News is bad for you

486 points by vvsanil 12 years ago | 232 comments

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." Thomas Jefferson

"Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists." Norman Mailer

"Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation." George Bernard Shaw

"In the real world, the right thing never happens in the right place and the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to make it appear that it has." Mark Twain

"I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets." Napoleon

"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." Malcolm X

"The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands." Oscar Wilde

"The lowest depth to which people can sink before God is defined by the word journalist." Soren Kierkegaard

thisiswrong 12 years ago | |

''Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.'' Oscar Wilde

vojant 12 years ago | | |

It's so ironic to use quotation in this case.

leokun 12 years ago | |

> "The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." Thomas Jefferson

To be fair news papers are much different now than they were then. A history of newspapers in America will show you journalistic credibility was hard to come by early on.

hsitz 12 years ago | | |

I get that newspapers and the journalistic profession used to be different, and in many ways better, than they are now. Still, doesn't it strike you as interesting that brilliant, thoughtful people living at at the same time as those "better" newspapers made criticisms similar to those being made today? Thinking too poorly of the present and too well of the past is a common error. Or, on a related not, "There's nothing new under the sun."

infinotize 12 years ago | |

What is the point of this post? To say that journalism is a worthless endeavour? It would be just as easy to go cherry pick some quotes that say just the opposite without providing a substantial argument.

Joeri 12 years ago | | |

News is not the same thing as journalism. Journalism is worthwhile when it is the news, not when it covers it.

lukifer 12 years ago | |

Information is power. A nexus point for distributing and legitimizing information arguably involves more moral hazard that just about anything else.

oskarth 12 years ago |

While I agree with the sentiment, Rolf Dobelli himself is a plagiarist. This whole reasoning is basically stolen from Nassim Taleb.

http://fooledbyrandomness.com/dobelli.htm

http://blog.chabris.com/2013/09/similarities-between-rolf-do...

EDIT: For another take on not reading the news, see http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews

JeffJenkins 12 years ago |

For anyone who isn't ready to completely turn off the news spigot, consider switching to a weekly (or monthly) source of news.

I get all of my (non-HN) news from The Economist's audio edition. It's released weekly and they have a section right at the start about big things happening in business/politics around the world in the last week. It's no more than a couple minutes to scan, and 10-20 in normal speed audio.

The rest of the articles are at least one step back (since they summarize a week of what's happened). Many others are looking at some larger event or trend, sometimes with a recent event/anecdote as a lead in.

I like the audio edition in particular since I can put it on while I'm doing chores or commuting and I'll pick up bits and pieces even if I'm not fully paying attention. I can also have only the sections I care about included, which lets me skip the ones I really don't care about.

tokenadult 12 years ago |

Whether news is bad for you or not probably depends more than a little on what the source is. I don't watch television—for years our TV was in a box in a closet, brought out mostly just for watching the Olympics. But I do look at Google News and try to train it to give me mostly long-form suggestions about science and world issues from diverse sources with professional reporting and editing. That helps.

The claim that giving up reading news will make you happier is a medical claim in the article that is not backed up by reliable medical sources,[1] so I call baloney on that. The newspaper opinion writer here (promoting his new book with excerpts from the book) doesn't report the issue the way a competent reporter would report it, but just makes a bunch of broad general statements with no nuance. In other words, the medical claims about happier human life in the article are just like the made-up opinions we can all easily find on the Internet, and the article stands as an example of how we can find blatantly misleading "information" inside or outside the professional news media. I have no reason to suppose that the full-length book is a medically reliable source (the publisher of the book is identified at the end of the article).

Anecdote alert: I'm a curious person and I like to learn, and so one of the reasons I come here to Hacker NEWS is to find out new facts about the external world that I didn't know before, including facts about current events ("news" in the narrow sense). My personal experience—which, to be sure, may differ from yours—is that I am a happier and more productive person when I know, from good sources, what is going on all over the world and the broader context of expanding human knowledge. But I'm sure you can find an opinion column somewhere based on a popular book with a different opinion from mine.

AFTER EDIT: Good catch! Another participant here on HN noticed that the author of the article kindly submitted here has credibly been accused of plagiarism by more than one published author who works harder than he does. I upvoted that comment for what it added to our understanding of the article's background.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:MEDRS

nathan_long 12 years ago |

The biggest problem with news is that it's about newness and rarity. Whereas what we actually need to know is mostly not new. Eg, "man eaten by alligator" is a billion times less important than "decades of data say you will likely get heart disease."

Another serious problem with news is its schedule. A daily paper must publish something every day, even if nothing important has happened. An hourly newscast is worse.

