though there is unbiased news. Generally a classic recommendation has been to read across multiple sources.
Of course there is still a question of how one would support quality investigative journalism and someone to hold the powers that be accountable, although one wonders how much the news have been truly doing that in the recent years, as opposed to being a mere extension of a political party.