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More and more people are tuning the news out: 'Now I don't have that anxiety

(www.theguardian.com)
126 points giuliomagnifico | 2 comments | 07 Sep 25 12:57 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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djoldman ◴[07 Sep 25 14:42 UTC] No.45158583[source]▶
News is entertainment.

The vast majority of news consumption is for feeling amusement, outrage, tribal-solidarity, etc. It almost never leads to a change in action by the consumer.

Non-entertainment news: articles that change future actions, e.g. trade publications related to one's career/job.

Need information to vote? Wait 4 weeks before the election and then go to one of the many websites that track candidates' quotes to determine as best one can what their positions are on the issues you care about. For example: https://www.ontheissues.org/

Entertainment is fine and dandy! But don't make the mistake of thinking it's productive or better/nobler than alternatives just because "journalism."

replies(1): >>45161721 #
1. johnnyanmac ◴[07 Sep 25 20:13 UTC] No.45161721[source]▶
>Wait 4 weeks before the election and then go to one of the many websites that track candidates' quotes

So just hear carefully curated words and not see the actions they did? Yeah, that's pretty much how my country got into this situation.

There's plenty of fluff, but lets not pretend that there isn't actual reporting out there for stuff that does or will affect your daily life. 1000x so with local policy where it is so excruciatingly difficult to find any real information on. Just

1) be honest about when you want either the dryest, direct report, or you want a show to go with it. I'm definitely in the middle myself, slightly skewed towards dry.

2) Understand the balance of relevance, impact, importance, and fun to your life. We can be honest and admit there some important news out there that simply isn't a fight you want to participate nor follow closely.

Likewise, we're on a tech forum right now and I'm sure while many of us would read about a distributed GPU runtime that we also all know it's not necessarily the most important thing in life right now (unless that is indeed your career right now).

Awareness can do a lot to drive behavior by itself. We just first need to be honest about it.

replies(1): >>45162786 #
2. djoldman ◴[07 Sep 25 22:32 UTC] No.45162786[source]▶
> So just hear carefully curated words and not see the actions they did?

Fair enough. Take a look at candidate actions as well.