My ideal internet news source would publish infrequently and be filtered to the specific reader. The second part is very hard. It would look something like this:

Not News - A car accident across town - A single crime in another state - Celebrities - Scandals - Daily stock market fluctuations

News - A trend of car accidents at an intersection near me - Crime in my neighborhood or a trend of crime in my city - Economic trends and their underlying causes

DanielBMarkham 12 years ago |

I've been trying an experiment for the last year or two. I have an app that collects commentary, tech and science stories from across the web. (Recently I added news, but that was a mistake)

I find I stay just as informed reading commentary, where I'm purposefully being manipulated, as I do reading news. In fact the news is better, as various authors advance various personal theories they've been working on for weeks or months, using the current events as fodder. Reading a couple of these from different viewpoints provides wonderful context -- and context is the one thing critically missing from most "breaking news" reporting. The only difference is about a 12-hour delay. Trust me, the world does not depend on whether I know something that quickly. Twitter peeps will annoy me if something truly incredible happens.

I'm also finding that branding, whether by news outlet, author, or social signaling, is a terrible indicator of quality. As I continue to flush out the app, my belief is that a better indicator is statistical clustering around personality types, but that's still a year or two away.

But one thing is for sure: I've been much happier since I gave up all forms of news consumption. News is based on emotional manipulation. It's always a crisis, there's always an argument, and there's always some terrible danger you've been unaware of. That stuff will rot your mind. It's always been bad; it's just gotten worse over the last few decades as the news cycle has shortened.

admstockdale 12 years ago |

This is a rather ignorant stance to take.

I know a lot of people don't like the doom & gloom of news. But it's needed. I recently discussed with someone who doesn't consume news about the NSA revelations. They were shocked. They said "why didn't anyone tell me?"

Instead of blocking things out and being happy with our ignorance, we need to change how news is done. If you whine about something, change it. The Guardian can certainly make an attempt to change the dynamic.

ctdonath 12 years ago |

So what source is there for "what you actually need to know" news? Something that's not afraid to say "today's need-to-know headlines: none." Something that keeps track of the status of significant long-term stories even while they're not catchy, knowing that something is happening, and predicting it will be a big deal again later. Something that dispenses with the "sensational but not relevant" stories. Something that might have a modest price tag attached, to dispense with the necessity to grab maximum eyeballs daily to sell ad space. Thoughts? Future YC candidate maybe?

bane 12 years ago |

News is terrible for me at least. For stress related reasons I decided at the beginning of 2013 that I would try and avoid daily contact with news (outside of anything important enough to percolate up HN, reddit and FB). I'm much more relaxed and less stressed and find that in casual conversation I'm about as up-to-date on important events as most people I know.

Recently I was looking for information on something and ended up on CNN.com and was awestruck at how much just absolutely unnewsworthy garbage filled the pages. Curious I looked around at other new sites to see if they were all worse than I remember and yes, pretty much they were full of gossip, misinformation and obvious fear mongering.

No thanks, I like this new system better.

npsimons 12 years ago | |

Huff Po links are like this for me. I'm no staunch republican, I just get sick to my stomach when I click on a link (often from HN!) that might be interesting and I am assaulted by tabloid gossip on the right side of my screen. I check the URI, and sure enough it's HuffPo, and it's always something scabbed from somewhere else (ergo, the original article should have been submitted).

chflamplighter 12 years ago |

I was raised on NPR and have used/use it as my main source for general news and find it very informative. Although it is not perfect, NPR seems to focus on the delivery of information in a balanced (if that is possible) way allowing me to draw my own conclusions. My problem with the big news outlets (cnn, msnbc, fox, etc) is that they are clearly a business and focused on profitability (I have much empathy for them as I do the same when I am at work). The problem is when editorial decisions are made not by what is news worthy but by what will draw the most eye balls. For me it feels presenters are trying to one up each other with outrageous comments as their personal views become the story at the expense of the news. I am sorry but I want the news presented in a sterile/factual way. But instead it feels like American Idol with the presenters angling for a book deal, more twitter followers or other forms of personal enrichment. Of course there is nothing wrong with self-promotion, I do it every day at work, but maybe I am old fashion in my longing for the days of Ted Koppel who for the most part delivered the facts as he knew them and purposely tried not to show emotion one way or another. So I don’t think consuming news is bad but the self-promotion/echo chamber creating delivery of that news is another thing entirely.

snorkel 12 years ago | |

Yes, clearly mainstream news has been turned into an entertainment product. Agree that NPR delivers the news in depth without all of the cynicism and noise that makes mainstream news so depressing, except on environmental issues, that's a topic where the NPR coverage will suggest you should have a bunker in the mountains.

mnw21cam 12 years ago |

http://xkcd.com/1299/

I grew up without a television - deliberate choice. My friends couldn't believe how much cool stuff I could get done because of this.

MartinCron 12 years ago | |

This implies that people are getting less smug about not owning a television since 2000, I don't see any evidence to support that.

Note: I gave up my television in 2000, and I am a bit smug about it.

LionRoar 12 years ago | |

I grew also up without a television. That was no deliberate choice, my parents are orthodox christians. I was very creative in that period and I kinda miss that now :)

normloman 12 years ago | | |

So return to that period by giving up the tv again.

joeblau 12 years ago |

Already knew this, already did this, already got happy. I generally agree with the sentiment of this article. If it's really news and really important, I'll get spammed on Facebook (e.g. NSA, Superbowl Blackout, Healthcare.gov, Paul Walker, Nelson Mandela, etc..).

