I have attempted to stay away from news media since around 2018. Around last November, I decided to make a complete cut and stop consuming anything "news related" from secondary sources like podcasts, reddit comment threads etc. I expected that I'd live in ignorance, but I'd gain some peace of mind.
This change has had a far greater impact on me than what I had originally assumed. First surprise is that I still find out everything that's going on in the world that's relevant to me or people I care about. Second, I feel like I turned sober for the first time in years - I've had soo much creativity and mental energy that bloomed out of nowhere within a few days after I stopped punishing my thought process with news from the world.
There are a few things I have discovered in the past few months. First, if you put in effort to find very high quality information about an event that you hear about, you will usually find something from primary sources that are orders of magnitude better than anything that's published on popular media. Second, there really aren't that many new things happening in the world all the time - 30 mins of effort a week is usually sufficient to be on top of everything going on.
There are a ton of people who will convince you that it's your moral duty to follow news as closely as possible. It's totally not worth it.
One thing that has suprised me is the lack of any non-virus news that is around. The virus and it's fallout can't be the only thing happening in the world at the moment! The only non-virus related news I've seen over the last couple of weeks is a couple of local court cases and North Korea firing something into the ocean. Oh and we had a local government election here in Queensland which got about an inch of coverage.
This tells me that most of the normal news we get fed is pretty much non-essential filler.
I’ve regressed a bit with news subreddits under 30 minutes a day, and will read links from friends, but I’ve found that it’s mostly propaganda.
> There are a ton of people who will convince you that it's your moral duty to follow news as closely as possible. It's totally not worth it.
Most “news” is either PR or propaganda. So is “your duty” to keep consuming it.
Side note: I buy all the Australian newspapers during the Christmas holiday and force myself to go through it, and it’s always a reminder how it’s all a waste of time.
And yet you're commenting here, in a news-related comment thread?
There's a limit to well I can self-isolate, and I'm sure I'm already taking every possible precaution. Being more anxious will accomplish nothing.
It’s useful also for non-pandemic times.
I wish we'd talk more about the effects of the media's reporting style on psychological health. Do we really need headlines and reports about individual deaths every day, live tickers, and an unending amount of notifications and newsletters regarding the same?
For people with anxiety disorders it can be total hell right now (talking from experience), and it's much less because of the virus itself than the reporting.
Curious about this term - is that the back-translated version of "Big Brother" from 1984?
Today I refused to switch on the tv and somehow nothing spectacular happened. I hope we are done with this news nonsense.
Radio is a bit better.
All the best for Italy, we were supposed to be in a week on vacation near Genua :(
We are closely watching you and hope your downtrend is real. All the best, ciao!
Thanks for the kind words. I actually did not even hear about a down trend ...
One point I want to add to what I wrote before: this stream of news can also be detrimental to interpersonal relationships during a long quarantine.
Long-term confinement can already strain some relationships, the news can make things even worse. Another point to avoid talking about it among family members.
The children are teenagers and they have enough work from school to keep them busy. They also have me handy, so we talk about their work quite often.
They also help with the house more than usual.
If it was not for the food which is a pain in the bottom to get, and the fact that one cannot do sport outside (biking for instance) it would not be bad at all for us (I am talking about our specific case)
It is true that we do not discuss the pandemy itself too much (as there is not much to discuss)
I agree. In Italy basically all the news are just about the coronavirus and nothing else, plus a lot of sensationalism ("we're all gonna die" style), and the Big Brother style press conference every day with the reports of daily numbers of cases, deaths, and recoveries.
It's so aggravating and anxiety inducing that I only check a news roundup in the morning and I shut myself away from any other news sources. Not ideal, but at this point it's the only way to make sure I'm not consumed by the constant stream of bad news.