Avoid News: Towards a Healthy News Diet (2010) [pdf]

&gt; Out of the approximately 10,000 news stories you have read in the last 12 months, name one that.. allowed you to make a better decision about a serious matter affecting your life, your career, your business – compared to what you would have known if you hadn’t swallowed that morsel of news.<p>That&#x27;s what got me to stop keeping up to date with most news a few years ago and I&#x27;ve been happier for it.<p>Being more charitable on why news is important though, news serves as modern day gossip, and gossip may play a key role in holding human societies together.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vice.com&#x2F;en_us&#x2F;article&#x2F;ne9ae8&#x2F;gossip-may-have-played-a-role-in-human-survival" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vice.com&#x2F;en_us&#x2F;article&#x2F;ne9ae8&#x2F;gossip-may-have-pl...</a>

What stopped me from keeping up with the news was noticing it being off whenever I knew a lot about the topic in question.<p>Ranging from glaring errors to subtle phrasing that may be technically correct, but insinuates something else, to -what I can only presume- spark outrage and thus increase “engagement”.<p>I can only assume similar discrepancies across every topic.

It&#x27;s unreasonable for most to go entirely without news. A good compromise is to get your news edited and curated.<p>I highly value having subscribed to The Economist for a couple of decades now. I try to avoid real-time news and read The Economist once a week to get global news. The weekly tempo reduces the need for the publisher to rush out an opinion on something that recently happened.<p>I know The Economist has biases. I think I understand most of these biases and take them into account.<p>I wish there were similar options for local news.

I think there is a deep dilemma associated with the news today. On the one hand, it is hard to be informed when the news contains so many lies, much of what you learnt from it just isn&#x27;t true. The very consumption of it is adjusting your mental state and making you anxious and less productive and those responses maybe to something that isn&#x27;t even true. But on the other hand, it is impossible to be informed if you don&#x27;t read the news.<p>I know I was a lot more productive when I didn&#x27;t care about the news and didn&#x27;t watch any TV shows. I don&#x27;t think you are a functioning adult unless you know the major goings-on of the world. People talk about the news a lot and it&#x27;s important for those interactions even if it is little more than gossip. I think swapping quite a lot of the consumption of the low-quality news with books and other hobbies is something we ought to all do and spend news consumption on the higher quality publications as a decent middle ground between cold turkey and continuous consumption of nonsense.

That was great, just sent the link to a few friends and my wife.<p>The article is over eight years old, but in modern times, timeless advice.<p>News addiction is a very real sickness. Just as I would prefer my friends to maintain privacy online, I would prefer my friends to not waste their energy and power by gorging on news. Like the article said, news is to the brain what sugar is to the body.

I disagree that people aren’t tuning out of news. I talk to people in real life that keep news at a distance. They don’t want to engage, they know it’s a black hole anxiety inducing clickbait. It seems a common topic of discussion is our parents who get get off cable news or being fed up with political twitter&#x2F;Facebook and deciding to no longer use social media because of news.<p>There’s a great article from NY Times about “The America That Isn’t Polarized” people not sucked into the correct news, just doing their jobs (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;amp&#x2F;s&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;09&#x2F;24&#x2F;upshot&#x2F;many-americans-not-polarized.amp.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;amp&#x2F;s&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;09&#x2F;24&#x2F;upsh...</a>)

A good little summary. Unfortunately, the author, Rolf Dobelli stole much of it verbatim from Taleb, something Taleb does not like:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fooledbyrandomness.com&#x2F;dobelli.htm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fooledbyrandomness.com&#x2F;dobelli.htm</a>

It&#x27;s frustrating how difficult it can be to escape the news, which is almost always some political outrage. Almost every remote server I log into has MSNBC set as the default homepage for the browser. Which means even while at work I&#x27;m treated to political outrage. It only takes a second to close but the exposure has already been done. And then there are all manner of public spaces that have some cable news channel babbling on. Same for restaurants. Can&#x27;t even escape it at sports bars now that sports channels have become political operations. Hiking seems to be the best way to escape it.

Does anyone suggest how to peruse news that is very specific to demographics? For example, my parents are green card holders and I&#x27;m a first generation immigrant. I&#x27;d like to know ASAP any news about government policy changes about immigration in my country.<p>Similarly, I&#x27;d like to know ASAP any news about government policy changes about the treatment of LGBTQIA+ people. Where would I go for that?<p>Really, I think the &#x27;news diet&#x27; thing is for a specific demographic of people that aren&#x27;t directly influenced by relatively subtle and potentially not-widely-disseminated news.