I would honestly rather just get my news from HN because the intelligence level is a lot higher than any news organization. While I may disagree with certain views on here, it's not a sensationalized conversation. Users on here generally have concrete conjectures and thought out responses which you definitely don't get on the news.

crazygringo 12 years ago |

I agree... but I think there are two important caveats.

1) Some news is important, purely for social (not informational) reasons. When you show up to the office, you want to know why everyone's talking about Miley Cyrus! And you need to know who won the Superbowl, even if you have no interest.

2) News does have explanatory power, but mostly in weekly mags like The Economist, New Yorker, etc., and occasionally in analysis pieces by the NYT. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

But to my first point -- I would love a service that would "curate" the need-to-know headlines, to send to me every morning/afternoon. Where each headline had a numerical score or increasing importance (say, 1-5), and I could choose to subscribe to all headlines of 5, and all headlines 3-5 in tech, for example. The important thing being that this is not a simple daily digest, but that I'd only receive it when there was something newsworthy -- plenty of days, you'd receive nothing at all.

seanhandley 12 years ago |

I made the decision to quit news broadcasts (TV and radio) some time ago and I don't consider myself any less informed.

Scientific research publications, local papers, special-interest blogs and good old fashioned conversation are more than enough to get the useful information.

It's extraordinarily rare that the TV/radio news ever contains any information that's directly useful to my life and I have better things to do than pan for gold whilst being subjected to varying degrees of propaganda.

aleyan 12 years ago |

I first encountered this line of reasoning in Bulgakov's excellent 1925 book, Heart of a Dog when a doctor advises one of his friends:

  If you care about your digestion, my advice is—don't talk
  about bolshevism or medicine at table. And, god forbid—never
  read soviet newspapers before dinner.

It seems to me that it has long been known that unactionable information is not good for you.

Curiously, another HN reader expressed the same [1] feelings about HN.

[1] http://anton.kovalyov.net/p/soviet-newspapers/

gpcz 12 years ago |

As it mentions at the bottom of the article, this is a shortened version of an article Rolf Dobelli wrote in 2010 called "Avoid News" ( http://dobelli.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Par... ). The first one was longer under the immediate challenge that people too mired in news would probably not finish it, so it's interesting to me that he shortened this prose specifically to post it on a news site.

ChrisNorstrom 12 years ago |

I'm a fully recovered Digg, Reddit, Huffington Post, & Perez Hilton junkie. I've been clean since 2009. It really is an addiction that takes over your life. It's like a stimulation that you always have to have. I quit cold by banning the offending websites using my linksys router:

● Go to http:192.168.1.1 using your browser, the default name and password is "admin" and "admin" (please change the password to a REALLY long one and write it down on a sticky note next to the router (if you haven't already)

● Click the "Access Restrictions" tab | Enter a policy name and select "Enable" | ignore "applied PCs"'s edit list | Set Access Restriction to "Allow" | Make sure the Schedule portion has "everyday" checked and "24 hours" selected | Enter the URLs of the 4 websites you'd like to block | and click "save settings" at the bottom.

● Sure you can come back here and disable the access restrictions, but it requires extra steps, requires you to get up, requires you to type in a long password. And by that time you'll have realized what you're doing isn't good and stopped yourself. The whole point is to stop the bad habit of subconsciously typing in Reddit.com every 5 minutes. It took me a month and after whatever chemical high I had in my brain that was addicting me to Reddit/HuffPo/etc. wore off I just disabled the bans and haven't been a Redditor ever since. I've visited Reddit months later maybe twice but didn't care and haven't been back since. I'm free.

dinkumthinkum 12 years ago | |

I bet you're fun to hang out with. :) Can you give me instructions for Netgear too?

ChrisNorstrom 12 years ago | | |

Well, I have started embracing both my masculine and feminine side. I like watching "How It's Made", "Build It Bigger", "Extreme Engineering", "Ninja Warrior", and "America's Next Top Model". I'm not familiar with Netgear though.

Aqueous 12 years ago |

If knowing the reality of what happens in the world leads to fear and aggression then perhaps we should be angry and afraid? We can't just shut reality out if we don't like the emotional state it puts us in.

protonfish 12 years ago | |

The reality of what happens is all around me - I observe it directly. What is on mass media is information that other people want to promote to further their own agenda. Whether it is for ratings, to get us to buy their product or to further political aims it does not matter (we all have our own motivations) but it is clearly NOT reality. The fact that you confuse the two is sad and frightening.

Aqueous 12 years ago | | |

There are parts of reality that you can't possibly witness directly because you are located at a single geographic point. For example, someone suffering on the other side of the world because they've been gassed by a dictator or a terrorist group, or wrongly imprisoned, or they are dying of some easily curable disease. You would usually only ever hear of such a thing through the news media, and yet it is real

Things are not all one way or the other. The media is very imperfect, but it is not worthless.

No need to attack me.

anoncowherd 12 years ago | | |

The mainstream media is a tool for controlling us. As a random example, a tragic school shooting happens, and the media will be chock-full of people demanding more gun control, with maybe a couple of voices of moderation in between.

