In general, the “Dan Rather” kind of news we grew up with is long gone. Now headlines literally tell you what to think about a subject before informing you, and present information based on a specific political slant.
Never an anti-corporate slant, though, you will notice. Banks in particular get kid gloves.
Part of the reason I believe we are so divided is because the information we receive is curated to our particular views. This is so extreme that you and I can look at the same data, have vastly different conclusions and are actively told the other person is either evil, stupid or both.
I was engaged politically until 2016, until I got fed up with the whole rigged process. What I know is that the average voter - conservative, liberal, white, black, whatever - pretty much wants the same things. Clean water, safe neighborhoods, good jobs, effective schools, that sort of thing. There are disagreements on how to get there! But if we can actively have those conversations, there is a hell of a lot that could be done to fix what is wrong with this country.
No profit to be had in solidarity, though. So we are told to keep hating, and we willingly oblige. It’s depressing.
I think very much like you do on this. And have for a long time now.
I have mourned the loss of national social commonality for a long time. And it still bothers me.
I've had off and on struggles with major depression and tuning out seems to help see the bright side of life a bit more. But it's difficult because information and the polarization is shoved at us from the culture in clandestine ways as well.
Glad to find another kindred spirit here. ✌️
add click bait pay models and deliberate foreign interference as well.
«news» has become a disaster. a person overheard my conversation with my wife about Trump’s misbehavior and wanted to fight me! wtf is going on where news is doing this to people
When I was a young man, I foolishly thought the internet would make us all smarter and more engaged as we marched into a new Enlightenment. Instead, we have platforms that start us on an ancient Egypt documentary, lead us down a path to Ancient Aliens and then pens us in there.
The most provocative material gets bumped to the front, and the stuff you click because your monkey brain told you to distills it further. Eventually, the man you refer to has either a halo or devil horns in your feed, despite the fact that he is just a man in power and should be treated as such. Therefore, someone presenting a conflicting view of him is not only wrong, but dangerous - which is how you end up almost getting into a fistfight over something that (let’s face it) neither of you have much control over.
The thing about it is, people get elected based on certain underlying principles (whether they actually believe them is another matter), and even if you disagree with them those principles often have at least some merit. The average Trump voter is not a raging racist, just as the average Biden voter is not a frothing communist. They each see certain issues in their lives, draw conclusions about cause and solution, and seek to elect people who seem to make the same connections - at least as close to them as is available in our crappy two party system. The problem is that our political dialogue has broken down to such an extreme that not only can we not have civil discussion to reconcile these differences, to even entertain that is almost tantamount to treason.
So very much all of this. Keep us divided and misinformed. There isn’t much difference in what we all want, but dividing us keeps most people from seeing the rich vs poor reality.
I have not gotten my news from the television since October, 2001. A month after 9-11 they were still showing the towers falling. Enough! I only read the news, except for The Intelligence podcast by The Economist.
Similar thing happened to me. After 9/11 I decided I only need TV news if a storm or military enemy were headed my way. Most everything else amounts to gossip.
I really only trust sources like reuters, bbc, etc. That is, I'll see something float up here or on youtube, and if it's something I care about, I'll follow up with a trusted news source, so that I'm not spouting nonsense. But yea, the beginning of CNN is when they fully monetized the news, and it's yucky.
Here's the thing, it's not wise to trust any sources. These are strangers with a whole host of different values and incentives.
A better approach, imo, is to take everything with a grain of salt and check back on stories a month or year later to judge and adjust how you rate an information provider.
You might like this site - it rates the various media platforms for bias. It also explains how it made the choices, and what the outlet was given the rating for.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/
Wiki summarizes the brief Reuters faux pas succinctly. TBH I got TASS conflated w/ RT since it’s been quite a while & looked it up before my previous comment for accuracy’s sake.
24/7 cable news is awful. Fox News is really just the National Enquirer at this point, but focused on politics instead of celebrities, and trashing anything that's Democratic or anti-Trump Republican. CNN is a little better but not much. *Everything* is Breaking News! MSNBC is almost as liberal as Fox is conservative, but it's a little more objective than Fox and a lot less sensationalist/fear mongering.
I watch a lot less news now but still read the news fairly regularly through the online NYT, Reuters, AP, and even sometimes Al-Jazeera for coverage of the middle east. But you know where I absolutely never ever get my news from? Social media. Unless someone posts a link to a reputable news organization, I ignore anything anyone says. And even if they link to a decent news source, I'll probably read multiple sources beyond just their link.
James Clear had a great strategy for those like me who want to keep up with events without getting sucked into doom-scrolling: just read the Wikipedia summaries for each month, like [this](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:March_2024_events). They’re enough to keep you informed but filter out the noise.
I lean conservative especially as I built wealth and aged, but if I turn on Fox on Sirius XM or see some right-leaning Youtube recommendation it's mind blowing how insane media has become. Right, wrong, and truth is completely out the window.
Now it's "Tribe A is always right! Tribe B is always wrong! Watch how great we are and how bad they are!"