I long for a dedicated curated positive and good news channel only. There are so many things happening in the world that help humanity and can be reported in a positive and healthy manner. Perhaps Alexa or google news can just read out snippets of “feel good” news only and skip all the sensational,policitcal or celebrity gossip.<p>The other main point is that there is no need for urgent breaking news likes it’s shoved down 24x7 nowadays. Consume your news slowly in time, newspapers were great, you get a 24 hour period to collect thoughts and read well edited and concise news only that you can pick and choose over a Nice cup of tea !!! You don’t need to know what’s happening ASAP most of the time for all other local emergencies ,weather etc perhaps alerts from local news station apps or appropriate twitter feeds can help.

One thing that really demoralized me for reading news is I read some political books from the early 70s and realized that the themes, politics and controversies haven&#x27;t changed since then. It&#x27;s all the same stuff over and over again. Nothing ever get&#x27;s resolved.<p>The author says the most important thing to happen in politics in the last 40 years is Watergate. You could even go without knowing what that was and do just fine.

Political news can be amusing if you take it the right way. There is no practical need to follow political news until the last few weeks before an election.<p>Intermittent fasting from political and financial news is a good thing. Business news and sci&#x2F;tech news are more positive and stimulating anyway.

This is absolutely the best advice I&#x27;ve come across in a long time. In this day and age where news are used predominantly to manipulate our political views by the major media, this piece is particularly relevant.

If you’re worried about missing out on a topic, you can always set a series of Google Alerts for keyword terms to stay in the loop. You’ll also get a wider variety of sources and opinions.

Thoreau: &quot;Read not the Times; read the Eternities. Conventionalities are at length as bad as impurities. Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are effaced each morning, or rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth.&quot;<p>When important truths can be partial truths, then -- as with the posted article -- we can be bold in their statement.

I’m reminded of the concept of the “50-year Newspaper”. A imagined newspaper only published every 50 years and only containing the most important stories of that span of time.<p>Almost everything in the news is here today gone tomorrow and as the article points out, what seems important nearly never is.<p>In the words of Rob Wiblin, news media today is a dumpster fire.

His point No. 5, 11, 12 are particularly important to people trading financial markets. It&#x27;s such a common occurrence that when bad news hit the wire, market goes up afterward. The investing proverb says, buy on rumor and sell on news. That&#x27;s exactly what this guy is saying.

There is good news tonight.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Gabriel_Heatter#%22There&#x27;s_good_news_tonight!%22" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Gabriel_Heatter#%22There&#x27;s_goo...</a><p>&quot;Heatter was already well known for trying to find uplifting but absolutely true stories to feed his commentaries. (He was especially known for a fondness for stories about heroic dogs.)&quot;

Try reading Congressional Research Service reports,they often provide quality&#x2F;topical info.

This reminds me of an article written by Aaron Swartz: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aaronsw.com&#x2F;weblog&#x2F;hatethenews" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aaronsw.com&#x2F;weblog&#x2F;hatethenews</a>

Author&#x27;s a known [1] plagiarist though<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fooledbyrandomness.com&#x2F;dobelli.htm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fooledbyrandomness.com&#x2F;dobelli.htm</a>

How selfish do you have to be not to be informed. You have to be a white rich industrialized man that is isolated from the rest of the world completely for his whole liglife

Now replace the word news with social media and you get a new valid document.

I’m frankly conflicted. Ignoring news seems good for my mental health. But is it really the news? Or is it the reality? For example when you dig into the Trump administrations policies or behaviors it’s usually MORE horrifying than imagined.<p>What if the house really is in fire and we all just want to be in denial about it by conveniently ignoring news? We’d rather work on the familiar: our own wealth and personal fulfillment than face the real problems out there?<p>I don’t doubt the clickbait attention grabbing monstrosity is real, but what if the horrifying nature of the reality is more important for for us to know than our mental health? What if we need to focus on the crises society faces rather than our own personal needs?

This is an arrogant privileged position to just ignore what is going on around you. This is at best ignoring the trampling of rights of the weakest of our society and at worst being an active colluder in such acts.