It only takes a moment's thought to realize that guns don't actually kill people - people do, so why are they whipping people into a gun control frenzy? I believe there was something about a militia in the Constitution..

base698 12 years ago | |

The issue is the news is usually out of context. Last week a video of a BASE jumper smashing into a cliff got a lot of airplay. The same week 100 jumpers were jumping 4 times a day without incident in the same area. There were some obvious takeaways from the incident and causes. The news always reports as har, har isn't that nuts?

They do the same with war reporting and airplane crashes. See the knockout game reports for further reports of garbage.

aaronem 12 years ago | |

If there's something one may usefully do, and which one would not have otherwise recognized, about whatever it is that's producing those emotions, then sure, you've got a point. But I don't think what's under discussion here would be such a universally recognized experience, were that the case. And if you're already doing whatever you can, or if there's nothing you can do, then why keep abusing yourself with constant exposure?

31reasons 12 years ago |

I have stopped reading mainstream news for last 3 years and its the best mind-hack I ever did.

http://neurographs.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/news-diet/

dinkumthinkum 12 years ago | |

What's a mind-hack?

iambateman 12 years ago |

The irony of reading this article on a news website.

My man Rolf became a journalist, worked his way up to the Guardian, and wrote a story about how busted up news is.

I look forward to the similar press release from Jony Ive telling us to stop using those blasted iPads.

etfb 12 years ago | |

One could argue that it's not news, so it's not ironic.

tunap 12 years ago |

RSS Feeds saved me from a life of the bl-ews. I've got my hand-picked sites ranging from world news to space news to tech news with a little TIL and Adam Curtis mixed in. It takes me five minutes to see the state of things I am interested in & bookmark any interesting headlines for perusing later when time allows. Many days, there is no later perusing, but I get an idea of what is happening outside my circle of influence.

Now if I could get a continental breakfast one morning without being assaulted by the talking heads squawking on every TV in every hotel lobby saying the same shit every same day.

robomartin 12 years ago |

Perhaps because I've lived outside the US and traveled extensively what really bothers me about US news is how egocentric it is. You get a horribly skewed world view if all you watch is US news. Also, when it comes to accidents or disasters (plane crash, terrorist attack, etc.) for some reason I am really bothered when the talking heads engage in US citizen accounting. Something like this: "A plane crashed today in <insert city>, 45 passengers died, 3 Americans". I get it, it's US news, but for some reason it feels really wrong to me that it is being reported that way. It's almost as if none of the other victims mattered. I'm sure that's not how it is intended, but it really bugs me for strange reason.

Also, US news bugs me even more when I am abroad. Watching CNN abroad vs. watching it at home produces different feelings. When out of the country I often feel the news is embarrassing. At home, regardless of the source, it oscillates between politically charged, moronic or down-right egocentric news. Most of the quality information I get is from non-US news programs or the Internet. Local and national TV news programs, regardless of network or political affiliation are deplorable.

I can absolutely see a constant stream of sensationalized and skewed news being bad for someone, particularly if they don't seek balance outside of their usual sources.

nashashmi 12 years ago |

Anyone find it ironic that a news agency (the Guardian) is saying news is bad for you?

diydsp 12 years ago | |

Yup. But like cigarette advertisers and spammers who intentionally misspell so only uncritical people pay attention, most mainstream news sources have so effectively created the atmosphere of _learned_helplessness_, they can tell people in bold letters straight to their faces, "this is bad for you" and people still pay for it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

dayjah 12 years ago |

Early this year I switched to skimming headlines and reading editorials only. In short this was the best decision I've made around media consumption. Between how much time it frees up and my reduced stress I'm so much happier.

This thread gave me pause to think about what I believed then, in the media induced state of stress, and what has come to pass. Of the notable ones:

- twitter would fail and cause the tech bubble to burst. Twitter now sits pretty on $51/share

- the euro zone would collapse and riots would rock the world. I actually skipped out on two trips (a wedding in France and a stag party in Taiwan) because I thought the world was on the brink of disaster. Nothing happened.

I only list two but there are a half dozen others that haven't happened either. The thing that really strikes me though, is that my perspective on others' has changed dramatically. When I see people spinning themselves up into a state because of some media (and quite often it is not reputable media) I feel a combination of anger and derision; somewhat akin to the emotional reflex I experience when a homeless person is drunk.

Havoc 12 years ago |

Yes, though its not that black & white. The optimal solution in my mind is to cleverly filter what news you consume.

In my home country "news" consists mostly of bad stuff. e.g. I glanced at a local news paper _today_...among the headlines "3 y/o baby gang raped". Being bombarded with that kind of stuff daily can break the strongest soul, so I just don't read local news anymore.

I tend to focus on finance & tech. Even if there is an absolute bloodbath on the stock exchange it'll never rattle me like the baby thing does (and I didn't even read the actual article). The stock exchange is just numbers...maybe I lost some money - so be it. That I can absorb without lasting damage.