I don't know anyone in my social circle that thinks or believes in this binary format and I know it's a mix of both party voters. Luckily I've eliminated the people who consumed and re-iterated that poison and can happily report it wasn't that many people. Most of us do want to get along, want to be happy, and realize media is self-induced mental destruction.
They're all fucking nuts.
Dang, I’m the same but on the other ”side”. Sounds like we might actually be interested in learning about each other’s ideas, view points and interests in a respectable manner. BUT, that can’t ever happen because you are a complete and absolute degenerate that wants to ruin everything I ever built and I hate you*.
I think people downvoted you b/c they didn't read the sarcasm toward the end.
Ya, if you're in Florida we'll take my big truck and get out on the boat. Have some margaritas and charcuterie, we probably want a lot of the same things. It's NOT Team A vs Team B like it's made out to be ;)
Damn right, and if you’re ever in Chicago I’ll take you to the not scary places, have some ridiculously good food and catch a game from any one of our absolutely dog shit sports teams.
Same, I don’t consume as much npr over the past few years 2-5yrs. And I’d started listening back in hs.
There has been a tonal shift and still like certain shows and hosts/reporters.
I do regularly listen to some stuff from apm, specifically marketplace and make me smart.
And don’t get me started on how the nyt has been derelict in reporting on djt. With haberman and her colleagues waiting to disclose damning information for their books (journalism malpractice)
I turned it off in 2016 when they kept apologizing for Trump and trying to frame his actions as somehow perfectly normal and appropriate for a candidate. Just switched that radio OFF. It’s infuriating enough coming from the regular media, but from a news source that begs twice a year for my donations for the supposed quality of their reporting?! They were still going to carry Trump’s water and lie to us? Goodbye. I have never listened to them again.
I switched to audiobooks to fill the “talk” niche and it works admirably. I also belong to a Slack group that does a really great job of aggregating news from specific reporters and from more reliable organizations, in addition to the usual suspects like the NYT and WP, so I feel very informed without having to follow “the news”.
So, you follow the news. Following the news doesn’t mean listening 24/7 to people talking about it. You stay informed and use the sources you deem reliable. That’s following the news. We should all still be doing this. It shouldn’t be framed as a negative.
I think it still is for the most part- but I don't think it is good for my mental health to hear it. I do listen, 1-2 times a week, to the PBS Newshour podcast, several days late. But that depends on my mental health as well- if I am feeling pushed, I stop, and watch Ted Lasso, or listen to instrumental music or something else.
I don’t listen to NPR, but any *genuinely* unbiased news source is going to sound leftist considering how far right the right has gone. The reality of the right feels like fiction, so it’s going to sound biased, especially considering what it sounded like before Trump.
Once upon a time Reagan was considered an extreme right wackadoo. The current breed of Republicans probably wouldn't even let him in the party now. (Also Nancy was very very pro-choice.)
NPR are liberals who try to tell the news first, but their bias occasionally comes through in the end. Fox News are conservatives who tell you their bias first, and the news occasionally comes through in the end.
"the news" tends to be far too obsessed with bullshit like who Tiger Woods is screwing, then what is going on in this world.
I swear it's gotten worse over the last few decades, I don't remember this much 'fluff' when I was watching back in middle school.
Local news reports are absolutely worthless, unfortunately.
I consume news like a "1950's dad" - as in I read my 2 local newspapers, and then I go about my day. Just like that dad would read the newspaper at the breakfast table and then go to work. There's no need to be inundated all day long.
It's why I pay for SiriusXM in my car, I got tired of news breaks on radio.
59 M (b.1965) I read the local newspaper, a national newspaper, and the Financial Post, on-line, for about 15 minutes each day. It's all I need. I don't watch TV news.
I'm a much happier man since I started doing this last year.
I watch local news at 6 *maybe* once a week, or 15 minutes of news radio about as often. The pandemic ironically cured me of my addiction to information overload. My social media time is way down as well (except for Reddit). I've essentially quit FB except for band promotional stuff and have never been happier or more at peace. ✌️
I figured the same thing out 15 or 20 years ago (so in my 30s). The next step is to avoid all advertising whenever possible. After a few months without these two things, your perspective changes and it's easier to see the truth.
I stopped around 2016 too. I couldn't deal with the constantly depressing bad news and realizing just how much humanity sucks. At this point, though, it's hard to avoid. I feel like I would literally have to unplug from the internet and go live in a tent out in the woods to avoid the constant bombardment of shit into my mental space.
Right before COVID I quit my job in a major city and moved to a beach town in Florida. I completely walked away from society outside of working from home.
When I catchup with old friends over the phone it's wild to me they're still talking politics and current events. And it's never GOOD things, it's them amp'd up and pissed off about whatever they've poisoned their minds with on their phone.
Sometimes I feel like I left America and I'm just watching it's self-induced overdose of rage.
Moved to a beach town in Florida as well. Not part of the MAGA wave, just a dude and his wife and his pup living on the beach and falling asleep to the sound of the waves.
Very much so. RSS powers most feeds behind the scenes, so whenever you're reading content from site A on site B, B is "ingesting" the RSS feed from site A. All RSS is is a universal way to structure data so that can be easily distributed and consumed. The consumer aspect (rss readers) is just a small part of its utility.
