You could spend the time you'd have spent reading the news instead reading actual books on history, poli sci and political philosophy, ethics, economics, et c., and then figure out who the right person to vote for is and what the right votes on various issues are in like 30 minutes of search-n-skim per election.
This pattern would result in a far better-informed voter than one who diligently follows the news all the time but doesn't read many books. The amount of news you need to read to make informed decisions at the ballot box is usually tiny, if you have the background to understand the news—and if you don't, consuming more news won't help much with that. Meanwhile, it takes a ton of close book-reading before you start to see diminishing returns on that front.
I have a BA in history and a MPA in public administration. I have already done a ton of that work: research, academic analysis/writing, and understanding. I agree these things are INCREDIBLY important to have a great foundational understanding of how the world works/worked; however, understanding current events is JUST AS IMPORTANT.
But; I'm done arguing w/you as it's clear your opinion will remain unchanged regardless of any evidence or opinion to the contrary.
Even if news reading informs an electorate, there's no need to be informed constantly when I only have limited opportunities to vote.
When an election happens, I can do a search of news on the candidates, and for discussions of the other issues put to the voters. In the meantime, by avoiding news, I can save a lot of distress about news that I can't change and doesn't have an immediate effect on me. (Nobody in this thread, including me, is great at avoiding news, me included... really important events tend to bubble up anyway, and all of us clicked into a discussion of an event that's probably not personally relevant)
It'd be different if a cat delivered tomorrow's paper to my door; I might not like it, but I'd have a duty to read that paper and try to make right what once went wrong.
My girlfriend says she doesn't trust the media, but she has to follow it to know what they're lying to us about. I've pointed out that the problem goes deeper than just whether they tell truth or lies. They don't just tell you what to think; they tell you what you're even supposed to be thinking about, and by omission what you shouldn't be thinking about. You can take the opposite position on every issue to the one they're pushing, but you're still letting them frame the window of what you are and aren't thinking and forming opinions about.
The only way to take that control away from them is to cut the primary "news" sources out of your life entirely. I still hear about important events from people around me, and I can see what people are hyperventilating about at forums like this, which is more than enough to know what the media is hyping each day and why.
That's the funny thing, I'm not out of the loop. When friends bring up current issues that matter, I'm generally better informed than they are, but I'm clueless if they bring up the latest controversial TV show or whatever is today's outrage narrative that will be replaced by the next outrage narrative tomorrow.
It turns out that by letting the people around me sort of curate the "news," and reading thinkers who write about bigger topics rather than what's in the headlines, I wind up with a pretty good filtered news feed.
> How do you decide to vote if you completey go out of the loop?
I tend to stay pretty well informed without watching cable news or constantly reading political gossip on social media. When I hear things like "the Supreme Court issued an opinion today..." I go read the opinion. When I hear "Trump signed an executive order saying..." I go read the executive order. When I'm talking with people about inflation, I go look up the BLS data among other things. If people are talking about what's actually happening on the ground some place, I will end up having to find some reports reporting things and ultimately have to weigh the fact they're choosing where to point their cameras to my understanding of what is actually true.
Some of these things are hard, like the "big beautiful bill" is 1,116 pages long. I'll jump to the things people around me are talking about, like work requirements for Medicaid and SNAP, and read those sections. I might go look up some direct commentary from trusted sources about it for deeper analysis, and probably try and find some real statistics to compare.
We have so much actual real data and original sources to go read, I don't need someone else to tell me what they think of it for me to have an opinion.
I totally get that, and agree to a degree. For me personally though, the news industry has become entertainment - TV news is hyperbolic, 24 hour breaking news for every story, newspapers (at least here in the UK) are little more than a propaganda outlet for the views of the billionaire owner where every story is designed to make people angry and point the blame at someone, usually immigrants. For years I listened to BBC Radio 4's Today Programme every single morning, until I realised that none of what they were telling me was actually news. You'd be amazed at how many stories started with the words "Ministers are today expected to announce..." - this isn't news, it hasn't happened yet. This is government PR. If you haven't read it already, I highly recommend Flat Earth News by Nick Davies [0] - it's incredibly eye opening. Reading it now, 11 years later, is even more eye opening - everything he writes about in there is now magnified ten fold.
Going cold turkey from the "news" doesn't make me any less informed about what is happening in the world, if anything it has made me more informed as I'm no longer just a vessel filling my brain with whatever some billionaire wants me to believe.
That "BREAKING NEWS" fuss is kinda a US specific thing though.
In Holland we just watch the news at 6 or 8pm (at least for those who still do that) which is very factual. Or we read nu.nl or nos.nl which don't really have screaming clickbaity headlines unless some shit really hit a fan. Which is really rare. I prefer nos.nl because nu.nl has too much celebrity news for me.
But we don't have any of that weird "Watch this NOW or get left behind!!" FOMO bait I see when I tune up CNN.
It probably helps that NOS is publicly funded so they have no incentive to maximise "engagement". Their job is just to report the news in a clean way.
I'm in the UK and while nowhere near as mad as US news channels, it's definitely been heading in that direction for a while. Even the BBC, our publicly funded station is like it now thanks to several years of the far right campaigning to get the BBC's funding taken away. Tune in to BBC news now and you're highly likely to see stories on "issues" that 90% of the population has no interest or opinion on, but some swivel-eyed, right wing fringe nutjobs have managed to push into mainstream news.
Not to be rude, but why should we care what you believe?
If there were a problem with holes being dug in the city people are not exacerbating the problem if they choose to just not dig holes.
Not everyone needs to be informed an act on whatever it is that others think is important. This belief really forms the backbone of the current, "if you're not with us, you're against us" mentality.
Whatever the cause is, it's entirely possible to just treat people decently without caring about who or what they are. That's where we should be encouraging people to get to, not demanding they jump into action.
Same. I have never really followed the news. Everyone always seems to be upset by something in the news. Meanwhile I'm happy as a clam all the time and just have all my time to focus on myself and doing what I want and like.
I wonder what you mean by that. What is so bad that happens if you don't watch the news for a day or a few days? A colleague might mention something you didn't know yet? I'm sure they'd be happy to fill you in.
Most of the news we see has no actual effect on our lives anyway. Like this crash. It's terrible but other than feeling bad for them (which doesn't help them) it doesn't affect my life in any way. If I find out about it at a later time that's fine. Probably when admiral cloudberg makes one of her masterpieces about it. I read the news anyway as a matter of interest and "nothing better to do" but to me it's mostly a time sink. I only read about 1% of the articles in the main feed.
I often go on retreats with friends and I hardly use my phone and the TV never goes on for even a second :) It's really nice to unplug. I can recommend having an unplug day once in a while for starters.
Your attempt at an irritated jab is just the doomscroll addiction talking.
Even for people that read news out of necessity, it can be curtailed down to only the relevant topics and the dryer outlets. I am one of those people, and the need to stay up to date doesn't justify the junkfood.
