The problem as I see it is that it is almost impossible to be informed enough to hold people accountable. In the U.S. at least the news is almost always of the form: “ Person from party A (which you are a member of) destroys person from Party B”. Or, “Party B seeks to destroy Issue C”.

There is virtually no nuance in the reporting. There’s no dissection. For example, the situation with Syria is quite complicated as Turkey, U.S., Russia, Kurds, and Assad all have conflicting goals and desires. Yet all of the reporting I’ve seen on this conflict has been absurdly reductionist and used to garner support/hatred toward the party in power by the adherents/adversaries of said party in power.

I understand the desire to have an informed populace but I think that is no longer possible. It is too easy to sway large swaths of the public. Witness the rise of anti-vaxers and other thoughtless beliefs. Even if I tried to be relatively informed it wouldn’t matter because the vast majority of the people are not psychologically prepared to withstand the pressure of subtle, sustained propaganda.

I have resigned myself to the fact that the republic is dead in the sense of what the ideal of a republic ought to be. I too avoid news and social media. I don’t count this website to be what I call social media since there is no identifying information about myself on here and none of my friends knows about my posts on this website.

I was reading Plato recently and this stood out:

> When they meet together, and the world sits down at an assembly, or in a court of law, or a theatre, or a camp, or in any other popular resort, and there is a great uproar, and they praise some things which are being said or done, and blame other things, equally exaggerating both, shouting and clapping their hands, and the echo of the rocks and the place in which they are assembled redoubles the sound of the praise or blame—at such a time will not a young man's heart, as they say, leap within him? Will any private training enable him to stand firm against the overwhelming flood of popular opinion? or will he be carried away by the stream? Will he not have the notions of good and evil which the public in general have—he will do as they do, and as they are, such will he be?

People have been complaining about what you're complaining about for thousands of years. What I find truly puzzling -- given the supposed madness of crowds -- is that things are going so well.

>What I find truly puzzling -- given the supposed madness of crowds -- is that things are going so well.

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhi's optimism here of course belies an ignorance of the impact of technological advancement upon the global climate, which was odd considering he was alive for history's literal technological fulcrum, but I guess he can be forgiven due to having other worries at the time.

> impact of technological advancement upon the global climate

It's worth remembering that our technology makes the world less habitable for us but that might not be the case for other organisms. I have little concern for the longterm health of life on earth beyond the blip of disruption that is humanity. However, I hope we can use the same technology to overcome or manage some of our own worst excesses. It is worth looking towards the positive stories in environmentalism sometimes. It is not all doom and gloom, and nature's ability to regenerate and re-conquer our wastelands is easy to forget.

Maybe, maybe not. There's a theory that fungi that breaks down plant matter today didn't exist during the Mesozoic - it's possible that subsequent civilisations (if any) aren't going to be able to turn to fossil fuels for cheap energy.

Not to mention that the goldilocks zone doesn't last forever, and the impending runaway-greenhouse-effect is something unprecedented in Earth's history. I'm being hyperbolic here, but what if the earth never had another ice age, ever again? In a sea populated mostly by jellies and cephalopods, would natural processes be able to sequester enough carbon to allow de-acidify the seas, finally allowing calcium to be used as an exoskeleton again? Or is earth's future going to be predominantly boneless?

Sure, life will never be extinguished until the seas have boiled away (and even then...) but the incredible biodiversity of life we had a few hundred years ago is likely never to return... ever.

| the incredible biodiversity of life we had a few hundred years ago.

I've been thinking a lot recently about the biblical creation story in the context of trying to understand how I can effectively communicate regarding climate change with those around me who are religious.

Some Christians are amenable to the concept of human destruction of the environment being sinful, but even then, I sometimes wonder if their tendency to rely on grace hinders their ability to be proactive in their worldview regarding it.