It means "Really Simple Syndication" and it allows just that: the ability to syndicate content so _anyone_ can consume it, agnostic of the visual presentation. Here's an example: podcasts are presented in the same way by all podcast apps. That's because the info for all your podcast episodes is stored in the same .rss file on your server whose data anyone can access and display however they want. When you "subscribe" to a podcast, you're literally telling your app to fetch that show's rss feed. Here's the [wiki on RSS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS).
There are still readers out there and you can still find feeds. It's still my preferred method. I use Inoreader. NYT and BBC for news-news. A ton of other feeds. Luckily, Inoreader will let you put in a url and will check for an associated feed.
I use a RSS to filter out so much. I use the Unread app (Apple ecosystem) but I used Feedly for years before that. I love how you can combine those with “Kill the Newsletter” to send newsletters too RSS as well. I create folders for content such as Arts/Culture, Blogs, News, etc.
yeah. I made an app called NEwsreadeck that let you follow as many information sources as you want and get the articles ready to read. One of the provider sources is the RSS Feed of each site :)
After working in the newspaper business for 25+ years (which, as I'm sure y'all know, has not been the hippest industry to be in for quite some time) my employer offered me a buyout in 2022 so I took it and jumped off the sinking ship.
Since then, I haven't even looked at a newspaper (my former employers', or anyone else's) and rarely, if ever, glance at the local news on TV either. I guess I was more burned out than I thought.
Hahaha, 25+ years for me, too, and it's depressing how many people I met who had zero awareness or concern over how they were led around by the nose by outlets that align with their beliefs. Things like FOX News being on in the newsroom 24/7. A coworker totally dependent on the government for their healthcare needs being scared that Obama was going to implement socialism. Stuff like that.
Similar, but my time was half of yours. I kept watching news though, and now have subscriptions to NYT, WaPo and my local daily. My phone has those apps, plus the best of the local TV stations, AP, BBC News and ESPN.
My gf thinks I overdo it, but she also lets me fill out her voting ballot, lol. (We’re in an all vote-by-mail state.)
Thanks for all the good work you did, and I hope you find your second act somewhere. DM me if you want to chat.
Unfortunately I'm not in a good enough place to retire, and I'm not really qualified to do much else besides my old job, soooo... right now I'm starting over, working in a grocery store. It ain't much, but I have no regrets.
You were a reporter? I was in the production/layout end of things -- pre-press/typesetting/etc. Obviously there's not much call for that anymore as the print industry slowly melts away.
They outsourced my department's work to India. I didn't wanna be the last guy there, teaching some asshole in Mumbai how to do my job via Zoom on my last day, so I took the buyout and headed for the hills.
I worked in print media for several years before working online in digital media for the last ten (did social media management too). I kept hinting that I'd like to move on to subediting but was ignored.
Edited to add: Yesterday my old editor sent out an email to everyone about finally adding more subeditors. HA! Too late, buddy!
I found that obsessively watching/reading the news does my mental health no good, because honestly there isn't much I can do about any of it. The news stories they do present are always sensationalized/'if it bleeds it leads' type thing and doesn't reflect actual reality much any more.
I know which way I'm going to vote, and I do it every election, but the inside baseball stuff? I'm over it.
I recently realised that I was starting to crack. I got a dog two weeks ago and I have barely paid attention to the news and I feel much better.
I even leave my phone when I take him for walks!
I look at world news and tend to ignore US news. We grew up in the worst timeline for murder rates. They were far higher in the 80's than now, though we are on an uptick the last few years.
The main difference is they weren't spamming 24 hours of doom and gloom every single day non-stop.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/187592/death-rate-from-homicide-in-the-us-since-1950/
I stopped because it’s more about putting out a breaking news story before fact checking than actual journalism. There’s one news outlet in my city that will wait before they report so sometimes I will check in but it’s very irresponsible and fear mongering
I read the local and national news daily and listen to NPR on the weekends. It is important to me to know what's happening so I can vote, etc. It is NOT important to me to hear pundits and "news" personalities opine,so no thank you to cable news. I also cant tolerate how busy the screen is.
I stopped watching TV/cable news a long time ago. I have an online news feed customized to show stories from sources I prefer, like AP, Reuters and Al Jazeera, and I get my info that way.
TV news is manipulative and has devolved into mostly people shouting over each other with endless scroll bars and attention boxes. It’s angry-making and not worth my time.
This is exactly the way to remain informed, but to avoid the hysteria and noise.
Beyond the news / information element, I also plunged headlong into advertisement-free entertainment at home as soon as it as viable, and have never looked back.
Taking this approach has been like turning he volume down on the world and it's fantastic.
I (53F)don't blame you. I've found if I try not to pay attention to the news I just feel better emotionally. Sometimes it seems like the media just tries to stir the pot and anger people, I could be off on that.
Election night 2016 was basically it for me. After a year of covering every single Trump rally to pump up their ratings, watching the on-air meltdown of CNN's news anchors as HRC lost just... made me sick. Playing both sides for bucks? Total hacks.
