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Comment by depaya | Hacker News Reader

I agree with the general concept that, at the individual level, news consumption is bad for your mental health and pretty much useless. At the societal level though... if everybody took this approach there would be no accountability for politicians or corporations.

How do we find a healthy middle ground?

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>How do we find a healthy middle ground?

In Europe we had teletext. In Spanish, but you get the concept:

https://www.rtve.es/television/teletexto/noticias/129/

Small paragraphs. Almost no bias. News condensed to be read on a small tv. No bullshit, no yellow journalism. Raw and short.

Teletext as shown on old TVs:

https://live.staticflickr.com/1453/25222724604_15d7a974a2_b....

Now they should create pages like this. Like https://lite.cnn.io or https://text.npr.org, but with small content, too. Not just the design.

How do you cover, for example, the behavior of the spouse of a US SCOTUS justice? You indicate that you think it can be done with "almost no bias" and "raw and short". Maybe. But this provides absolutely no context, which whether you feel that Ms. Thomas' actions are fine or reprihensible and disqualifying towards her spouse, you absolutely need in order to understand what is actually going on.

The context can be set in a second paragraph. With teletext we often (not usually) had a two page text for a new so you could get more info on important news such as major terrorist blasts or natural disasters.

Check in once every few months. That's plenty. Done. [EDIT] Exception for local news. Maybe every week or two.

Use the extra time to read books on political science, economics, and history. Maybe some media studies. You'll be a better voter doing that instead of following the news closely. It's not as if it should have taken someone who knew nothing about either person, but a lot about the actual issues and how politics works, a ton of time to figure out if they wanted to vote for Trump or Biden. 20 minutes of googling right before going to the polls should have been enough.

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