Ask HN: How do you read the news without getting depressed?

I can recommend the Farnam Street blog. It has an excellent article on this subject.

It may be what you need

https://fs.blog/2013/12/stop-reading-news/

Don't read the news.

Do you really have to read it?

If you must:

- Choose an rss reader and curate your own sources.

- Read long-form news periodicals instead of the daily news, which tend to be less toxic.

You don’t have to know everything that’s going on. It won’t change your life and you often won’t have the means to affect the situation.

For example, I don’t know what’s going on in New Zealand. I’ve heard vague things about the shooting from people talking about it but I’m not even going to bother looking it up.

People die every day for depressing reasons. This is just another event that is only differentiated by the fact that it captured the attention of a Western audience.

Instead, I’m focusing on other things that I’ve already decided need my time. Don’t let the news set your agenda. You can be informed on a slower cadence despite what people and the 24/7 news factory would want you to believe.

Listen to things like the marketplace or NPR podcasts. They focus on business and deliver things in a fun educational way. Don’t read mass media terror news.

One thing I think a lot people are pretty bad at is filtering content. We're overloaded with content now, and I hear a lot of people saying "X is bad because there's bad content" where X can be Hacker News, Reddit, Twitter the news, etc.

I've never really understand that, because it discounts the fact that there is enormous value in every medium, you just have to skip the bad stuff.

I don't even notice that I do it, but hearing that made me realize how quickly I scan any of those media and just cherry pick the content I find valuable.

Maybe I'm just not as curious as other people, but I feel no obligation to read or look at something if it fails a 2 second gut check of "does this add value to my life?" No doubt, I probably skip a lot of good stuff, but I'm fine with the false negatives if I feel like I'm getting the valuable stuff I want frequently enough.

It’s important to consider what “the news” is. Pre-cable TV, it was 30 minutes a night to summarize everything in the world. As I understand it, it was closer to a public service than profit-seeking content.

Cable news changed everything, because then there was all day news, and competition between news sources. To succeed, it’s about engagement, not education. This has become amplified with the internet. All of the incentives are in place to manipulate you with emotional triggers and take advantage of your sympathies to get your clicks.

Not only does this not keep you “informed,” it actually helps give you an incorrect worldview that’s overly pessimistic.

To get a much better understanding of the world, and how to navigate this sort of media coverage, read the book Factfulness. It’s a much better use of your time and it turns out that the world is a much different place than the narratives you find in clickbait.

I try to not read that much news and instead try to read books.

The quality of the news is decreasing to Facebook/reddit levels and designed to increase engagement by preying on your emotions. It’s much like marketing.

The book Factfulness by Hans Rosling has some good thoughts on this - mostly the world is getting better, but the news has to sell ads, which means telling dramatic stories.

If something is truly important, I’ll find out about it somehow (word of mouth etc).

That’s not to say I don’t skim the headlines once in a while, but let’s face it, it’s not really my job to know what is going on 24/7, so why worry about it?

You don't say where you are, but here in the UK at least there are weekly publications that give a summary of the week's news. Good thing there is that the terseness mandated by compressing a week's news into a page or two forces them to focus more on the facts, rather than pushing the publication's political doctrine (which depressingly seems to be the case in the MSM).

Stoicism:

Focus on the things you can control.

Also, try to limit your exposure to the news, be deliberate about how much information/spam/whatever you are bombarded with on a daily basis.

Anarchism.

Seriously.

Once you embrace the chaos, all of the toxicity is practically pornographic.

Tragedies are sad though. Just take comfort that they are less frequent all the time.

Some random thoughts...

I still listen to NPR. It seems to be slightly tame / a little bit liberal. (I need to listen to something during the day, as I'm a programmer in an open office.)

I read Bloomberg Business week,(actual paper edition) cause it's a little more business orientated and I don't see a big political agenda.

I have a kindle that is probably 6 years old, with limited features. I think it is awesome because I can just read a book and not accidentally click on a website...

I have stopped checking news sites, or have reduce it significantly. Zerohedge, splinternews...

What has helped the most, removing Facebook in 2010 and then twitter in 2017. That has been a relief and I feel as a burden has been lifted from me. Just cause I can, doesn't mean that I need to know what everybody thinks about a particular issue.

I also go to the gym for the sole purpose of getting away from the computer and phone. I rarely, use my phone while in bed. From dinner time to when my son goes to bed (about 3 hours) I put my phone away completely. I personally believe that the phone addiction is part of the problem with the 24 hour news cycle.

I don't have cable tv

Maybe you should screw your head right. What is so depressing about the news? Journalism has always been about sensationalism and clickbait, but for every depressing news, there are dozen little victories that the press ignores. We live in an age of unprecedented prosperity and the future trajectory is looking promising on multiple avenues. Millions of people will be lifted from poverty, hundreds of diseases will be eradicated, more and more people are getting connected globally and many things are affordable and will be increasingly so during your lifetime. We are sending rockets to space so casually that it's becoming mundane even to a layperson. Don't get me wrong, sure we are facing serious stuff on many many avenues, but you have to understand the scale and nature of everything that is going on. News only covers the wafer-thin cross-section of the global experience, and even then they just cover the fumbles and foibles.