I'd love a open platform that can process RSS that I know won't close/change/fail me. Google Reader had some ability in this regard but we all know how that went. Plus I think RSS might no longer be sufficient...cutting edge news is now on twitter. Not sure if 140 chars counts as news though...headlines maybe.

defective 12 years ago | |

I am the same as you, as far as focusing on finance and tech. I think there are reasons why these topics are far less stressful or depressing: Tech news and reviews are exciting when they are good, and irrelevant when they are bad. If something gets some bed press, you simply don't buy! Also the tone is often nice, probably because tech reviewers have a pretty good job. They get to play with new things all the time and get paid.

Finance is usually upbeat as well -- now, I get most of my news from Bloomberg, if that matters. But since hedge funds can't advertise, literally everyone in the financial news chain benefits from the stock market going up. This may tend to color reports to the positive, making for a happier listening experience. Giving everyone the benefit of the doubt that they would ever "color" a story, then even in difficult times, the focus is on investment opportunities and interviews are always with those doing well. Ever since I switched to Bloomberg news radio and a focus on online tech news, I feel like I can bear to live in the world again!

minusSeven 12 years ago |

This is article is very bad rip-off from the book "Art of thinking clearly". This book goes into each of bias that we face in everyday life. Knowing them can help you immensely. The articles just takes contents from the book to and try to infer that NEWS is bad for you.

It is very poor attempt. For every point discussed in the article present so many counter-arguments that are never discussed. Not just that some of the arguments are just contradictory. Not to mention there is hardly any research material pointed that made the author think that way.

Once it says that we don't think about news : "Unlike reading books and long magazine articles (which require thinking), we can swallow limitless quantities of news flashes,". This is ironic. The article itself is NEWS. Is it not making us think. Well if it not making us think this makes this NEWS itself is useless right?

The author just tried to create an article by combining things he read from the book. At the end he just presented HIS OPINION. This should not be NEWS !

sherman333 12 years ago |

If you attach a negative connotation to news then you're obviously trying to make people hate it. Essentially this article equates reading the daily news to a quick fix of heroin. But we aren't feeding an addiction when we read the news. On a high level, we are trying to stay informed. But you must recognize the deeper connection our minds make with new information.

The psychologist Gary Klein has written about how people make decisions. His most recent book provides several pieces of evidence that we have good insights because we can connect irrelevant information/ideas to the problems we see everyday (whether these problems are at work, at school, in the laboratory, or on the toilet).

Learning is healthy. Reading is necessary. The news is irreplaceable: not because of its pertinence but because its insightful value.

nashashmi 12 years ago |

If you were ever part of an MLM network, or quixtar or amway, or anybody who was ever big on 'selling' things, you would know better than to read the news. A typical newspaper has a ginormous amount of negative articles. HN is different though.

aaronem 12 years ago | |

You assume, I think without justification, that someone sufficiently ill-equipped that he cannot avoid being suckered into a Ponzi scheme, is nonetheless capable of recognizing the deleterious effect of excessive news consumption. (I've known a few such people myself -- they were decent enough, mostly, but generally encumbered with a regrettable excess of credulity.)

normloman 12 years ago | |

I'm curious. What does Multi Level Marketing have to do with news consumption? Why do MLM people know better than to read the news?

rodolphoarruda 12 years ago |

I've been hearing from more and more people each day that they have opted to receive curated news instead of jumping from site to site. Mainly from people outside the IT circle. They seem to me -- my impression -- to be less tolerant to ads then us, and even less to poor quality content. I think we from IT tend to judge content faster by just scanning headlines -- thank HN for that skill. Most people just can't do this, so curated news are a good thing for them, to the point some are actually paying to receive it on a regular basis.

mcormier 12 years ago |

Interesting article, but it doesn't seem very balanced as it only focuses only on the negative. Also, it is an excerpt from a dude's book which he is trying to convince you to buy for £7.99.

itchitawa 12 years ago |

Here's how missing the news affected me: When I finished my CS degree, I decided have a go at postgrad in another field. I reasoned that if it didn't work out, I'd just quit and get a programming job like my classmates had done easily. It didn't work out. But when I went looking for a programming job, it was surprisingly hard. That led me to change career direction. Only later I found out what the "NASDAQ" was and what had happened to it while I was indecisively loitering at university in 2001.

officemonkey 12 years ago |

Most major news sources are biased that the only way to get anything close to a healthy dose is (a) to turn the volume down and (b) turn the gain up.

Increase the number of sources, believe fewer of them, and use critical thinking. But only pay attention to things you care about.

I may be outraged with recent conflicts between tech carpetbaggers and SF residents, but I try not to invest any energy in it, because I've got my own local gentrification vs. crime issues and I only have so much bandwidth.