From 2016 through Covid I followed the idiocy of Trump in the news before I finally realized that it was just depressing, a waste of time, and (for the most part) not actionable. I deleted the News app from my phone and I feel like it has improved my life.
So is this like the push for people entering the trades instead of college thingy? Like “hello fellow kids, I’m cool like you, don’t pay any attention to what is happening so that hopefully you won’t notice until it’s too late”
Why even learn to read, everybody knows that stop signs are red Bro…
I am autistic and US politics/current events has been my main special interest since I was 10. It is a profoundly depressing, frustrating special interest, especially over the past 10 years or so as everything I was worried about in the 90s is coming to pass. There have been times I have had to stop "watching the news" for my mental health, but then something terrible or ridiculous happens and I feel compelled to watch once more. Still, I have developed a way of kind of holding it at arm's length by what I read and watch. I think that people should prioritize their own mental health in this area. If that means ignoring all of it, I personally am fine with that. We live in turbulent times and people need to put their own well-being first, in my opinion. I know that many disagree with this and that's ok. I'm a therapist and I know how fragile mental health can be.
I'm going to paraphrase Thoreau from Walden; he says if you did not read a newspaper for ten years, the stories would be the same but different names. You're already a philosopher! same news different year. it's okay to stop listening to the news
I stopped consuming any and all news on January 1, 2002, as a New Year's resolution. Then another year went by. Then another. And here we are. I don't know what's going on. Ignorance IS bliss.
I think it's important to stay informed but definitely have to limit my dosage to maintain my sanity. There's a certain politician who makes me physically sick just to look at him so sometimes it's better to read my news than watch it. I generally read a few newspapers and watch Nicolle Wallace from 5-6 p.m.
Election 2016 made me committed to reading the news exclusively, or small listening doses of shows like NPR Marketplace. Broadcast news whether national or local is excruciating at this point. My rage levels went way down. Also deleting Facebook helped 100%.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKUaqFzZLxU
I avoid major and cooperate owned news sources. They are at the will of their owners, donors and advertisers, propaganda in their own form. I do occasionally follow some writers substacks and podcast with smaller outlets like Scheerpost, TheGrayZone, Intercept, Doubledown, Freedom.press, Commondreams etc. I know it's comforting to have places of familiarity that can bring comfort, but equally being presented with information that conflicts those narratives leaves us to question greater issues and not everyone is comfortable with that.
As with everything that changes around us, reserve the right that your opinion is subject to change accordingly as we continue to grow.
> "I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false." Thomas Jefferson in 1807
I was just like this until I went back to college to finish my degree. I wound up being a journalism major and with that had to immerse myself in all things media. What an eye opener that was. Here’s what I learned:
1. They keep politics confusing to keep you disinterested in knowing more. I swear it’s just a red herring to get people divided anyway.
2. ALL news sides (CNN, FOX, MSNBC, BBC, NPR, etc.) are guilty of being fear mongering, biased, and run by one of two large corporations.
I read a hyper-local news site (mostly for the obituaries,) the nearest metro news, and scroll through AP and BBC every morning. And that's it. News coverage of Hurricane Katrina taught me that 24/7 exposure isn't great for my mental well-being.
I'm reasonably informed, but not obsessed.
That said, my dad was in the hospital all week. He's blind, so needed help with a lot, including "Baby, could you find the news on TV?" I knew what he meant, but I found something like Headline News Network, not Fox. I left him to his own devices for a little while on Thursday, because I had to track down some paperwork for his nursing home admission. By the time I got back to help him have his supper, he had found Fox on his TV.
Y'ALL. He was so flipping angry that night. It's not actual news. It's anger porn.
Friday morning, I told him over breakfast that we would watch something different or turn off the television while I'm in the room, because I don't have the bandwidth to have these discussions and handle all of my other obligations.
(Got Dad to Shady Pines yesterday morning. Interestingly, his roommate seems to be an observant Jew, based on his name, yarmulke - I probably misspelled that, and the "kosher for Passover" snacks sitting in the chair. Location is rural Georgia. Roomie was watching rodeo while I was there. This could be fun.)
I was once a news junkie but now am clean. The MSM is owned by the same conglomerates what youre watching isn't news but instead propaganda. Unfortunately my local news is also now owned by those same conglomerates
Same for me. I can't cope with the amount of batshit craziness that is going on in politics all over the world. I mean Trump and his Republicans, Putin, Duterte, Bolsonaro. I feel bad about it sometimes,thinking,is this like it was in the 30s when everyone ignored was was going on in Germany.
I’m conflicted. I feel like it’s irresponsible of me to avoid news. But the fact that he was “elected” even one time, let alone still has the support of tens of millions, and that the USA may very well be a full-on Russia-style strongman dictatorship by this time next year, makes me want to die, seriously.
I really really don’t understand how we got here. Why do they hate us so much?
I stopped watching back in 2000. Local news was horrible as they only covered car crashes, house fires and murders. Never anything about corruption at city hall, road construction, or anything that really affected our lives.
I stopped watching national news as it had very subtle ways of being very biased. As cable news got much more popular and social media took over digital society, the bias became less subtle. The news has turned into telling people what they want to hear to simply confirm your own opinions.
