[nomilk]

I feel like we're failing to accurately name 'news'.

The vast majority of what is offered as 'news' isn't news at all, it's gossip, schadenfreude, arbitrary drama, and frivolous feel-good stories.

'News' has a ring of plausible importance. I wish we had a more accurate name reflecting its mostly unimportant, worthless, and destructive nature.

[GuardianCaveman]

100% Agree. It's an entire article written about a celebrity or politician's tweet reacting to another celebrity or politician. It's an entire article that talks about some filler setting up the background, the actual embedded tweet, a paragraph or two quoting that tweet with filler in it, then perhaps a second reaction tweet or a bunch of tweets that random people responded with either positive/negative or both depending on what the author is trying to achieve or influence.

[lynx23]

I think you are drawing an arbitrary line to defend an industry that doesnt deserve it at all.

In my book, even the supposedly important news are pure poison for the individual, and at the end of the day, unimportant as well.

People that need to push a new or current narrative will likely disagree, but that is predictable. They dont want their hate-channel to be closed down.

[labster]

But if we take all of those stories out of the news cycle, the only national news we’d have left is The Onion.

[Dalewyn]

I unironically and sincerely believe The Onion is one of, if not the, the best sources of journalism in our time.

[Gigachad]

I’ve observed that so much of the news is published before the facts are even out. In a race to be first, they present half a story that hasn’t been verified yet. So you are left to either be outraged preemptively or just ignore the story entirely as it’s currently useless.

[wolverine876]

Could you give some recent examples, especially from news organizations with leading reptuations (NY Times, Washington Post, etc.)?

To a degree, that's what journalists should do: They are not writing a history book. They can't wait until all the facts are out or we'd never know if someone was arrested or accused until the trial was over.

[lynx23]

reptuations, that was a freudian slip, right? Reputation is obviously in the eye of the beholder... What is one persons reputable source, is a money making machine without conscience for others.

[wolverine876]

People can fabricate whatever they want. They can call a leading newspaper a child kidnapping ring. But reputation refers to something else - there is truth and people do tend strongly toward it; people make functional (not optimal) decisions as a group - that's how democratic self-governent has worked far, far better than any other form of government.

It's philosophical theory that human judgment could be just completely arbitrary and that all these arbitrary opinions have equal weight. But it's cheap theory - not good enough for the first day of philosophy class - and transparently wrong, and has nothing to do with reality. We (you included) make imperfect but not random judgments all day every day, using many skills and inputs.

> that was a freudian slip, right?

Your assertion isn't about Freudian slips.

[lynx23]

I ment "you likely typoed that word because you unconsciously dont believe in what you said", which is, stretching the coloquial meaning a bit, a "freudian slip".

But reading your text, it is probably useless to talk to you about humorous viewpoints...

[wolverine876]

Oh please. Try harder. How about some wit? When they switch to ad hominem, they have nothing of merit left (and no sense of humor).

[vachina]

Yeah, they use words like “allegedly” or “according to unnamed sources” to free themselves from liability in the event when what they report turns out to be inaccurate. In that case might as well not report the news then if they’re not sure.

[MandieD]

As the tagline for one of HN’s self-consciously frivolous ancestors says, “It’s not news, it’s Fark!”

[Dalewyn]

>I wish we had a more accurate name

Propaganda.

[lynx23]

This!

[haimez]

News is just what’s “New”. It’s name is already prefectly descriptive :)