Anyway, most people know the story of Adam and Eve as an explanation of the imperfection of life. "Why did God make life so hard? Why is there evil?" Humans did something knowingly bad and we now have to pay the consequence of having a harder life. Fine.

I just can't shake this feeling that maybe that story is a prophecy more than a prologue. I look around and see all the incredible beauty of the natural world; the amazing cornucopia of life, the incredible desolation of space, the warm gifts we give each other in the form of culture, food, love. Seems like life is really ok if you have family and can put good food on the table every night, right?

So what happens if we keep breaking the natural order of things? What happens when all the animals bigger than us are dead? When the soil drys up and blows away? When we've put enough pesticides and antibiotics and plastics into our rivers and oceans and overfished them to the point where our children won't know the concept of seafood like we did because it doesn't exist anymore? What happens then? I think only then we realize that what we had before looked pretty close to Eden.

It's completely thinkable that we've already caused the extinction of some organism with an adaptation that humanity will desperately need in the future. Our science is good but it's almost nothing compared to the machinations of nature itself when it comes to revealing fundamental truth about reality.

I only hope we can turn the tide.

You write well, your musings there were enjoyable to read.

All of the Old Testament is interpretive metaphor, so the original Fall story can work equally well as both prophecy and prologue.

The Fall deals with loss of innocence and the acceptance of consequences, which is a parable that has the remarkable flexibility to work at any level. Every decade for the last 100 years, we could safely say that civilisation as a whole was less innocent than the decade before it, in that we were more aware of ourselves and our impact on each other and the environment. With each generation of awareness we are imbued with more responsibility to take care of ourselves and our world, but we don't do it because those that pushed the innocence-lost envelope are also the ones emotionally capable of externalising the costs of doing so.

The thing about civilisation is that we can't really envisage an END to it - we can easily imagine ourselves amongst the stars, continuing to lose innocence the further we go... I often wonder if it's possible to progress AT ALL without our cancerous approach stomping a steel heeled boot on our environment and on other people.

Is progress possible without suffering? That's a question for bigger minds than mine, i think. I need an economist, a sociologist, and a philosopher, stat!

> People have been complaining about what you're complaining about for thousands of years. What I find truly puzzling -- given the supposed madness of crowds -- is that things are going so well.

The people doing the manipulating are generally getting what they want, why would they try to pull the system apart?

> There is virtually no nuance in the reporting.

If you want to read ad-supported news, then you will be stuck with news that is intended to have the lowest possible production costs, and garner the most possible eyeballs. This business does not support nuance, because nuance is expensive and less audacious.

Nuanced reporting exists on essentially every topic that it is possible to care about, but it is often in smaller paid publications.

> Nuanced reporting exists on essentially every topic that it is possible to care about, but it is often in smaller paid publications.

Earlier this week I spoke to someone who wanted me to subscribe to a left-wing newspaper (klassekampen for the Norwegians here). I said my media budget was full - for now - but I'd like to add them - together with one from the other side at a later stage.

Then she says: that's not unusual, a good number of our readers also read resett (right wing web site that I usually don't read.)

That surprised me a bit, and in a good way.

Edit to add: I'd of course be equally happy to know if many right-leaning people read left-leaning news, and I've no reason to believe it is different.

People could read both to make more informed decisions or to take a middle position on issues. But it could also be because they want to know their enemy or to find fodder for their online rants. I agree with you though that it's always good to be informed.

I'm happy to read articles both from the political left and right in Sweden, but I refuse to read the anti-immigration websites by the far right. It just makes me feel dirty, and I don't want to be in their company. I already know that even if we start from the same sets of facts, our conclusions will be completely different, and there's no need for me to even see their proposed solutions.

Speaking of all sides, there's a Swedish web forum called Flashback that is a great example of this. It's very pro free speech, which means that you have posters who are openly nazis discussing politics with communists and others. You have to have a thick skin to read some of the stuff posted, but I'm really happy that there is a platform for these people to meet and discuss, because nothing gets better by only having individual echo chambers.