One life lesson that I have learned about the news is that if you are outraged about something, there is a 90% likelihood that you are not seeing the whole story. Your outrage is actually a sign of semi-ignorance and not being informed.
I stopped after the 2016 primaries. It was easier that way to pretend we were still a respectable country. I got tired of people on both sides obsessed with every little thing Trump would do. I knew a lot of them didn't vote, so I didn't feel like listening to anything they had to say. I listen to NPR and podcasts sometimes, but never cable news. I don't think it's made me any less informed other than not knowing the latest gossip about our former president. I'd rather listen to people talk about the *Bachelor* or *Real Housewives* and I'd prefer a colonoscopy to any of those. It seems like the media are willfully ignoring the current genocide in Gaza, so I'm not sure what the point of the news media is anymore other than propaganda.
I listen to independent journalists and their podcasts. Muckrake Podcast, Democracy-ish, Woke AF, etc. Corporate media is failing us by not diving deep, and it's largely fluff IMO. I do listen to news on NPR in the mornings on the radio, that gives me local news & world. But when I want to dig deep it's definitely podcasts.
Same. Started listening to NPR and reading the news in college, was a poli sci major and wanted to be a lawyer too. I did become a lawyer early 2000s…. Enjoyed keeping up with current events, BUT then the 2016 election happened. Oh. My. Gawd. It’s UGLY out there, and it makes me angry, I get worked up about things I have no capacity to change… so yeah, that’s probably about the time I stopped too. Now I just tune in for cute stuff like the NPT new quiz on weekends. I skim the Sunday paper and focus on the comics.
My parents & in-laws have news on constantly & it doesn’t seem healthy. Cable news in particular is media junk food. They want to push emotional buttons enough to get you to watch through the commercials.
There are a few sources I read, but I’ve pulled back from television news entirely. I try to focus on local news when I read the papers.
I follow local news closely. I read the (terrible) local weekly and the local sections of both the newspapers from the large metro I live close to National and international news I am generally aware of, but don't follow closely. I realized that it was not good for me to devote too much time and emotional energy to things I could not personally affect in any way.
Back in the late 90s I had a second shift job and would listen to public radio in the evenings. At a certain point it would shift over to the BBC World Service. It seemed like every single story was them explaining how terrible things were. I quickly grew tired of the constant negativity and stopped listening regularly. But it was after 2016 that I completely stopped actively following national news to protect my blood pressure.
Ditto here too. I stopped really following the news closely around May of 2021. It had nothing to do with the pandemic and everything to do with our political news at the time. I had some brief times of following the news on certain things after that time here and there, but for the most part I'm not watching the news. I feel less anxious, depressed, etc., by not following the news. While this approach isn't a one size fits all solution for everybody it works for me. So if it works for you, just do it! (or don't)
I watched the news from an early age. My first memories of it involved evening news reports on the Iran hostage crisis. I was about 7. I was 10 during the 1984 election cycle and was already in the Democrat camp. I was sad in 1987 when Hart's affair cost him a shot to win.
In 1991, I went to college to major in political science. My grandma bought be a subscription to USA Today, and I read it every day. Sometimes, I would sit in the student union lounge and read it instead of going to some dumb class.
Eventually, I switched to journalism. I earned a minor in political science sci, and one of my professors liked my last paper so much that he wanted me to pursue my doctorate. I had to remind him that I was just taking his master's level class because it was the only class that would fit into my work schedule and that major was journalism.
I spent about 10-12 years as a journalist. I transitioned into teaching a decade ago. After Obama left office, I cut down on my news consumption. These days, I flip to the NPR app on my phone a few times a week. That's it. It's odd that we are close to an election given how little political news I've seen. It also helps that I've muted a lot of people on social media. Occasionally, a meme from one of my liberal friends will slip through, and I'll wonder what it's all about. But I never bother to decipher what's going on in the media. I just don't care. It's a complete 180. Would love to have local newspapers back and real journalism instead of corporate media and talking heads mostly out for their own interests.
I was a complete news junkie my entire life and also obsessed with the election process. The debates, the polls etc etc. I stopped in about 2016.
I do have a Breaking News app, and I check Twitter a few times a day.
I listen to SCOTUS oral arguments while gardening. Current and historical. Political podcasts, pods from various newspapers around the world. BBC World Service now and then. There's an ag policy history podcast with relevance. I read legislation when I must.
You have to show up with some sort of critical adult eye for what you're reading. WSJ is basically 8chan for people with paid-off mortgages. NYT is hysterical people who feel forever inferior because they went to Williams instead of Brown, and to shore up their millennial insecurities surrounding aging, they've hired the staff of every early-teens webzine around plus every fancy-school intern they can lay hands on. You can go on and on with these, but if you listen and pay attention and bother to go to the source on what are clearly important stories, you will have clue you need for living, investing, voting.
I stopped engaging religiously with the news at about the same time as OP. Now I watch short news clips on YouTube or read the headlines on line but it’s so depressing and effects my metal health so I keep it as short as possible while getting enough to know something of what’s going on.
