Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

(www.scientificamerican.com)

Show context

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.

replies(21): >>42959917 #>>42960125 #>>42960476 #>>42960691 #>>42960783 #>>42960898 #>>42960933 #>>42961214 #>>42961374 #>>42961618 #>>42961937 #>>42961953 #>>42962143 #>>42962171 #>>42962319 #>>42962493 #>>42962995 #>>42963639 #>>42963983 #>>42964597 #>>42965062 #

Bhilai ◴[06 Feb 25 15:59 UTC] No.42963639[source]▶

>>42959854 #

> 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?

replies(14): >>42963782 #>>42963790 #>>42963794 #>>42963811 #>>42963831 #>>42963877 #>>42963894 #>>42964265 #>>42964469 #>>42964702 #>>42964859 #>>42966291 #>>42966841 #>>42967243 #

1. michaelmdresser ◴[06 Feb 25 16:14 UTC] No.42963811[source]▶

>>42963639 #

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.

replies(3): >>42963950 #>>42964187 #>>42969898 #

2. Bhilai ◴[06 Feb 25 16:26 UTC] No.42963950[source]▶

>>42963811 (TP) #

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.

replies(1): >>42964040 #

3. NickC25 ◴[06 Feb 25 16:35 UTC] No.42964040[source]▶

>>42963950 #

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.

4. slantedview ◴[06 Feb 25 16:51 UTC] No.42964187[source]▶

>>42963811 (TP) #

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.

replies(1): >>42967475 #

5. glaugh ◴[06 Feb 25 23:17 UTC] No.42967475[source]▶

>>42964187 #

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

6. mncharity ◴[07 Feb 25 06:03 UTC] No.42969898[source]▶

>>42963811 (TP) #

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&...

↑