LionRoar 12 years ago |

I have done this and I agree. "News" gives a single side view on the world and it is hardly an uplifting one. Personally I strongly belief that the general public opinion is negativer then needed caused by negative news-feeding. In the periods that I decided to not follow the news (opting out :)) I felt better and more relaxed. In the mean time I did not miss any big news and what I missed turned out not to be important. Easily to do as an experiment.

delinka 12 years ago |

Information overload is depressing. No, I mean it can cause depression. Mild perhaps as opposed to clinical, but you're more stressed when overloaded. My first thoughts on reading the title, however, went here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9pD_UK6vGU

"Life is easier and the world is a much happier place when you're dumb."

nathan_long 12 years ago | |

Funny, I think news tends to make one dumber. For instance, you get exaggerated ideas about the dangers of muggings, lightning strikes, serial killers, etc, and get distracted from things that are actually likely to harm you.

enterx 12 years ago |

I generally avoid personalization of the internet but there should be a service that informs the individual.

It should be a kind of alarm system with editable preferences like topics of interest also location based warnings with ranking of information importance consisted of social component plus importance rating given from information provider.

However, these days news are bad all over the world so not reading them will truly make you happy. :)

dba7dba 12 years ago |

I recommend a book by C. John Sommerville, titled 'How the News Makes Us Dumb' from 1999.

One interesting paragraph on backcover: 'news began to make us dumber when we insisted on having it daily'.

As anyone who's tried to make or create (even just writing something about a topic) something would know, creating takes time. Now when something needs to be created daily or even hourly, you end up putting out junk.

FrankenPC 12 years ago |

I disagree. Without news, I wouldn't be able to determine which organizations are legit and good for humanity. Armed with that knowledge, I join the appropriate orgs (i.e. EFF), donate money, and send nasty-grams to the proper senator/congressperson when needed.

The caveat is that it's necessary to know which news is garbage and which is meaningful. Clue: meaningful news is not typically popular.

pbhjpbhj 12 years ago |

Ostensibly I gave up the daily news a few years ago when The Times [of London] put up their paywall, 4-and-a-half years ago [according to Wikipedia].

I do read a lot of tech news however and more recently have taken up reading the headlines on the local newspaper websites.

For me it's an effort to help me be more positive about life as I have struggled with negativity and sometimes intrusive thoughts.

sarreph 12 years ago |

I'm unsure whether OP's intention was to highlight HN's potential for being a well of unhappiness (as the article would suggest). However, it must be made clear that this headline does not apply to many (if not the majority) of HN posts, which are simply more than just current affairs or news; that's why I love HN — it's more than simple news.

yodsanklai 12 years ago |

Totally agree. Actually a few months ago, I blocked the news websites that I was used to reading. I really see news as a form of noise rather than information. Especially all those low quality sites such as the Huffington Post and so on...

Not only they don't provide quality information, but it seems to me they trigger our worst sides (jealousy, hatred...).

ChristianMarks 12 years ago |

There is an opportunity here to create technology that will facilitate thinking instead of fragment it. Imagine a distraction-free internet. Our machines are programmed to exacerbate hyperbolic discounting, to replicate and encourage the so-called monkey mind. We much teach our machines to meditate. We must quiet their computations.

octo_t 12 years ago |

Like the old proverb goes, ignorance is bliss.

aestra 12 years ago |

Why TV News is a Waste of Human Effort: One Example Worth a Trillion Dollars - by C.P.P. Grey

http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/why-tv-news-is-a-waste-of-human-...

hspain 12 years ago |

http://goodnewsgopher.com

I made a news crawler that automatically filters out bad news articles using sentiment analysis.

I like to think it offers a good reprieve from all of the negative, depressing news you get inundated with from the major media.

olegkhr 12 years ago | |

The first "positive" news today on our site is about execution in north korea... I guess automatic filtering is not ready yet to such kind of tasks....

coldcode 12 years ago |

Happier at the moment but possibly a lot madder when you find out how terrible the future might become.

aaronem 12 years ago | |

Which is an excellent opportunity to study the practical application of the valuable old saw: "What can't be cured must be endured."

thinkersilver 12 years ago |

This news article summarises nicely why I went on an extreme news diet over the last 4 months. I broke that streak today by reading the article on the guardian about why I shouldn't be reading the news. I couldn't resist because of the articles obvious reflexivity.

nelmaven 12 years ago |

I don't watch TV news anymore, it's always same thing ever and ever: economy is bad, protests, war, that team won that game, here's the weather, a disaster just happened and thousand died and in the last 2 minutes is when they show something cheerful.

johnchristopher 12 years ago |

  s/journalist/commenter

Any journalist who writes, "The market moved because of X" or "the company went bankrupt because of Y" is an idiot. I am fed up with this cheap way of "explaining" the world.

pkhamre 12 years ago |

What is the motive for a newspaper to tell people not to read news? Reverse psychology?

gorner 12 years ago | |

Strictly speaking it's not "the newspaper" saying this, but an op-ed contributor:

> This is an edited extract from an essay first published at dobelli.com. The Art of Thinking Clearly: Better Thinking, Better Decisions by Rolf Dobelli is published by Sceptre, £9.99. Buy it for £7.99 at guardianbookshop.co.uk

Newspapers don't necessarily agree with the views they publish – though presumably they found this an interesting piece regardless.

dictum 12 years ago | |

Maybe instead of following web-native properties and cable news with 24/7 coverage, newspaper editors wish we all could go back to a daily digest (and a weekly recap with more soft news) of yesterday's events.