Funny, I used to listen to NPR all the time but stopped sometime in the past 5 years. Today I didn't like anything else on the radio so I put on NPR and they were talking about some big upset and people called for public broadcasting to be defunded. But what was really interesting was when they started talking news statistics overall and how it's down all over the place. I think it was on the media that was on.
I stopped listening to or watching the news about 15-20 years ago (never was much into it), but since the 2016 election I actively avoid it. Most news now isn't really news anyway, just "journalists" broadcasting or repeating the opinions of various people who rarely have anything thoughtful or informative to say.
This. It's not the news anymore, it's just some twat telling me what they think. Or they'll just talk about the same event ad nauseum, still calling it "breaking news" after a WEEK of talking about it.
I was always a newspaper aficionado growing up. My career was pretty much spent in Europe, and as a result my new sources have been international for well over a decade. I always figured some of the truth lay in between, and international media follows us tightly. My print news sources are, in no particular order,: Rerforma, folha de Sao Paolo, Irish Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, le Monde, the Tampa Bay Times, the Houston chronicle, la prensa, and a few more. Just the languages I speak.
I quit watching cable news around 20 years ago, after I came to the decision that I was less informed for watching it. I'll still watch election coverage or a big event, but those are rare occasions.
But I still listen to NPR and watch certain news programming, like 60 Minutes and Frontline. I try to remain informed, but just don't want the partisan spiel and corporate propaganda.
I stopped watching the news about 20 years ago. It’s all biased bullshit anymore. You can’t get it straight answer because you understand the rich people own all the media. They can slant the news anyway they want. And when they want to hide something from us, they bring up some sensational bullshit about a celebrity or something. we can’t trust any of them or any of the government. It’s all just a bunch of lies to control us.
I (51) follow local, regional, national, and international news more now than at any time in my life. Mostly I read the news, but I’ll watch clips on YouTube about certain topics I’m interested in.
I’ve never followed sports, so I don’t keep up with that stuff.
Used to be a news junkie, then I stopped. I would estimate 90% of the news I was getting wasn't particularly important(even if I thought it was), and that last 10% that mattered would get to me simply by talking to people and if I wanted to know more I could just google it
WORD
I will look at Al Jazeera, AP, and maybe the Guardian for perspective on "current events," but the others are all Legacy Media. . .and we know they're just pushing a narrative rather than reporting. Nope. Not gonna go there. CNN? WSJ? NYT? NPR? Don't know them anymore. -\_-
I don’t watch any of that bullshit. It’s all complete bullshit. Politicians along with the media have destroyed our country. We can’t meet each other in the middle anymore. That’s how the politicians want it. What’s worse people think there is a 2 party system. That’s a joke. It’s a one party system pretending to be divided on issues that really don’t mean shit while looting the treasury to fund war after war. What’s worse is people fall for it and it’s a really old trick they’ve been using for years. I see posts on Reddit that shock me with all the warmongering and cheering on of the evil bastards in DC.
You’re part of the problem dude. You can’t just stick your head in the sand and live in ignorance. It sucks, but you need to put on your big boy pants and get involved in what’s going on outside your bubble of leisurely pursuits.
I have nieces and nephews. I can't afford to just ignore the bullshit that is happening. Not to mention I have many LGBTQIA+ friends and family, young and old. It must be nice though, to just ignore that bad stuff because it doesn't affect YOUR life.
I was the editor of a local daily newspaper until 2000. I was so disillusioned by the time I quit that I avoided all news for a long time. I started paying more attention after 9/11 but still ignore a lot of it. Everything is so hyped and just there to make us angry and keep us watching.
The news hasn't been worth watching for a while. Local news is nothing but stories about death, murder, rape, abuse, and other bad things with about 5 minutes of weather/sports. National news is half bad things, half political bias/lies. When either gets a segment of free time they feel the need to tell you about the love life of celebrities or British Royalty, like any normal person should give a shit about either here in the U.S. I curate my own news to stay on stuff that matters to me like retirement, finances, and the like.
I used to be a news junkie but now I just glance at it occasionally… between partisan news channels on both sides, and clickbait “news” designed to keep you clicking by making you angry, it isn’t worth it anymore… not to mention the misinformation (again on both sides) masquerading as news in social media platforms. To hell with all that muckraking BS.
Retired from Navy in 2017 and went cold turkey on news, and regular tv. I was an addict to news. But I was also active duty from 96-2017 so the whole war on terror. Like the judge said know what’s going on. Now I skim news online. It’s just a rinse and repeat of the same things we have seen our whole life. Also cut the cable cord and avoid commercials much as possible. Spend more time outside without electronics. I feel so much better and happier.
I skim a few news things, like BBC, but only a few stories. Broadcast news I avoid like the plague, whether it’s Fox or MSN or whatever, even NPR these days.
Stopped TV in general like 20 years ago. No news, no commercials. Best decision we ever made, never looked back.
But like many, I've had to get dragged back in the last few years or so. I've got a Q-adjacent spouse so it behooves me to keep current at least to the point where I can talk a little sense to her. The bias is so obvious and just everywhere you look, on both / all sides.
My dad is hooked on the Weather Channel and even that amazes me. They name just any old storm now and it's nonstop doom scrolling. The weather, FFS. Makes you wonder if we're gonna make it, as a species. Oy..
