The Media Bias Chart is a good tool for assessing the quality of sources: https://www.adfontesmedia.com/
Select one or two sources at the absolute pinnacle of the chart (bias score of between -6 and 6, quality score of 56+). Once a day, spend 10 minutes scanning the headlines in their Top News sections.
Once a week, select a source with a quality score of 32+ and set aside an hour or two reading their opinions/analysis columns. For bonus points, alternate between the left and right sides of the pyramid.
On a few hours a week you will quickly become, by far, one of the most well-informed people you know. You'll develop a balanced and even-minded view of world and local affairs (if you're currently stressed out about the state of the world, this will have a therapeutic effect). You'll rarely get sucked into clickbait, filter bubbles, etc. and when you do you'll recognize them quickly.
The opposite of this strategy is to spend several hours a day consuming "news" from Facebook, Twitter, and the "sources" on the far left and right of the pyramid. This is what the OP warns about. Abandon all hope ye who enter here. This will warp your view of reality and damage your mental health.
If you want to have a healthy body you need to select a diet of quality foods. If you want to have a healthy mind you need to select a diet of quality information. (In both cases, some light fasting can be beneficial too.)
A overreacting population is even more malleable.
>This isn't news, it's opinion. Don't read this.
>Be a discerning news consumer.
Media, even big mainstream media, is very flexible regarding the distinction between news and opinion; the latest big example being the maga-kids and how people were rewriting the same articles over and over on debunked facts.
I am not saying to stop following the news, but more than reading trusted sources you should mostly distrust most news. In this context I like how Tim Pool describe how too many journalist are in a twitter bubble.
Distrust implies they're lying to you, when most of the time they aren't.
Whether its the correct interpretation or whether the content of the tweet itself is factual depends on several factors. And I agree, the news has some play in interpreting the information because they have to generate content through additional discussion (ie. business), and because everything needs some form of interpretation.
The irony is, the OP might as well say stop reading Hacker News, because this site is a publicly curated news outlet filled with BS and non-BS content everyday. So, should we stop reading Hacker News because it could spread lies or opinion?
This, right here, is the problem. Something is not a FACT just because it's being repeated over and over on Twitter. In fact, I have a feeling the correlation between accuracy and Twitter-repetition is probably inverse.
You completely misunderstood what I meant.
For example, if someone Tweets that the earth is flat and the news reports this statement, the reported statement is fact because someone can go to Twitter and read that profiles tweets and there's clear evidence that this account represents said person, even if they didn't physically write the tweet.
The tweet itself is not fact, for obvious reasons. You can apply this to any ignorant statement anyone has ever uttered.
This is what I hear, as an avid news listener, whenever a tweet is the subject. Its simply someones written, public testimony. To not report these things, makes no sense.
I find almost everything in news noise now. Don't following any of that on purpose makes me feel calm.
Now if there is something that I should really know, it comes to me. I meet people all the time and then they tell me if something important is going on. I don't have to go after news. I adopted this after going through all the political bs in last few years. It works like a filter and I enjoy it.
"I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus & Thucydides, for Newton & Euclid; & I find myself much the happier." [0]
"If you're reasonably affluent, straight, white, cisgender, male or a sufficient subset thereof you should unburden yourself from having to keeping up with the news secure that your interests are well protected."
For me it's less about being informed and more that I have to keep up with the news on certain topics/issues because I have to actually do things in response to the news or my life will get worse. It's not like I, or I think anyone, wants to have to read the news.
> I have to do things in response to the news
I would like to know what this consists of.
Is this in terms of needing to protest against things? Needing to switch suppliers of medications?
>but then you have the no right to complain when laws are passed that don't align to your values.
Who says that ever happens ?
The idea that everything you read in the news is garbage because they don't have a solid grasp on the strange esoterica we work in simply doesn't make any sense. There's no reason why any news organisation would be equally informed on every topic. So yeah, if I read an article in the Washington Post comparing relational databases I'd be suspicious. But if I read an article about tax policy, written by a journalist who has spent years studying the area, what on earth would it have to do with my database experience?