I know I do, sometimes.

dinkumthinkum 12 years ago | |

Well they are just appealing to a kind of Internet hipster that will likely continue reading them anyway.

ErikSlagter 12 years ago |

Nobody sees that this is just an advertisement for the essay?

Why would a news outlet suggest that news is bad for you. Thanks to hacker news, the article will get thousands of extra reads and the guardian is raking in the cash!!!

robbyking 12 years ago |

I understand the author's point, but as a long time SF resident, I would say local news is very important to me. Many of my day to day decisions are dictated by what I read in the news each morning.

pshin45 12 years ago |

It's pretty ridiculous to make a blanket statement like "News is bad for you", which is akin to saying "Food is bad for you". Certain food/news is definitely bad for you, especially in large/excessive quantities, but that doesn't mean we don't need it.

The amount of bad food/news in the world has increased exponentially in recent history due to the ease and low cost of production and distribution.

But like we've seen with food, the more unhealthy options proliferate, the more of a premium there is for e.g. home-cooked, organic meals. I like to think that Hacker News, on most days, is my source of healthy and nourishing news, and it's up to me to discern and sift through the junk that might occasionally get mixed in.

kabisote 12 years ago |

While it is wise not to believe everything we read in the news, it does not follow that there is nothing we can trust. The key may be to have a healthy skepticism, while keeping an open mind.

adrianmig 12 years ago |

I should have not read this news... i feel i little bad already

davvolun 12 years ago |

Yeah, ignorance is bliss, but, while the premise is fundamentally flawed, I'll direct you to Idiocracy about what happens with an uneducated populace.

seanhandley 12 years ago | |

Pssst. Here's what idiocratic actually means :-) https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=define+idiocratic&oq=defin...

acomjean 12 years ago | |

I'll second this.

The world isn't in great state, so watching keeping up on whats going on is by definition somewhat depressing.

Its important for me in my "democracy" to keep up with whats going on a bit so that I can make a somewhat informed decision come election time.

nollidge 12 years ago | |

That's a fucking work of fiction.

ExpiredLink 12 years ago |

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5549054

rwhitman 12 years ago |

News is also highly addictive, I've tried to kick the habit since I read the original article a while back but its been nearly impossible.

mariusz79 12 years ago |

This article together with Snowden revelations, makes me think that the Guardian is probably on of the last news sources that can be trusted.

Newky 12 years ago |

What is hilarious is that this article was Number 1 on Pocket Hits Best of 2013.

A reading app's top read article was an article about giving up reading.

jdstraughan 12 years ago |

This is exactly why I wrote NoNews.

You can check it out at http://www.nonews.info/

seanhandley 12 years ago |

I'd rather be uninformed than misinformed!

niamh 12 years ago | |

I'm with you on this. Upworthy is my news source of choice.

jerkywez 12 years ago |

News has its uses but at the end of the day its usually negative. Simple as that. Live happy, live longer ;)

satyampujari 12 years ago |

because of the fact that we discovered the news that news is bad on hacker news, I think (hacker) news is actually cool. This should make another news. Too much news for the day or may be its the lambdas on my screen: lambda f: (lambda x: x(x))(lambda y: f(lambda v: y(y)(v)))

sgt 12 years ago |

Just stick to reading HN. If outside news is significantly important, then it'll reach HN too.

Thrymr 12 years ago | |

That's only (arguably) true for issues of national or global importance. It is also important to be an informed citizen and voter on state and local issues, and many local news sources are woefully inadequate. Many states and towns have local referendums and elections held at times of no national election, counting on apathy, ignorance and low turnout to be able to more easily sway the vote.

dinkumthinkum 12 years ago | |

... But if you only read HN ... Let's say that news is really as bad as everyone is saying, that must mean that people are basically mindless and necessarily believe everything simply because they consume it ... Ok, but if that's case and you only consume HN comments and believe the general echo chamber ... I think you will end up with a bizarre conception of the real world ...

tibbon 12 years ago |

I would have read this article, but according to the title... I probably shouldn't.

markyc 12 years ago | |

not all articles can be classified as "news"

diydsp 12 years ago | | |

Excellent point. I've been debating with my gf a lot lately about the diff. b/t "information" and "observations." I find many articles are simply observations... like molecules in bloodstream, they float around, but only rarely combine into anything worthwhile, as compared to controlled chemical reactions in which ideas and structures combine meaningfully.

thomasahle 12 years ago |

"Why I've stopped [perfectly normal thing] and you should too!"

xacaxulu 12 years ago |

News is bad for you, except for this bit of news explaining how news is bad.

luckysahaf 12 years ago |

good one! But I assume its hard to completely banish news. It comes everywhere, on Facebook and daily routines.

Kluny 12 years ago |

Way to devalue yourself, The Guardian.

eam 12 years ago |

tl;dr Ignorance is bliss. :)

alecdbrooks 12 years ago |

I am often frustrated by news and think much of it is worth ignoring, but many of the points are not very well-supported.