Maybe what I'm saying is that you have to balance your diet with the awesome heroics that people constantly do and broaden your view of what is actually happening around the world. I don't have a simple answer to this, but what I can suggest is that maybe you look for science and engineering news, there might be positive sources for the developing human condition other than trashy journalism.

I try to add more structure to how I do things these days. It was not that long ago that I could just sit around for hours on social media, but it helped to have life goals that pulled me away from that.

I am only really aware of news in a few enthusiast areas, where it's effectively a source of entertainment, and a bit of local news(and then mostly headlines). When I need to be informed about something(e.g. elections), then it is a research project like in school. My experience with news is that the more you try to "understand" events by consuming news product, the more you get drawn in to a manufactured story of some kind(whether it's "scene drama", conspiracies, apocalyptic fears or ineffectual radical causes). But boring news - demographic statistics, business summaries, legislation, and so forth - contains all the whispers of the truth, all the facts that we very loudly obscure under public dialogue.

To create the world I want to live in, I must actively live in a way that creates that world, which means managing who I am and how I behave, and discarding parts of the rat race, while not going to full hermit/off-grid mode. Letting my grip on things loosen to play is OK, but I have to put myself in a situation where I'm not just looking for random stimulation and grabbing whatever works.

Things aren't happening as fast as 24/7 cable news needs to fill hours. It is a lot easier to pick an half hour to pick articles and a half hour in the evening than be consumed by it. For better or worse Google news is still valuable to me for putting multiple headlines side by side and the difference in intent can be enlightening in its own way.

Another thing is especially in the last five years or so the number of pointless articles that do not inform or do real anything that end up as news just is too high. The article that is third or fourth to the post can be 100x more valuable in actually showing references or deeper analysis. It's ok to put the news on hold to stop eating your time/money. Also ditch 95% of opinion articles as hopeless.

I read a lot less of it than I used to.

Most items are covered many times a day.

Don't try to shoulder every single problem in the world.

Atlas isn't merely a mythological figure he's a cautionary tale.

Understand that "news" is a filtered set of "information" packaged for maximum impact in minimum time. For those in the "news business" they are there to get eyeballs, clicks, etc. for profit or world view support motives.

Basically I am noting that all "news" is filtered, edited, and often creatively rewritten. This is to maximize the likelihood of a particular desirable audience segment to interact with it.

So, yeah, I try to ignore pretty much all of it at this point. I skim some breaking news blogs/aggregators to see if anyone has started a war, or if there are disasters anywhere.

But I've learned to take everything "news" I read with a kg or two of salt. Its worse in science, where creative writing distorts actual discussions. The whole "IBM quantum computer went backward in time" bit from a few days ago is a perfect example of how wrong something can go by ignoring the language given to the reporter/PR firm, and replaced with a more creative exciting (in)equivalent paragraph. This is just one of a plethora of examples, but the point is, you generally cannot rely upon information content being accurate in the vast majority of writings.

I am sorry I am so cynical on this, but honestly, you'll feel much better if you stop reading the "news".

Note: scare quotes "" intentional.

I don't.

I stopped reading/watching the news in the late 90s. I started by not reading the news for a day to see if there was anything important I was missing. Then a week and then a month. I pretty much realized anything important would filter though. For example I found out about 9/11 the morning it happened because it was in a huge font on yahoo's homepage (this was before they had news on the front page). For me I've decided I'm much better off. I'm not wasting a bunch of time on things I can't do anything about.

When I was undergraduate student I was spending 2-3 hours a day consuming politics in a wider sense. Of course this included daily news but also longer magazine articles and documentaries. Maybe that's just me but oftentimes when I see how people have much more bad lives than I do, I don't feel so bad anymore.

Oh and daily news is often presented in a very boring way, you don't have that so much with in-depth articles or even books about politics, those are sometimes even written in an ironic way. (Stating the obvious but probably it also makes sense not to read too many right wing sources with an aggressive sentiment - although as a proper democrat one should cross read. Still, reading a little tabloid stuff can be really funny btw.)

The principle of Despair-meme is simple, it is transmitted in the form of signals that simultaneously carry a danger and the impossibility of resisting it. For example: an endless stream of bad and terrifying news in public media, aggression from people in a higher position in the social hierarchy, nagging people who cause discomfort at the level of empathy, but not taking advice to solve problems, etc. Since the resulting stress is unsolvable, a closed cycle of self-reflection is created, producing stress and a feeling of helplessness, prompting a person to search for an accessible target for their sublimation and send the same signal to someone else. When the external signal ceases to function, the consciousness continues to paranoidly seek out any signs of a similar danger and inventing threats where there are none. So the meme of helplessness auto-stimulates itself. Thus, any new and unusual information will be perceived with suspicion.

Increased exposure to Despair-meme can also lead to apathy and paranoia. And this is just one of the well-known memetic hazards that the explorer of reality-tunnels should fear. Filter-bubbles and their habits to notice only useful things in your everyday life will also significantly reduce your chances of getting out of the pattern.

Follow Stephen Pinker's stuff, and remind yourself that the world is getting better and more peaceful but the media is just getting better at streaming what bad stuff is still happening direct to you. eg https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/science/steven-pinker-fut...