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Comment by batty_alex | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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> 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.

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