[admstockdale]

This is a rather ignorant stance to take.

I know a lot of people don't like the doom & gloom of news. But it's needed. I recently discussed with someone who doesn't consume news about the NSA revelations. They were shocked. They said "why didn't anyone tell me?"

Instead of blocking things out and being happy with our ignorance, we need to change how news is done. If you whine about something, change it. The Guardian can certainly make an attempt to change the dynamic.

[normloman]

I'm willing to wager many people who do consume news don't know about the NSA revelations, or don't care, because they're too busy reading about the tragic vehicular manslaughter of an attractive teenage white girl who lives 1000 miles away, or about this one weird old trick for increasing productivity at the office, or about the 10 new indie releases you should be listening to right now.

Junk news can cause as much ignorance as no-news. And we have to concede that most of the news we read is junk, especially what you find on Hacker News.

But I agree that a self-imposed news fast is silly. If we didn't get news, we'd be blind to the NSA's betrayal, among other things. So lets keep consuming news. But we need to consume far less news. Far better news. A small amount of high-quality reporting, as opposed to the usual firehose of bullshit.

[admstockdale]

I agree we need to consume better news. Instead of clicking on the link-bait headlines, take some time and read that long-form article that took months or years to research. If we tell the media that's what we want, that's what we will get. They need/want to make a profit.

[AlexandrB]

> I know a lot of people don't like the doom & gloom of news. But it's needed. I recently discussed with someone who doesn't consume news about the NSA revelations. They were shocked. They said "why didn't anyone tell me?"

So I've been following the NSA news closely. But I'm not American! What actionable information has following the minute of the NSA revelations provided me? I can't influence the US government in any way. The most I got out of it was that I should move to non-US based service providers if possible - but this was clear when the first revelations hit. Did I really need to spend (I'm guessing) 10+ hours reading articles about the NSA's revelations?

I could see a case for following local news - where local might mean relevant to your industry or to your community. The more local the news, the more actionable the information. Nightly newscasts rarely focus on this though - they're basically entertainment, real reality television.

[untog]

What actionable information has following the minute of the NSA revelations provided me?

Encrypt your data better, perhaps. But that's kind of besides the point - are you suggesting that there is no point knowing about things you have no control over?

[aaronem]

Are you suggesting there is some point? That there's real value, to oneself or to anyone else, in repeatedly dismaying oneself over things which one does not have, and cannot obtain, the power to affect?

[untog]

I suppose I just can't imagine being content at being ignorant of the world. By that principle surely it's also worthless to learn about world history?

[aaronem]

Not in the slightest; the mistake there would lie not in studying the dead past, but rather in taking it personally enough to experience dismay. Taking sides in the past is pointless; one studies the past to take sides in the present.

I also want to pick on the fallacy I find in your equation of largely ignoring journalism and being ignorant of the world. Having in early life studied journalism without reference to history, and then later studied history without reference to journalism, I found the former to leave me bewildered in a morass of facts with no useful means of assembling from them a coherent picture of the world, and the latter to furnish me with the cognitive mechanisms necessary to derive a coherent, if of course not perfectly accurate, model, into which to fit the facts I derive from review of what I am forced to conclude is the rather slapdash and careless journalistic profession.

[jmagoon]

It's probably hard to have a general rule about something like that. My take away from the article was that much of the current news that we consume isn't particularly useful to us--it doesn't improve the way we think or act, it just makes us sad and afraid.

Like, say, watching a report about a kidnapped child. Or reading about the trial of a serial killer.

[memracom]

How about: Ask your political representatives for their position on surveillance of citizens and vote accordingly.

[admstockdale]

No you don't need to read 10+ hours of news about the same story unless there's new information and it has an effect on you. I didn't make that point so I'm not sure what you're getting at.

There's plenty people can do: develop a means to protect ourselves from the governments spying, activism, find out who was responsible at the top and try and get them removed.

I used to work in television news. I agree with you that some of it is just entertainment. The problem is that's what people want. Not everyone. But a good portion who never speak out about the news don't mind the entertainment part.

There's also reason to educate yourself about the world and culture without having to directly apply it. But that's another philosophical argument.

[AlexandrB]

> No you don't need to read 10+ hours of news about the same story unless there's new information and it has an effect on you. I didn't make that point so I'm not sure what you're getting at.

The NSA story keeps coming back around as new information is revealed. The initial revelation was in May of this year and information is still tricking out. Following the news means taking in at least this much information on the NSA scandal.

> There's plenty people can do: develop a means to protect ourselves from the governments spying, activism, find out who was responsible at the top and try and get them removed.

The only means we have to protect ourselves is encryption (where possible) and keeping things offline. Ok - done (after the initial revelations, as noted). As a non-american I have no influence on the American political process so the other two are out.

> There's also reason to educate yourself about the world and culture without having to directly apply it. But that's another philosophical argument.

I agree completely, but news isn't education. Most of the information in daily news has a very short shelf-life (e.g. current events) so it's not even an accurate representation of the world after a few months. Science reporting in news media is notably terrible - big headlines around single studies and results that turn out to not amount to much later. This is in-fact the opposite of education, it's information pollution because you're learning things that turn out not to be true.

[admstockdale]

I have not consumed 10+ hours of information about the NSA revelations and I feel I have a solid understanding of the situation.

When we read something like the NSA reports, we don't just think of what we can do right now to protect ourselves, but about how we change policies for the future. We look into what we need to develop. We look at how to protect ourselves without sacrificing privacy.

News is education. If you consume news about Kim & Kanye I would agree with you and call it information pollution. Good journalism is educating us. There's plenty of good journalism out there. Whether we want to read it and support it is another thing.

[marcosdumay]

Another non-USian here. Most information is always unactionable. In fact, that's a more general principle: most of anything is trash. So, expect to waste some time for getting the usefull bits.

Some of what I got as actionable info: 1 - Don't trust services. That's different from "avoid services", and very different from "avoid US services". Some times you can use non-trusted services, other times you can't. 2 - The US is messing with standard crypto. I'm avoiding eliptical crypto while I understand it's history better. I increased some RSA keys, sometimes over the old 2k bits "maximum amount anybody would ever need". I got some ideas for what to do when you don't trust your crypto algos, but I didn't need to use them. 3 - Don't trust closed source software. I already knew that one as an abstract thing (just like #1), but it was reveled that it's a completely real thing. (Also, now I have facts I can throw at somebody.) 4 - Don't trust your LAN or your hardware. Yeah, the first part is good practice - but easy to ignore. The remaining means that one must evaluate all his data worth, and prepare if needed. Ok, not really an action, unless you have data that isn't worthless.

[RodericDay]

this may be a little facile, but the article reads like a "psychologists have found..." version of "ignorance is bliss"

[aaronem]

The Guardian is the dynamic. Either it's working out well enough to suit them, or the institution has grown too sclerotic with age to behave other than how it does.

[dobbsbob]

I change cable news by not watching it. When nobody watches their propaganda tabloid trash anymore they will cease to exist and something better will replace them.

[admstockdale]

Cable news is only a sliver of the news picture.

We have yet to come up with a better alternative because we consume & we want it all for free. We cry about journalism yet we don't want to fund any. When good journalism is done, no one or very few people read it.

The key to changing news will be finding a way to monetize online content. Without this, all we will get is link-baiting and stories that are sensational to get people to come to a website.

[Estragon]

I rely on talking to people who share my interests and do read the news. Works pretty well.