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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

Just turn on most TV news networks.

It's the Apocalypse about everything all the time. Everything is tied together. You've got "experts" willing to make dramatic statements about anything at all. It's always "those people" causing something.

Nobody sets any context. No real information is presented. It's just paranoia and panic made to hook people into watching more.

I always have this fantasy where I start my own TV news network and it's "just news". If the topic is complex like something about the separation of powers, we do a little intro to that, then the news. I'm not sure it would be popular, but at the same time, i'm not convinced it wouldn't be considering the competition.

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> It's the Apocalypse about everything all the time.

I just catch-up on the news once a week to avoid thinking about it too much. Yeah, there's madness, but a lot of it is beyond my reach. So, it's not really helpful for me to hear about what's going on more than once a week.

> I always have this fantasy where I start my own TV news network and it's "just news".

PBS News Hour tends to do this pretty well. The experts they bring on usually do a good job of just discussing facts and describing common stances on all sides.

Part of your complaint has to do with the deregulation of the news industry, historically. In 1987, the FCC fairness doctrine was eliminated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

It's no mistake that it gave rise to a massive number of pundits under the guise of proper news outlets.

> I just catch-up on the news once a week to avoid thinking about it too much.

For most people, you can probably stretch that. Catch up once a month, then catch up once every three months, then six, or twelve. Most people I've spoken too feel much better when they just quit "news".

I have mixed thoughts about it, myself. I like to keep up, but it is refreshing to turn everything off a while.

Also reminded me of this, a Lukas Nelson (of the red-headed stranger stock) song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2lild9nfps

Everybody likes to keep up, that's why drugs are addictive ;)

I found that "news" (as in non-local stuff) doesn't matter to me. I cannot do anything about the things that are happening, whether or not they happen changes my life very little (i.e. "whatever party is elected, my taxes are going to go up"), but they do weigh on my mental health. Just like with cigarettes, knowing that they're not good for you isn't enough to stop smoking though, and just because I've stopped before doesn't mean that it's easier to quit this time.

Even with the local news there is rarely any actionable information. So that isn't worth watching either.

If your city was hit with a terrorist attack or mass shooting is your boss going to let you have time off work because you don't feel safe? I doubt it, it's back to work as usual.

True, I meant superlocal news as in "there's going to be repairs on the street by the church" and what stores are closing down or opening up. I only get those from our local govt site and some private blogs, the local newspaper has changed hands a few times and is now just one outlet of a large corporation that runs the same articles in hundreds of local papers.

Oh wow. My local news (CityTV Toronto, disclaimer—have done some work for them before) covers hyper local stuff like street closures, transit closures, major construction, other incidents and success stories as well as overs a range of national and global topics. It’s not bad that way at all.

Sadly a lot of smaller town local papers across Canada have been bought up by National Post much like Sinclair Media did with small TV stations in the USA. Some independents still persist but the numbers grow fewer...

I've thrown out the TV years (it'll be decades soon!) ago, so I don't know whether the local TV channel in the metro area where I live is doing something, but from what I remember when I still had one, they did not. And I get it too, the costs to provide hyper local coverage would be immense. Maybe there's a chance for a mix of citizen journalism with more polished & professional distribution.

I've dropped it completely except for once every four years, on presidential election night, at a bar, with opposing networks on TVs right next to each other. Great entertainment!

> I just catch-up on the news once a week to avoid thinking about it too much.

How do you do that? We used to have a good selection of newsmagazines that summarized the week's news and utilized the ability to more deeply dive into issues to great effect. They've all devolved into gossip rags, AFAICT. The only exception I know of is The Economist; and they've got an unabashed bias they put into things. That's refreshing than the hidden bias everybody else has, but it makes them not a great sole source.

What I notice the most is that on 24-hour news stations, everyone is yelling. The correspondents, the pundits, even the anchors at times. Regardless of one's opinion of NPR's content, the tone of their news pieces is nearly perfect.

NPR does pretty well. They do tend to get whipped into a bit of a frenzy when interviewing Republicans about various Trump antics (most recently this Ukraine thing).

Edit:

Specifically this interview [1]

[1] https://www.npr.org/2019/09/27/764969584/many-gop-lawmakers-...

Yes, they hardly ever are forced to talk about the existential crisis we face and instead take human interest angles on the people experiencing the early effects of it. It's a very effective way to pander to people's desire to feel engaged without letting on that they may be next.

And it's true, they hardly ever point out how unlawful the president is, but occasionally his reps come on to suggest that asking "a favor" of foreign leaders to try and manufacture smear stories about upcoming political opponents come on they get fussy.

>If the topic is complex like something about the separation of powers, we do a little intro to that, then the news. I'm not sure it would be popular, but at the same time, i'm not convinced it wouldn't be considering the competition.

I have a similar wish, where political news is mostly just civics class.

I tapped out on political news and conversations because it's become sports for people who don't like sports. Well, it's actually worse than that. At least people obsessed with sports know the ins and outs of the rules and can rattle off statistics. I was having an discussion with a couple news junkies that knew all the talking points and fashionable positions of their preferred team. Somehow it came up in conversation that nether of them knew the three branches of US government. WTF am I even doing with my time?

>it's become sports for people who don't like sports

I like this description. I think it really does capture the mentality of most politics type people.

I do wish it could somehow better communicate the intensity of the politics mentality. Because it's not just, say, Michigan wanting to beat Ohio State. Because in sports fans of both teams realize, deep down, that this has to be done on the field. By contrast, the political types don't have these sorts of limits. If you're perceived to not be on their side, they'll kill you while you're shopping at walmart or playing bingo at church or something.

For the politics type people, it's not just what happens "on the field", so to speak, it's a more all encompassing "sports" fanaticism.

re: 3 branches of goverment. harsh :(

I try to think about those "fashionable positions" within the context of what i know about the structure of my government (the USA), and perhaps what I'd like to see it be instead.

There is a lot of bad faith argument, which is exhausting.

It would be nicer to see more of the principle of charity; but at a certain level of feeling aggrieved I'm not sure it's a reasonable expectation.

You sort of already have this with NPR, right?

No really, NPR softballs most of the ridiculous things we're seeing in the US right now. Rather than focusing on the very real humanitarian crisis of US border detention camps, we instead hear human interest pieces about how difficult it is to be a lawyer there (as the lawyers desperately try and send a message for help that is calmly ignored).

News about the new reality of plastic-contaminated water? Nah, let's instead focus on the legal drama of the lawsuits.

Climate change is real, sure, but for NPR the real challenge is that it's tough being a climate change scientist and how mean people can be to you for just reporting the science.

And I haven't even gotten to the political stories or the foreign policy stories.

NPR is all about re-interpreting everything about the uncertainty of the next 40 years within a lens of urbane detachment and disinterested compassion. "Just the news," without any mention of the existential crisis that you call panic."

It's why I use the BBC as my primary news source. They actually have articles explaining complicated topics.

(Politics rant) I really got sick of CNN and Colbert in the first year after Trump was inaugurated. Everything was about Trump, Trump, Trump to the exclusion of other important news. It seemed like every other day some CNN reporter did a hatchet job trying to make Trump look like a moron instead of just reporting facts. Where's the real news? The hatchet jobs didn't change anyone's opinion of Trump, they just played to their audiences' biases. (/Politics rant)

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