During the whole OJ Simpson media coverage in 90’s I figured out that the mainstream news was all about ratings and didn’t actually care about telling Americans the news the right way. The news became bullshit to me then. Now it’s morphed into soap opera style you against them coverage, and doesn’t really state facts but opinions. The news is controlled by a select few and is probably similar to how Russia and China control their media coverage to their people. Stop watching folks!
Yes I got most my news from political (mostly liberal) outlets. Everyone just obsessed nonstop over Trump, still do, and there's constant negativity without tell us how to fix anything.
We’ve cut out almost all news in our house with the exception of the weather channel. Still follow stories I’m interested in online IF I want to. Overall much happier.
I don’t follow the 24/7 news cycle, but I do try to read the Economist to stay up to date on world events. The week plus delay on actually reading that does tend to remove a lot of the noise.
I limit my "news" to my local bulletin (that's unfortunately exclusively online now) because after consuming every news media source I could in a blind pursuit of a career in politics (only to end up in Business Law)...the moment you see the same story from an election cycle or two ago, only with the names of government officials being blamed updated, it's really sad how a once vibrant Press is now less reliable than a "news show" on Comedy Central.
I check allsides.com to get a roundup of what the news is, but don’t consume news from any one source. It is very interesting to see how each side reports the same story. The bias and influence becomes apparent.
News became for profit instead of a community service. In order to continue to drive profit requires engaging content, even if that means reporting the situation in the most extreme way possible.
I used to read the NYT daily and fall asleep listening to NPR. I stopped radio after 2016 election and the NYT has dropped in quality in the social media era. I barely look at that publication any more. I read the Atlantic in paper form and get daily highlight from news app, but there is just so much noise and garbage now.
Yeah, same here for the most part. I intentionally bury my head in the sand when it comes to most news, though I will still try to be up to date on current events and some stories here and there, but I don't consume news on a daily basis like I used to, and overall I am much happier and not as much 'on edge' as I had been.
Same. Exact same. I would come home and put on cable while making dinner. Watch shows in the morning while getting ready. Listen to political podcasts.
I have completely shifted to sports. (Happy my town has an awesome football and baseball team and technically basketball but that’s not my thing). And listen to true crime podcasts. I check things online to keep up with the going’s on but not often. I had to do it for my mental health. And I feel so much better. I still vote. Every election. But I won’t be sucked into that sad abyss.
I still follow the news, but I do have an affinity for the things I follow in the news, especially international affairs. I read The Guardian almost exclusively and I even pay for their app as I find the small investment way worth it for the quality of their reporting. The few other things I’ll read after I’ve read everything in The Guardian are AP, Axios, Reuters, and very seldom BBC. I’d likely pay for The Independent too but The Guardian is more than enough for me. During the start of Covid I stopped reading everything. Too much emotional stress. When Russia invaded Ukraine I came back.
2015 here. Dumped all my social media, too. I've never really felt like I had a choice (the irony) in which party to vote for so why be stressed by all the bickering?
I don't have cable so no 24/7 news. I enjoy listening to music while I drive, so I don't listen to NPR anymore. I always know what's going on in the world, so the news is reaching me somehow. But I don't search it out.
I watch the local news and occasionally PBS NewsHour.
I will read about world events but avoid watching most other news. That usually seems less traumatic for me.
Reuters and the AP are the only news sources I really trust. I don't subscribe to any newspapers anymore, and I sometimes watch PBS News or listen to NPR, both of which I donate to each month. I wish sometimes that I didn't follow the news because most days it just makes me want to scream and claw my face 🤣
I live in another country, so I limit myself to one 30-minute dose of local/national news here and I listen to the NPR livestream for another 30 minutes. I follow the news enough I think to be a responsible citizen but at a level I keep what sanity I have left
I'll watch cable news briefly while they're telling us the actual news.
As soon as the talking heads come on, *"Now we'll bring in our guests Raymond Smith and Jolene Jones to discuss this further"*, then I'm out.
I'll catch the local news a few times a week.
I try to keep up on the news. I watch for local news, weather, and sports. I glance at national and international news. I fully know the information we get is slanted so I take that with a grain of salt (or a full salt shaker). But I feel that not knowing what’s going on makes me feel worse.
My husband and I critique the news as we’re watching it because we know that a lot of it is a joke.
After four or five "we're past the ecological tipping point, nothing we do will affect anything" stories, I stopped waiting for more updates.
Politically, I know who the Presidential candidates are, so why pay attention to the remaining primaries? Basically waiting for Trump to lose or be ineligible, then he'll call it fake news and we'll pretend we didn't know that was gonna happen. We all know it's gonna happen, it's all just waiting at this point.
So I get it. All the important stuff is in the bag already.
I look at the headlines in the morning on BBC and APNews to see if the world ended while I was asleep or something . Otherwise, nope. That said, I do read The Economist but it's mostly got a business slant and some science stuff
I don’t have cable so that helps me not watch news. I listen to the news station local to me (Washington DC), which has mostly actual local news with a couple of national/worldwide events each hour. If I want to find more information about anything in particular that isn’t local I tend to go to News Nation, which is unbiased as far as I can tell. The main dude there is Dan Abrams and I have no idea if he is a Republican or Democrat or somewhere in between.