> We’re afraid to ask ourselves deep and meaningful questions.
Noise and news are an incentive for people to play this left-right, right-wrong game you described in your comment.
It's in your own interest to do so. How much do you pay in tax? Do you think that's right? What about public services? How are the roads around you? Your trash pickup? These are all things managed by elected officials. If you care about any of them it's in your interests to vote.
Is not in your interest. Is in the interest of the elected officials. They get to you through the news and social media (by sharing). In simple words: they don't give a F about you, the taxes or the roads.
That's not what they are asking or claiming.
Yes, but also make an offer to read sources that provide a different point of view from your own. There should be smart people who you disagree with. Find those people.
Mainstream news is not information, it's entertainment. The sooner your realize it the better.
Journalists have nor the time, nor the expertise or the means to write a purely accurate objective articles (that nobody wants to read because it's purely informational). I cannot count the times I read articles about my field of expertise, that are laughably inaccurate or pain false.
Journalists crunch out quick stories that are exaggerated or come from one angle, so that people would read it after seeing the headline, and get agitated enough to share it. Remark that this is not the fault of the journalists, but just how that whole system works.
You should read "Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator" by Ryan Holiday, and see how fragile that whole system is. And because of its fragility, can be easily manipulated on top of it.
If you want to get informed, either read books written by experts (like suggested), read the original scientific paper and draw your own conclusions, or stay ahead of your game by getting news from sources other than media. That last part will show you that by the time it's covered by main stream news, it's already old news (think bitcoin etc.)
When I read something, first thing I check is "who is this person?". If it's an expert on the subject, or has his own experience and tells the story, I'm happy to read it. If it's a journalist that is crunching out stories every week, I skip it.
This is, and always has been, an utterly dumb argument that only persists because it sounds clever. Mainstream news informs people about what is going on in the world around them. What their elected representatives are doing. What the weather is doing (an underrated one, in terms of every day utility, especially in hurricane season).
The mainstream TV news also happens to wrap this information up in a package fronted by two or more telegenic presenters, and often finishes off with a nice feel good story. That doesn't diminish the information being conveyed. Perhaps the world would be better informed if everyone set aside two hours a day to read academic journals, but that's never going to happen.
The weather is indeed informative, but if you look at video's where the reporter has a hard time standing against the wind of a hurricane, and people behind him just walk around like normal, you definitely get the "entertainment" value. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyZdDQY37Sg
> What their elected representatives are doing.
I'm not that familiar with US, but in Belgium, the politicians who do proper work, hardly make it to the news. Most of the time, it's politicians making bold or crazy statements, saying something controversial etc. Reporters are also known to lean towards the political left, so a lot comes through from a certain standpoint and not really objective, like it should be.
I'll leave you with video of a Belgian news photographer that shows how easy it is to let his picture depict anything he wants. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmbsXussxUc. In his own words: "It's dangerous, the media"
I don't get my information from news outlets, and there is not much that can convince me otherwise.
A gross generalization. I've been in the biggest newsrooms in the country, seen the autonomy of editorial up front and personal.
You're conflating the bad with the good. You're not alone.
> This isn't news, it's opinion. Don't read this.
Sometimes this is harder than you think, even with popular news sources. I subscribe to the NY Times, but if I go by notifications on my phone for the "popular" stories, many of them are opinion pieces. In fact, I'm looking right now at "Most Popular" in my NYTimes app and I'm seeing multiple "opinion" pieces in that list (actually 5 of the top 10) and only after you click into them do you know that they aren't hard news.
This is a weird argument.
His point is news is a stupid fodder to feed your mind with and its better to get indulged with books like literature, biographies, self help books et al.
Or before. I learnt more about 21st C USA by reading Tocqueville's Democracy in America (1835) than anything written since.
Don't eschew current news because it's slight, because it's invite, because it's simplistic in form. That's the point.
What examples are there of any meaningful "responding in the present" that happened because of news (as opposed because of directly suffering some oppression on yourself)?