I think individual spaces are also important, where you agree with people and don't have to fight all the time, but we also need spaces for people with different backgrounds to discuss.

the issue with the "i dislike mainstream media" argument is that its usually made by people who have a simultaneous and unspoken desire to have the "correct" information and opinions gift wrapped and personally delivered to them.

I think mainstream media is very dislikeable, and this "correct" information exists and can be gift wrapped to an extent. The only problem is that it's not so easy: if you want true education, get books on the matter (e.g. middle east history and current affairs). Vastly more valuable than trying to grasp the torrent of sensationalist news snippets. Not everyone has the commitment to do so. I'm not sure in that case if it's better to read no news at all or only read news (and no detailed reporting); I'm inclined to think no news is better. If you're not willing to question, contextualize and integrate information that's offered, better not take it, waste of time (or worse when it is skewed).

contrarians are superficially similar to skeptics.

i like this

So read something like The Economist or the paper version of the NYT?

The NYT I definitely now class with all the rest. In my opinion The Economist stands alone as the only publication I can trust to be nuanced and informative.

I agree that The New York Times can be pretty terrible (a lot depends on the reporters and editors of a particular piece), but I have to say that I also find The Economist to be pretty shallow and often wrong. The best part about The Economist is its breadth (a lot of stories from all over the world), but a story about a water purification project in Uganda (for example) isn't going to be useful for most Americans (and I assume Ugandans would have better sources to read). It's mostly infotainment.

I'd say the Economist, Bloomberg, Bellingcat, and fivethirtyeight all have good signal to noise ratios.

Bloomberg (the website) is garbage, FT is far better. Bloomberg journalists are compensated for stories that “move markets”. Ridiculous.

I would really like a free Bloomberg terminal tho

>Bloomberg journalists are compensated for stories that “move markets”.

Possibly, but that is fundamentally different from infotainment. Even with that bias, Bloomberg never writes an article which fails to answer the most basic questions one could ask about a given story (unlike most "news" [1]). I also qualify them as decent because they generally report trends not anecdotes. Contrast with your local TV station running 1000 crime stories a week no matter the crime stats.

[1]https://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/why-tv-news-is-a-waste-of-human...

This! Whatever its flaws, the fact that it doesn't share the most pernicious ones of most online news sources counts for something. I refuse to pay to access Bloomberg as long as he is running for President, but it would probably be worth subscribing to otherwise.

Bloomberg posts plenty of articles in my area of expertise that are riddled with faults.

I find Frontline to be some of the most nuanced, deep dive journalism which is readily available.

Why do you think those sources are nuanced or provide decent coverage of topics? Are you sure you're right?

Here's one example among many that perhaps these are not good sources of information.

https://www.mediamatters.org/new-york-times/how-iraq-war-sti...

This is the answer. Journalists cannot work for free, and trying to run a newspaper entirely supported by ads creates perverse incentives.

ProPublica to me is the best. Of course they don't cover everything, but what they do cover, they do an excellent job.

The news these days has no attention span and pounds on the most catchy story all day. Right now it's novel coronavirus. I bet people who watch CNN are highly stressed out about it. I caught a few minutes during a tour of the CNN center and I was glad I won't be seeing that reporting all day. As soon as a more gruesome story comes along, the reporting will change, it'll forget about the virus, and life will go on.

There must be a better way to truly accomplish keeping government accountable. Think about your locus of control. Most reporting is about things that do not directly affect you, you cannot change them, and they have some emotional value that keeps them in the news. Where you can effect change is in your locality, or with your local representatives, voting in larger elections, writing letters to staff, joining advocacy groups, etc. I think the constant drumbeat of bad news makes people less likely to do any of these things.

This is easy to say and hard to accomplish in reality. Unless you give specific to dos and don'ts, you will have to change a lot of your habits.

