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    Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

    (www.scientificamerican.com)
    757 points headalgorithm | 23 comments | 05 Feb 25 14:55 UTC | HN request time: 0.623s | source | bottom
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    majgr ◴[06 Feb 25 07:03 UTC] No.42959854[source]▶
    Living in Poland ruled by trumpists for 8 years I have these experiences:

    - Get subscription of high value newspaper or magazine. Professionals work there, so you will get real facts, worthy opinions and less emotions.

    - It is better to not use social media. You never know if you are discussing with normal person, a political party troll, or Russian troll.

    - It is not worth discussing with „switched-on” people. They are getting high doses of emotional content, they are made to feel like victims, facts does not matter at all. Political beliefs are intermingled with religious beliefs.

    - emotional content is being treated with higher priority by brain, so it is better to stay away from it, or it will ruin your evening.

    - people are getting addicted to emotions and victimization, so after public broadcaster has been freed from it, around 5% people switched to private tv station to get their daily doses.

    - social media feels like a new kind of virus, we all need to get sick and develop some immunity to it.

    - in the end, there are more reasonable people, but democracies needs to develop better constitutional/law systems, with very short feedback loop. It is very important to have fast reaction on breaking the law by ruling regime.

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    1. Bhilai ◴[06 Feb 25 15:59 UTC] No.42963639[source]▶
    > Get subscription of high value newspaper or magazine. Professionals work there, so you will get real facts, worthy opinions and less emotions.

    I struggle with this. It's incredibly challenging to find reliable, unbiased news sources these days, especially with the perceived slant of many major outlets. It's discouraging when even subscriptions to reputable publications like the NYT and WSJ leave you feeling like you're not getting the full story. It's also concerning when editorial content undermines the perceived objectivity of the news reporting, specially with WSJ. So what are people reading?

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    2. otterley ◴[06 Feb 25 16:12 UTC] No.42963782[source]▶
    I don't think there's a single source of news that is going to satisfy a need for full context. I read both for balance, and add The Economist to the mix for even more context.
    3. jajko ◴[06 Feb 25 16:13 UTC] No.42963790[source]▶
    Don't have a specific advise, but generally I don't consume nor trust news articles about given country, from given country. So I read about my central European homeland from neighboring news, or BBC/Guardian for example.

    Its more difficult with US since every fart affects rest of the world, sometimes massively, but some sort of averaging in my mind does it for me. Or at least I think it does, what is truly objective is a goal worthy of maybe academic discussions, I don't think individual can easily even get to it and realize 'this is it'.

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    4. BurningFrog ◴[06 Feb 25 16:13 UTC] No.42963794[source]▶
    I'm pretty happy with WSJ.

    I have no problem separating the news from the editorials.

    That said, there is not enough money in news these days to have anything like the quality and volume of 1-3 decades ago.

    5. michaelmdresser ◴[06 Feb 25 16:14 UTC] No.42963811[source]▶
    I’ve been sticking to the weekly edition of The Economist for years to stay informed while escaping the news cycle. The US coverage is remarkably good. The weekly cadence mean I’m often a week behind the news, but to me that’s a feature. The editorial pieces (those expressing “the opinion of the newspaper”) are kept separate as “Leaders” and I read them last, if it all; I usually read each issue back-to-front following a tip from HN years ago.

    For US-interested people, I’d also like to recommend Checks and Balance, a podcast by some of The Economist’s US reporters.

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    6. troyvit ◴[06 Feb 25 16:15 UTC] No.42963831[source]▶
    Yeah I agree with this. Local news sources work as a good filter, only bringing national stories that have a local effect, plus you get more local news, plus your subscription goes to a news room of probably no more than a few dozen people who live in the same area as you depending on what city or state you're in.
    7. culi ◴[06 Feb 25 16:19 UTC] No.42963877[source]▶
    Focus on investigative journalism. Places that do their own research. You'll likely get less big picture stuff but the tradeoff is worth it

    ProPublica is a good example: https://www.propublica.org/

    8. danans ◴[06 Feb 25 16:20 UTC] No.42963888[source]▶
    > Its more difficult with US since every fart affects rest of the world, sometimes massively

    The Guardian (UK), Al-Jazeera (UAE), and the Straits Times (Singapore) offer an outside perspective on the US, while still in English.

    9. jandrese ◴[06 Feb 25 16:21 UTC] No.42963894[source]▶
    So many once great media outlets were bought by billionaires and now all have the same editorial slant. It's extremely frustrating. In there modern world where would Woodward and Bernstein work? Propublica? Even where there is a will to do that kind of work the funding is even harder to secure. The reporters have to pick and choose their stories.
    10. Bhilai ◴[06 Feb 25 16:26 UTC] No.42963950[source]▶
    I liked content from The Economist in the past but thought of them as more focused on the world affairs. Will try them out for sure.
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    11. NickC25 ◴[06 Feb 25 16:35 UTC] No.42964040{3}[source]▶
    I too enjoyed The Economist's reporting on foreign affairs and world news.

    I found their editorials to be completely wacky and out of touch.

    Same could be said for the WSJ.

    12. slantedview ◴[06 Feb 25 16:51 UTC] No.42964187[source]▶
    The Economist is not exactly a neutral source of information, and is very much pro-big business, which has caused it to take horrible positions on many important issues throughout its long history, such as overthrowing democratic governments, supporting dictatorships, etc.
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    13. xocnad ◴[06 Feb 25 17:00 UTC] No.42964265[source]▶
    There is no such thing as an unbiased new source. Rpoerting only articles with pure fact there is still selection bias in what topics are covered and what facts are presented. Giving equal coverage across articles and within results in both sides reporting which can seriously tilt the article.

    Choose reputable sources and read with an understanding of the corespondent's perspective as well as the publication's. Diversify your choices to not isolate yourself.