"News has no explanatory power": I'm not going to argue that most mainstream news is even that good, but to suggest that "the accumulation of facts" is inconsistent with forming deeper knowledge is too sweeping. Readers of news can observe patterns, which hopefully they will check against more in-depth research.

Much of news' task to not the "how?" but the "what?" and on that measure, it does a decent, if inconsistent job: http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2011/knowless/.

"News is toxic to your body": The author cites a case study involving the limbic system that doesn't mention media or news at all. It may well be that "Panicky stories spur the release of cascades of glucocorticoid" but do they do so at noticeable or unhealthy levels? I'm not convinced.

"News increases cognitive errors": News is not an ideal way of challenging biases, but it seems much better than not reading news and getting information about filtered through friends with similar biases to you. (Reading carefully filtered news and books is probably best of all.)

"News inhibits thinking": This section only applies if you read news intermittently and let notifications interrupt you. Concentrating on a newspaper (or news site) for 30 minutes would not have the same effect. But continually leaving work for chatting co-workers would.

"News works like a drug": This section is one of the most plausible, but once again, it doesn't cite any evidence. Cal Newport has a similar line of reasoning, but he actually has research to back it up: http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/06/10/is-allowing-your-child.... (It's about Facebook, but the same principle of distracting activities ruining focus applies.)

"News wastes time": This is all about habits and boundaries. Like "News inhibits thinking," this problem could emerge with any activity engaged in on a whim during working hours.

"News kills creativity": The theory that younger mathematicians are more productive is actually unfounded. See http://www.slate.com/articles/life/do_the_math/2003/05/is_ma... or http://privacyink.org/pdf/myth.pdf. And this last part is pure argument by anecdote:

"I don't know a single truly creative mind who is a news junkie – not a writer, not a composer, mathematician, physician, scientist, musician, designer, architect or painter. On the other hand, I know a bunch of viciously uncreative minds who consume news like drugs."

The points about most news being irrelevant to day-to-day life and story bias are worth pondering, but otherwise this article overreaches. It is a series of interesting conjectures about the effect of news, but often presumes a certain way of reading or watching news. The evidence for each point is slim. I'm forced to conclude his warnings of "panicky" news with "no explanatory power" are hypocritical.

squozzer 12 years ago |

theguardian.com excepted, of course.

vacri 12 years ago |

A car drives over a bridge, and the bridge collapses. What does the news media focus on? The car. The person in the car. Where he came from. Where he planned to go. How he experienced the crash (if he survived). But that is all irrelevant. What's relevant? The structural stability of the bridge.

This is an amazingly bad example. Most news sources would be leading the torch-and-pitchfork brigade to either the relevant road authority or the architect's office.

I don't know a single truly creative mind who is a news junkie

There is a vast gulf between 'news junkie' and 'don't watch news'. The author may also want to broaden his social circle, because I'm aware of a few. I also find it weird that 'physician' and 'scientist' are classified as 'truly creative minds' - I've known quite a few of each, and it's a terrible assumption.

The article is an example of poor quality news - consuming it without thought is indeed bad for you. Full points for irony, I guess.

dinkumthinkum 12 years ago | |

Exactly, most are proceeding as if the OP is correct while neglecting that the basic example is completely wrong.

dschiptsov 12 years ago |

It isn't new per se, which supposed to be just accurate reporting of the recent events and facts, but that unprecedented flow of unimaginable nonsense, propaganda, brain-washing, manipulations, lies and mere stupidity no mind could cope with. It is just unnecessary stress (especially from modern "dramatic" framing of third-rate media) we do not have any adaptation for. So, just switching off a TV and stopping reading nonsense (about Bitcoin or Docker) is really a relief. It is like giving up reading /b/ dramatically reduces the likelihood of developing ulcers.)

The problem is that every fool nowadays could write a blog post or a comment which would be indexed by a search engine, adding a bit to the total waste.

amerika_blog 12 years ago |

Modern media is a good way to make yourself neurotic. Fear sells and misery sells. Everything else is not of interest.

LekkoscPiwa 12 years ago |

Of course. The news are depressing in the declining empire of the USA, how not to get depressed watching them? It's not like things are going into the right direction and each year is better than the previous one. The things goes in wrong direction and things are worse every year than they used to be. And pretending it is not happening by just simply turning off the news is exactly what NSA and the USG want you to do.

kimonos 12 years ago |

I agree on this because most of the news I hear today are bad news..

kingkawn 12 years ago |

I do not believe that news itself is bad for you. Reading about horrors and then doing nothing to follow-up is bad for you. But these days I do not have to do that. I am not helpless. I can see the Philippines being destroyed and donate money, donate time, talk to people I know who are from there or who are there now. This is true of any event. We are ruined by inaction, not by information.

I can consume any and all news and have it be beneficial to me. Not because I now know facts, but because I can understand each of the stories as a glimpse into the lives and processes of other people in all disciplines and all walks of life. In doing so I can create equality where, in my own mind at the least, it may not have already existed.

> 1) Return items that match some search terms I give. I'm > interested in news items about mental health, even if it's > poor coverage of a news item that mention MH in a > stigmatising way.