I'm implying consuming more deliberative media, such as long-form journalism, research, "current" history, and the reports of advocacy groups you agree with to inform yourself and help decide what action you will take.

It's almost as if large scale change requires a great effort.

You can delegate your concern to a political party, which is essentially all you are able to do as a citizen in a country like the US particularly if you live in a state that does not have a lot of referenda.

If you want to learn more you can spend more time on researching the issues. Otherwise you could vote on a single issue, or just pick the party that is supposed to represent people like you with a similar hierarchy of values.

The US also doesn't have mandatory voting, so declining to vote just signals that you have delegated concern over civic issues to other people who are willing to make that (sometimes significant) sacrifice of time, energy, and money.

The problem with the strategy you describe is that if too many people use it, politicians can just openly lie about what's happening in the world and what they're doing about it. A voter who has identified with a party and is no longer interested in learning the facts has no way to correct for this.

Do politicians who openly lie about what's happening in the world and what they're doing about it get corrected? Now THAT would be news.

Yes, it happens all the time. There are many news websites that track and correct lies made by public officials.

I think he meant more in terms of "big media" instead of "you can find the actual truth if you go to these places"

I also meant in terms of effect. Yes, you will find things exposed in various media outlets. But if I turn on CNN during a Republican presidency I see people on the edge of rage-quitting life and if I turn on Fox News during a Democratic presidency I see McCarthyism is alive and well. And if I do the opposite I see literal propaganda. I don't think most of their viewers are really looking for truth but are basking in deep, echo-ey pools (or sensory deprivation chambers, if you please) of confirmation bias.

There are far better news outlets, and I agree that press and media need to exist and be free for the purpose proposed above, I would just argue that in the most popular media, that isn't really what's happening for most of their audience, and I personally am far happier not seeking out mainstream news myself because of how sensationalist and biased most of it is. I'll eat my hotel breakfasts and airport snacks somewhere other than in front of the complimentary TV.

Perhaps, but there are usually people in positions of power that care and for better or worse probably have more influence than the general electorate.

It's not a strategy, it's a choice to be happy. I don't have control over other people, and I don't want it.

There's a simpler solution if you don't want to exert control over other people. Don't vote.

Here's the secret, most "news" makes your view of the world less accurate, not more. So like with many things, the key is quality over quantity.

Check out the Media Bias Chart: https://www.adfontesmedia.com/static-mbc/?v=402f03a963ba

To know what's going on you only need 10 minutes a day skimming stories from a few outlets at the top of the triangle. You can have a remarkably well rounded knowledge of global affairs just from following Reuters' freely available Top News RSS feed. 10min a day on that feed and you will have a better picture of the world than 90% of your peers.

Most people's media consumption is far greater than 10min a day. They stick to one slope of the triangle or another. The problem with all these sites as you go down the slope is that they get increasingly more sensationalist, and even when they remain technically accurate they try to paint an engagement-driving, adversarial, perpetual crisis view of the world.

When you slide down the slope of the triangle you end up feeling like the world is doomed, the enemy is on the rise, everything is broken, because that's how the publisher wants you to feel, because they know it keeps you coming back.

Cut your media diet down, spend 80% of your time on the facts, and 20% on occasional long read analysis from both sides. You'll get smarter and your anxiety will disappear.

As for social media... from a news/events standpoint at least, it's just garbage. A billion lost souls jockeying for imaginary status with imaginary people. Avoid.

> Check out the Media Bias Chart: https://www.adfontesmedia.com/static-mbc/?v=402f03a963ba

Where NPR, NYT, and CNN are deemed neutral and balanced, eh?

Such determinations say more about the determiner than the determined.

In point of fact they are all left of center on the chart, but less far left than say MSNBC, which I would say is pretty spot on.

Some other commenters have offered really good replies, but I’d like to reiterate the sentiment that most major (American) news outlets have heavily prioritized ad revenue and television ratings over their public duty to inform the people.

