FWIW sharing my primary global non-tech news source while we are at it: The Financial Times to me is all the important news without the fluff and very much worth the subscription price. Obviously there is a heavy focus on economic news (but not exclusively).
I especially like the News Briefing which I can listen to conveniently with a "Hey Siri, play the FT News Briefing" while doing my morning routine. These podcasts as well as Alphaville (https://ftalphaville.ft.com) are actually free.
I delved into FT last year through exploration of the Media Bias Chart for the US: https://www.adfontesmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Med...
I probably should read more widely but I had been disappointed by traditional outlets like the BBC or The Economist for a long while now. It also feels like the world's balance of power is shifting heavily at this time so I'm not sure where I can get high quality global news without our natural western bias (our perspective increasingly feels like wishful thinking to me).
Financial news, in general, tend to be my favorites because their biases don't tend to fall strongly along political lines, so you get fewer outrage-of-the-day stories, fewer what's-trending-on-twitter stories, and less politics in general - unless it's a really meaningful story that can affect markets.
How Media Fuels our Fear of Western Terrorism: https://www.nemil.com/s/part2-terrorism.html
Visualizing 10 years of International Coverage in The New York Times: https://www.nemil.com/s/nytimes-international-coverage.html
So watching CNBC, for example instead of NBC Nightly News, you'll still know all about the government shutdown or the possible resignation of the governor of Virginia or a winter storm shutting down half the country, but you won't have to endure endless, excruciating segments about a kid smiling at a guy beating a drum.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC64gD1NN-GE_tfd0swtxcOA/vid... (a fun one)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/
http://en.people.cn/ (very good English, despite the HEAVY propaganda)
http://www.sciencemag.org/news
https://twitter.com/chismaiocity?lang=en
http://www.congoindependant.com/category/presse-anglophone/ (if anyone knows of a better English paper for Congo, please let me know!)
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai
https://www.newdelhitimes.com/category/delhincr/
https://www.scmp.com/frontpage/international
https://dailytimes.ng/category/news/
https://dailynews.co.tz/tags/local.aspx
https://www.who.int/ebola/situation-reports/drc-2018/en/
Again, apologies for the wall of text!
My own view is that you should reduce consumption dramatically, but still read some publications. And realize that in software, we have our own form of “news” that this missive applies to.
Here’s my media literacy guide:
https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-media/blob/master/README....
And one just for the tech industry (including HN):
https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-media/blob/master/softwar...