Protest marches? Strikes? You could even include terrorism if you wanted.
Our ability to react to news is often personal, but it can operate on a macro level as well.
I like that it shows how to be critical of mainstream media while consuming it and without needing to adopt a pseudo-conspiracy "alternative fact" mindset.
It may seem as though I glossed over that, but my larger point is people need to understand what news is and means first.
A bubble is inevitable in either event, finite time ensures that.
We can think of that in terms of know-your-enemy, but often the effect of hearing from the best of those enemies is to find the ways in which they are either allies, or at least to learn to empathize with their positions. If we had no bubble, and just took in the loudest most amplified opinions at random, we'd be more likely to inaccurately conclude that those positions had no steel-man positions to learn from. So a well curated bubble is better than the illusion of none at all.
Anti-vaxers and flat-earthers might be called "bubbles", but then so is the pro-vax round-world view. After all, if you only ever read round-world media, aren't you closing your mind to alternative facts? /s
That's perhaps because you live in a bubble.
The only people you hear complain about bubbles are the people that are marginalized, if you agree with the bubble you will love every second of it and hate everyone outside. So, watch out before you speak in support of your bubble, that probably just means you are in the center.
I recently watched the Netflix documentary on the Fyre Festival. I also watched the one on Hulu. One of the documentaries was produced by a company involved in that whole mess but you wouldn't be able to tell by watching the documentary. Due to consolidation of media it seems to me that it is easier to spin and control a narrative. I don't think any of the popular sources of information are trustworthy.
"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
Whole speech here: http://docdro.id/4wgVecr
Surely that only works if the same combination of journalists and subeditors work on all the stories? Just because Margaret has written some pop-sci junk about robots doesn't suddenly make Malcolm's commentary on Botswana any less valid.
Let me refocus that to highlight the silliness:
> If doctors get it wrong in areas you know about then why should one think they get it right in areas you don't know about?
If my doctor knows not even the slightest tiniest thing about computers, the internet, etc., I'm still going to trust him on medicinal matters.
If your doctor wrote articles about computers and got it wrong would you be willing to trust him/her on articles about Syria? Tax policy? Politics? You would trust your doctor in the area of his/her expertise and not necessarily about other areas.
Some are. Some aren't. But if you're not an expert in the same area, how can you judge?
(eg. "MD" in Private Eye is a doctor and therefore reasonably qualified to report on medical things.)
In the end you are much better off avoiding highly biased sources than trying to use them. This might change if you are doing a dissertation or something, but not for day to day stuff.
The line between opinion and actual reporting is gone. It no longer exists. All reporting is activism.
Read books to be informed. Specifically the books that have stood the test of time and shaped history.
Our media is owned by the most powerful people in the world. You are conceding your most critical faculties, the power to think for yourself, to the most powerful people in the world.
And they've gaslit you into believing that the exact opposite is true.
I went to journalism school. I've worked in news rooms - from small to the world's largest and prestigious. What you describe is fantasy.
In good news organizations the editorial side has autonomy by design. The corporate part is intentionally insulated away from the news producing side.
I've seen fights between publishers and ad directors over content. It doesn't happen often but those conflicts are real.
I've never seen editorial lose.
Media-types live in an echo chamber that distorts their reality. Over time, the echos grow stronger and stronger, but those in the media still believe them; while those outside of the media see an ever escalating cacophony of noise.
An uninformed populace is a malleable one. Controlling and limiting information has long been a strategy for despots or worse.
> The point is, most of what you read online today is pointless
Don't read that then. Read sources you believe are important to you and deliver information that is important.
Be a discerning news consumer.
> Being well informed isn’t regurgitating the opinion of some twenty-two-year-old with no life experience telling me what to think or how outraged to be.
This isn't news, it's opinion. Don't read this.
Be a discerning news consumer.
> Read from publications that respect and value your time, the ones that add more value than they consume.
In other words, be a discerning news consumer.
> Read fewer articles and more books.
This is a weird argument.
Look, people hate the media, so an argument like this is an easy sell. But rejecting information from the media is a concession to power.