These days, I get most of my headlines from Reuters and AP. I also respect The Economist, Propublica, FiveThirtyEight, Washington Post, The Intercept, Miami Herald, Buzzfeed News, and New York Times. Of course, some more than others, but it seems that the quality of the journalism emerging from these outlets is relying more on the integrity of individual journalists with great track records as opposed to great teams (think Spotlight).

I’m sure just about every commenter here who follows the news knows of at least one article that tarnished the reputation of each of those outlets at some point in time. Maybe it was a low-effort payila piece, or a poorly written opinion column, or just straightup poor journalism that never got a retraction.

payila -> payola

May I suggest consuming news through text rather than video? In fact, the more boring the better.

I see a big issue is that the news is frequently emotive based. In some cases this is helpful, when terrible stuff is going on. Other cases it makes mundane things seem worse. Or it makes things that don't affect us and/or we have no control over emotionally important. The latter is particularly harmful, imo. A lot of these make you feel like you are more informed than you are, because you're highly emotionally invested. I think video really promotes the emotional investment.

But the boring stuff allows you to become emotionally invested in what __you__ care about. Then the lack of emotional forcing makes you feel less informed, so if you care you spend time finding out more. This prevents people from being "armchair researchers" and fighting.

Where do you get the boring stuff? Please, I'm drowning here.

To be honest, most of the major news sources have the boring stuff. The actual issue is that what goes viral and is passed around are opinion articles. I particularly like Reuters, they seem more middle of the road in terms of bias. But I think one of the keys is to read from both sides. You don't have to agree with the side that you don't lean towards, but it is extremely helpful to know the content that those people are ingesting. If you want nuance, you really have to try to see things from other peoples' perspectives. This is pretty hard. I think being "so connected" this is actually more challenging, because it is easier to find your niche inside of a niche inside of a niche and stay there, instead of having to deal with different niches.

Short form, Reuters and AP. PBS NewsHour is excellent if you prefer an audiovisual presentation.

Personally, I find all of that to be too much of a firehouse, and prefer longer form reads.

For those, I’d recommend subscribing to physical copies of magazines (or digital copies of the physical copies).

Something about the pieces of paper or emails in my inbox beckons me to read. Some magazines (New Yorker, Economist, even WIRED) have first rate long form journalism.

They’ll usually have at least one substantial article that’s deeply or tangentially related to current news blurbs, so you stay “in the loop”.

Magazines are nice because they seem to respect the reader’s autonomy and intellectual curiosity, by avoiding tantrums, outrage, and diatribes, and focusing instead on nuance and themes. It’s a more literary way of digesting current events than twitter or what have you, and it can even be relaxing!

Audio also works well. I've been listening to the NPR News Now podcast, as well as NPR's Planet Money.

When I'm feeling a little more capacity for the news cycle, I might also listen to NPR's Up First, NYT's The Daily, and NPR's The Indicator.

Reuters and AP are the news wire services from which most new networks get their news. They are both super boring and terse, and there are RSS feeds for both.

Local papers?

I actually hold a more optimistic view toward the effect of people not staying up to date with the news, I feel like a good part of reason why there are so much anger in the world right now, and political spectrum becoming more extreme is partially due to how news get reported, you rarely rarely see an objective view of matters on news. They're often used as PR outlets for political parties.

>I absolutely understand what you're saying. But part of me feels an obligation to be informed to hold those in power accountable.

So, how does that work out for you?

If you encourage your neighbors to vote, local politicians will pay more attention to your area. I doubt it goes much broader than that.

You could say the same about not voting.

Well, if you can say the same thing about voting and not voting, then it makes not much of a difference either way...

In the context of the article and the point OP made it’s working out great not being informed or voting. At least for me. I don’t stress or get worked up by stuff. I feel like I’m a lot happier these days. Deliberate ignorance is not for everyone but it does work well for me.

