Of course it’s not an explicit expectation, but the news cycle is dominated by a mix of 24/7 news and daily summaries. It’s rare that I see weekly, bi-weekly, monthly summaries. I’m thinking, is there really that much that can happen in a day and that warrants our attention? Most news are clickbait focused on the negative, making us feel depressed and feeds our negative emotions. I wouldn’t be surprised if the news actively contributes to the mental health crisis.

At the same time I think it can be of importance to have some understanding on what’s going on in one’s local area, one’s country and in the world. For me I think a weekly summary would be good balance, but those are weirdly hard to find. What are your thoughts?

  • Libb@jlai.lu
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    2 days ago

    Why are we expected to keep up with the news on a daily basis?

    If it is not faster? What’s the lifespan of any buzz news, nowadays? 15, 30 minutes? 1h?

    That being said, we may be expected to do that and many people may even be willing to do it, aka gobbing news all day long, but we’re not supposed to do that. At least, not if we want

    to have some understanding on what’s going on in one’s local area, one’s country and in the world.

    Understanding takes times (to read more, to hear various point of views) and effort (to conciliate those various view points we hear/read, and to try to understand it (aka make up our own personal opinion) instead of merely reacting emotionally to it.

    Time and efforts are two things media certainly don’t want us to practice because it will cost them a lot of money and probably, for a majority of them, their job too. Because:

    • Readers/listeners/viewers that are used to do efforts on their own (instead of being spoon-fed) will also expect better quality news (instead of the actual trash that’s falsely labelled as news) in order to be satisfied. It happens that better content does cost more money to produce than trash content (it requires more work, more time and smarter people, none of those being free or AI-replaceable).
    • In depth understanding of better content also requires more time to understand it. Which mean people will consume less news articles/videos/whatever and that news outlets will sell less ads.

    Too bad, those medias and the army of people working there need to sell as many ads as they can in order to pay for their salaries, they need us to be as stupid as we can be so we will swallow whatever cheap turd they can produce without even blinking an eye. We may even ask for more.

    It’s all about choice.

    Our choice as individuals, to waste our time on such shit content or to spend it on better content, and our choice as a society, deciding what we value more between a better education and information (which takes a lot of work, takes time, and cost more) or being raised as braindead morons that will happily clap hands everytime they’re fed whatever the latest buzz-turd is so dumb that even the stupidest AI can write it in mere seconds?

    Most news are clickbait focused on the negative, making us feel depressed and feeds our negative emotions. I wouldn’t be surprised if the news actively contributes to the mental health crisis.

    Most news can also not be that. It’s a choice. Not an easy choice, but a choice nonetheless.

    The news I read (I have quit watching TV in the early 00s when I realized what a trash can it was morphing into) are not like that, or barely are. But it does cost me money and time to make them not be clickbait trash. Which is sad since many people can’t afford one or the other, if not both. While other people simply don’t want to be bothered.

    What are your thoughts?

    There are still great news papers out there, and websites, coming from all political ‘trends’… Which incidentally is another of our serious weaknesses, one that is also over-exploited by trash media: our allergy to anything that would not perfectly reflect our ‘values’, aka if a news outlet is not blue, red, green, grey, pink, whatever our ‘color’ is then it’s worthless. It is not. But, here again, realizing that there a re great news outlet even in the ‘facing camp’ will take time and efforts (to read them and to spot the few that aren’t trash).