    14. anyonecancode ◴[06 Feb 25 17:24 UTC] No.42964469[source]▶
    Focus on outlets that prioritize reporting. You can't find a "neutral" outlet -- all human beings have biases, and that gets magnified once we're talking about collective human endeavors such as newspapers, magazines, etc. But we can at least avoid solipsism ("the view that the self is the only reality") by grounding ourselves in outside, shared reality. That's what reporting is -- actually being at a place in real life, talking to actual people involved. Sure, the transmission of those observations will inevitably be shaped by the human reporter's own biases, but you're still getting access to shared reality. Even if the opinions aren't ones you share, you can at least see what they're based on and so have some ability to make your own evaluation on if the implicit conclusions the reporter is drawing match up with the base facts they are sharing.
    15. intermerda ◴[06 Feb 25 17:48 UTC] No.42964702[source]▶
    What do you mean by an “unbiased news source? What dimension does it not have a bias against?

    If you are talking about political ideologies, reality has a well-known liberal bias. So you have to choose one or the other.

    There was a comment recently about how Gemini won’t tell you some Chili recipe from Obama because that might see political. So Google seems to be heading towards politically neutral direction. Contrast that with many years ago when a Google image search would bring up Trump’s image when you searched for “idiot”.

    16. StableAlkyne ◴[06 Feb 25 18:03 UTC] No.42964859[source]▶
    > So what are people reading?

    I've been liking AllSides. They aggregate news from all parts of the spectrum, so you get stuff ranging from Jacobin / Daily Beast all the way to Fox News / Breitbart (I'm not commenting on the truthfulness of or recommending any of these sources, just using them as an example of how wide ranging the sources being pulled from are)

    For each headline, they pick a left, center, and right source and show that headline. They also show various headlines either side misses along with which side of the media is covering it. And other stuff, but mostly I just care about the news.

    It helps with avoiding echochambers. One side's doomerism usually ends up being what another side's cheering. Given the current political climate that's been especially helpful to my stress levels.

    17. mihaaly ◴[06 Feb 25 20:43 UTC] No.42966291[source]▶
    Almost every story has sides. Multiple at a time. Depending on people and their cultural background involved or observing. Ask one people about a story, and might say completely different things than another. This is just the nature of humanity, nothing novelty was said here.

    Choose something where they at least try.

    My long time favorite is The Economist. They have writers there committed to a certain kind of message, true, like everywhere, putting on a glass supporting their preconceptions, yet the overall tone is somewhat analytical, at least trying to look behind and around, trying to use multiple viewpoints. If they miss some, you might add yours pretty easily (on your own or from other sources), and so you will be empowered by better vintage point at the matter than without their help. That's much more than nothing, at least compared to the vast majority (I believe).

    I am sure there are even better alternatives where the being emotional first and professionally outraged all the time is frowned upon too. Definitely avoid bbc.co.uk despite their facade of being in depth and balanced. They actually say nothing more than repetition of the events mixed with lots of emotions nowadays, even their selection of topics are outrage oriented.

    18. LeroyRaz ◴[06 Feb 25 20:51 UTC] No.42966372[source]▶
    I wouldn't trust the guardian. Their misrepsetation of Depp v. Heard was appalling and revealed that they have extreme ideological biases.
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    19. Karrot_Kream ◴[06 Feb 25 21:50 UTC] No.42966841[source]▶
    Frankly I find the NYT fine. Does it have its deficiencies? Sure. But journalists are but human and subject to their biases. Much better to listen to an NYT journalist than some hysterical X poster. WSJ and NYT have recently had social media outrage aimed against them and I think that's the point: the very folks who are most emotional about the media are angry that NYT isn't as emotional as they are.
    20. lcnPylGDnU4H9OF ◴[06 Feb 25 22:41 UTC] No.42967243[source]▶
    https://ground.news/

    No affiliation other than being a customer.

    They aggregate stories and report on who's reporting on the story and how, detailing bias and factuality. They do international stories and probably also stories in your local area (in the US, perhaps less likely elsewhere).

    21. glaugh ◴[06 Feb 25 23:17 UTC] No.42967475{3}[source]▶
    I’d say it’s pro economic development. Like they express concerns around the decline of anti-trust enforcement.

    I’m sure it’s true that they used to advocate dictators, but in the 30 years of reading it as my primary news source, they’ve always seemed to me to be very consistently on the side of liberalism (in the older sense of the word) and very concerned about democracy

    22. mncharity ◴[07 Feb 25 06:03 UTC] No.42969898[source]▶
    I years ago read The Economist, and found a characterization of "Fleet Street cocktail party" useful for anticipating distributions of expertise and dysfunction across topics.

    I've not read it regularly, but some suggest the Financial Times.[1][2]

    The NYT... sigh. "All the foreign bureaus have closed" (geographic and topical; so superficial, confused, and pre-framed); and "correctness is a local property attained by wordsmithing" - an apparent belief that bad reporting can be "fixed" by local tweaks, so sentences in isolation aren't utterly wrong, even if most readers without overriding expertise will still be left badly misled. After all, it's "news" not analysis. My daily reminder that "Journalism hasn't yet had the 'we suck at this' epiphany which sets up a field's many-decade struggle towards high reliability organization" - we know what a safety/reliability culture looks like, and journalism very isn't it.

    [1] https://www.cjr.org/special_report/why-the-left-cant-stand-t... [2] https://www.ft.com/ https://news.google.com/search?q=financial%20times&hl=en-US&...

    23. jajko ◴[07 Feb 25 15:25 UTC] No.42973706{3}[source]▶
    Yeah I don't trust any 100%, all have biases, heck all people have biases. That's why some sort of averaging if topic is worth investing time into