Here's how I solve this problem: I subscribe to the Sunday print edition [0] of the Boston Globe [1]. It comes on Sunday and I read it over coffee.

There's no practical reason to be informed beyond what's in your city's Sunday print edition. Anything more than that is entertainment.

[0] It occurs to me that city dailies are so out of fashion that some of you might not understand why I recommend the Sunday edition. The Sunday edition is the largest edition of the week and repeats stories that appeared on other days. It also includes some features and sections that are not included on any other day. If you only get one day, you want Sunday.

[1] This could be any big-city paper (e.g. The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Boston Globe). It doesn't matter.

A valid point. But I think that occasional (perhaps regularly scheduled) and mindful checks of select, thoughtful news sources that aren't overly focused on driving engagement with clickbait topics, article titles, etc allows you to stay sufficiently informed without succumbing to the stress-storm that is most news media. Think big picture, often long-form reporting vs. a heavy reliance on "breaking news", opinion pieces, and lifestyle-focused content.

(Some sources I like: PBS Newshour, ProPublica, the Economist, the Financial Times, the New York Review of Books.)

You are largely being informed by PR people and lobbyists. Also facts are generally missing or just wrong when published in real time. Books gives a much more accurate and accountable view of events.

Not sure how books really solve that. If I was interested in following the recent impeachment, what books am I going to read? I'm sure there will be plenty available within the year, but that's a little late for anyone who wants to know what's going on right now.

That's precisely it. There will be plenty of books available before November, and their authors will have had a few months to digest what happened and its aftermath.

And November is the only time it really matters. Until then, you can shake your tiny fist, but in November you get to make a choice that counts, literally.

You could follow it in real-time for the entertainment value, if you want. But if you actually want to make an informed choice when it matters, you'll have no trouble finding a book that summarizes it, and it will take far, far less time than trying to keep up with it (and remember it all come November).

Ignoring the news and waiting for a book leaves you vulnerable to revisionism. As people tell stories about events that happened, the events retroactively evolve.

This is something that is particularly noticeable as you get older so that you remember things 10 or 20 years ago. Of course, your own memories can be inaccurate, but people who weren't around at the time are generally completely unmoored because nobody examines primary sources.

> But if you actually want to make an informed choice when it matters, you'll have no trouble finding a book that summarizes it, and it will take far, far less time than trying to keep up with it (and remember it all come November).

I also doubt there are a lot of people who were following the impeachment because they wanted to decide whether or not to vote for Trump. If you already know how you'll vote, following the day to day political battles is, as you said, merely entertainment.

"because they wanted to decide whether or not to vote for Trump"

I assume people weren't watching to find out if he would be acquitted, either, although polls might be interesting to know.

Important people have been declaring odd things, like how they're sure he's learned his lesson, so it's hard to tell what people believe or expect.

Books definitely won't help you satisfy impulsive urges for 24/7 live updates on such minutiae; but then again, what practical use would you have for trying to stay perpetually up to date on the current status of the impeachment process?

The impeachment is already forgotten.

What impeachment?

>If everyone follows the advice of avoiding the news,

That would be a similar situation to everyone following the advice of not becoming a musician (no music) or not becoming an astronaut (the international space station would have to shut down). Our society is based on specialization and every group of friends really only needs one person who knows what the news is talking about.

It seems like most of the people I know who spend hours a week watching political news end up having no clue who to vote for when it comes to local elections where they have the most impact. I've worked the polls multiple times and have seen this over and over.

A lot of the news is mental junk food, and the idea that they are doing it for a better society is usually just an excuse for a bad habit. Even on the topics the news covers, people are usually left with a cartoonish narrative that's often worse than being completely ignorant on the issues.

I've been avoiding news as well since the last Presidential election. I can appreciate that this is terrible advice in general, but for the sake of my blood pressure, health in general, and mental well-being it's the best choice for me.

I noticed that certain politicians do their best to reach the media and news, and others just do their job.

Why would the news be the best source to judge your politicians?

I'm struggling to think of anything that could serve as a better source, or even a reasonable runner-up. Am I taking a broader interpretation of "news"? I would agree that cable news is probably a net negative; web aggregators like Google are hazardous, and following individually-selected news sites is a lot of work, but what else is there?

You can look at their voting record, or who they take money from. There a number of "non-news" websites that have this information.

Yes the important stuff is public record, but it's also hard to analyze the primary sources. Bills tend to have misleading names, mixed content, and non-obvious agendas. Context is important; it's not uncommon for someone to oppose a weak bill because politically the alternative is a stronger one, not inaction. The FEC database is hideously formatted anomaly-filled MS Access stuff. I generally let someone else do the analysis, but then that's "news" (or at least subject to the same pitfalls?).

I was kind of shocked recently because my phone nudged me towards the "front page" of Wikipedia with top news stories, and it was completely different from other sources of online news. In particular I hadn't heard anything about Brexit finally happening. Someone who is older than me and mainly watches news on TV told me it had been reported there. But Google News and various internet sites I usually read seem to have omitted it. It seems like there is a distinct echo chamber, and maybe you don't have to give up news entirely to get out. It's crossed my mind I could start reading a local newspaper again, too.

I think in a country like the US, where news networks can push a political bias (not needing to give both sides of an issue equal coverage), without accountability, it requires consumers to do their own homework on issues. I guess the question is, why not optimize and cut the news out of the middle?

It might be a benefit. Being misinformed could be worse than being uninformed.

“Hold those in power accountable” could mean many different things, but if you’re referring primarily to voting, then reviewing high quality sources every few weeks or once a month will probably give you better information then following the daily news cycle.

I think if people in general took that approach, the effect on the government would be positive. Citizens consuming politics as entertainment and politicians approaching their job like YouTube celebrities are doing enormous damage.

> reviewing high quality sources every few weeks or once a month will probably give you better information then following the daily news cycle.

I have found this to be effective. I'll read something like Reuters a few times a month. Events that are major that I need to care about sooner are talked about and I can't escape, so I go read up on them.

The truth is that there's not enough happening every day that needs your attention for you to stay informed (at least informed enough. Because we can't all be experts on everything, which I think the daily cycle gives you the impression that you are).

I've adapted a kind of middle road with regards to this. I don't use mainstream social media but I do use Mastodon; a certain amount of general news reach me that way by people sharing it.

For regular news I don't read it during the week, but I will catch up on it during the weekend. It keeps me updated on ongoing situations (e.g. Corona virus, presidential elections) and let's me see what things stick around. If a story comes out Monday and it reappears Saturday it means it's worth considering since it survived the 24 hour cycle. Looking back I also pick headlines that seem interesting to me and read them even if it's something that's not reappearing for the weekend.

This way I avoid all the SHOCKING BREAKING NEWS that generally amounts to nothing much, I stay up to date on major issues, and I see what things are actual stories as opposed to clickbait.

If you read the news regularly you can quickly form the opinion that things are terrible. If you read up on things you'll find that in general things are better than they've ever been. Better obviously does not imply good, even so it's way better to be alive in 2020 than in 1920 everywhere on the planet.

I agree.

I went from long time news-junkie phase to no-news phase to just-enough-news phase.

Being a citizen in a democracy is an active process and the active part doesn't have to take too much time. For example, you can check news just two times a week.

For those who are saying there are no neutral news organizations, here is my take: All people are biased. Organizations are made up of people. Hence, you won't get an organization without bias.

The goal is not to find organizations with no bias. The goal is to get your news from organizations with high standards of journalistic integrity and professionalism. Organizations that are aware of thier bias and try to seperate their news coverage from thier opinion section. There are many such news organizations (probably more than any time in history). Just pick two or three such outlets and you will stay informed.

There is no possible way that the means by which you might be informed today - mass media - is going to give you an impartial view of the world, without bias towards the ruling elite.

The ruling elite long ago exercised masterful control over the masses through media manipulation - it has been a hundred years of refinement.

If you want to hold your government accountable, you need to demand more leaks and whistleblowing. This is the only effective way of keeping the power structure on its toes - because it does everything it can to maintain power, including control mass information at scale.

I've never found the "News" to be anything more than "what the elite want me to think about the world" which is why, switching it off, life got immediately better.

Happy middle: subscribe to one or two high quality sources of news (eg. NYT, WSJ). Less clickbait overload than something like Google News or Facebook, and you get acquainted with the journalists’ styles, beliefs, and perspectives over time. Slower paced.

>But part of me feels an obligation to be informed to hold those in power accountable.

I'm curious though, how does the average citizen hold those in power accountable? OK so you vote, but tons of other people vote and are often uninformed about what is going on or are completely apathetic. The recent news about Roger Stone's sentencing to me proves how little power we as average citizens have in actually holding others accountable, especially when those in power have ties to other rich, powerful, and well connected people.

What direction your outrage on that story points is a function of what media you consume. This is of course just the outrage du jour, there’s nothing unique about the Stone story in this regard.

Reading news is useful if it helps inform you about issues that you can take action to help address whether via voting or other political action.

This is most pertinent at the local level where your vote has more impact and it's more feasible to take action on specific issues when you learn about them.

Reading about presidential scandals every day when you likely already know who you're voting for just drags you down and benefits no one besides the media companies profiting off your attention.

I think OP is referring to the news that only have entertainment value and one that does not empower the citizens but makes it a spectacle. There was a Hidden Brain episode just on the news topic. It is a great listen.

Here is the link:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-brain/id1028908...

Not much information is necessary to hold the people in power at the national level accountable. More information has little upside and significant downside in a two party democracy.

The exception I see is at the local level, where more information has more upside than downside. But I’ve also found social media dominated by national politics without much local information.

> If everyone follows the advice of avoiding the news, what effect would that have in our Govenment?

Probably not much. Lots of information that people get from the news is misleading at best anyway.

And you can do simple retrospective voting without reading the news: did I do well in the last four years? Then re-elect the party in power. Things are going badly? Then vote for an opposition party.

> did I do well in the last four years?

As in you did you personally do well financially or what have you? So you're voting as the ethical equivalent of a four year old?

The rule of law is threatened by a subtle erosion of norms in the administration of justice, but your 401k's up, so let's vote the incumbents back in?

If you want a vote that actual changes things, vote with your feet.

That vote has an enormous impact on your own life. Bigger than any ballot box.

But it also has a comparatively big impact on the place you leave behind and the place you are joining. Just your tax revenue alone will be so much more impactful than your marginal vote was.

> As in you did you personally do well financially or what have you? So you're voting as the ethical equivalent of a four year old?

Yes. But that's not because I think it's a particularly good way to vote; I just think that it would be an improvement on what people are doing de facto. See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter

Problem is these days the news tends to be more narrative than plain news.

Even things that weren’t typically political or politicized these days they are.

Instead of reading the news you can try reading books about current and past events. History books of all stripes will inform you more than the goldfish memory of newspapers ever could. I like that I pay for a book. It makes the transaction very transparent, unlike the hidden costs of newspaper advertising.

What if the news are so distorted and harmful that it's making you worse at holding them accountable ?

I feel like the news are doing a bad job at keeping people informed about important matters anyways. They report on all kinds of other stuff just to get the eyeballs for the ads that will make them money.

So yeah, I spend my time on other things. Like for example on reading stuff on HN.

Informed how? What actionable information is the news providing that impacts you as a voter?

> But part of me feels an obligation to be informed to hold those in power accountable.

This falls into the "circle of concern > circle of influence" problem identified by Covey.

If rightwing governments ever became the good guys I guarantee you'd hear about it.