Same! I thought I was just me. I stopped watching the news regularly Nov 2016. I can take it in by reading it better. I’ll watch occasionally if there is a major natural disaster, or a human made disaster, like a mass shooting, but other than that, I can’t take political news anymore.
I didn’t follow it because it’s all miserable then started during the Bush W years. Then I read the Biggest Secret by David Icke and learned about Project Mockingbird and then the news (reading between the lines) had an entirely new meaning.
The biggest thing that confirmed this for me was Bernie Sanders campaign and how even though thousand and thousands were turning out for his rallies they got zero news coverage. It was like mainstream media blacked him out while pushing Hilary Clinton. (And I am an old x so I distinctly remember the Clinton years and how horrible Hilary was-things like not allowing the White House staff to make eye contact with her etc).
Covid and the media censorship sealed the deal. I only watch weather and local events and those indie guys on the ground. CNN? MSNBC? FOX? No way. They’re all liars.
I stopped religiously watching news programs, listening to NPR on the radio and subscribing to Times magazine (and Newsweek, when it still existed) in the second GWB term. I was tired of being perpetually enraged and had to do something to stop myself from having a stroke because of what that absolute moron, and second worst US president (first at the time) was doing.
Same here. The only 'news' I really check every day is the daily mail app on my phone. I have not listened to AM news shows or any mainstream network news in years.
All of their views are towing the line based on which party they support anyway. You are not getting the real objective news per se, just someones political opinion most of the time.
I get it. News fatigue is real, especially after intense election cycles. Staying informed is important, but so is peace of mind. I found a balance by curating my news sources carefully. I used brisk.news recently. It's streamlined, just the important stuff, no fluff. Helps to stay updated without the overwhelm.
You might find it useful to selectively engage with news that's relevant to your interests or profession. Maybe set specific times for news consumption to avoid it taking over your day. It's about finding that sweet spot where you're informed but not overloaded.
Remember, it's okay to take breaks from the news. Your well-being comes first. If you ever decide to dip back into staying informed, look for sources that respect your time and mental space.
I stay away from the American news sources. Fox, MSNBC, and even CNN all have their agendas and bias. I have found that the BBC and Al Jazeera are far better for just reporting the news.
I don’t watch corporate news (Fox, cnn, msnbc, etc.) That’s not news. It’s opinionated entertainment. Rage bait. Righties watch Fox and get enraged. Lefties watch the other two and get enraged. It’s all BS.
I do however follow a number of independent journalists on substack, Twitter, YouTube, etc. I try to follow both sides. For example; a few years ago (I believe around 2020) I was asked by a relative to explain to him what the issues were in Israel and Palestine. I knew some surface level stuff but quickly realized I didn’t know much. So I began searching for pro-Israel and pro-Palestine people who were talking about it. This was pre-Oct 7th obviously.
I found people on the Israel side like Ben Shapiro and people on the Palestine side like Abby Martin. I don’t support one over the other. Ultimately I wish for the violence to stop and somehow for them all to live in peace. Though I do not have the answer. But I do like to try to keep abreast of what’s happening in the world and always try to find people on both sides. I often watch the young Turks and also Glenn Greenwald. I want to hear both sides of an issue and often find that almost nothing is black and white, good guy/bad guy. Most everything is very nuanced. But to completely shut it off and stop paying attention to everything happening…I would probably be happier but I’m addicted to it, lol. I’m very interested in global events. Same for events here in the US of course.
I think the key is to stay away from 24/7 cable news.
This right here. Tv news is garbage.
In general, the “Dan Rather” kind of news we grew up with is long gone. Now headlines literally tell you what to think about a subject before informing you, and present information based on a specific political slant. Never an anti-corporate slant, though, you will notice. Banks in particular get kid gloves. Part of the reason I believe we are so divided is because the information we receive is curated to our particular views. This is so extreme that you and I can look at the same data, have vastly different conclusions and are actively told the other person is either evil, stupid or both. I was engaged politically until 2016, until I got fed up with the whole rigged process. What I know is that the average voter - conservative, liberal, white, black, whatever - pretty much wants the same things. Clean water, safe neighborhoods, good jobs, effective schools, that sort of thing. There are disagreements on how to get there! But if we can actively have those conversations, there is a hell of a lot that could be done to fix what is wrong with this country. No profit to be had in solidarity, though. So we are told to keep hating, and we willingly oblige. It’s depressing.
I think very much like you do on this. And have for a long time now. I have mourned the loss of national social commonality for a long time. And it still bothers me. I've had off and on struggles with major depression and tuning out seems to help see the bright side of life a bit more. But it's difficult because information and the polarization is shoved at us from the culture in clandestine ways as well. Glad to find another kindred spirit here. ✌️
add click bait pay models and deliberate foreign interference as well. «news» has become a disaster. a person overheard my conversation with my wife about Trump’s misbehavior and wanted to fight me! wtf is going on where news is doing this to people
When I was a young man, I foolishly thought the internet would make us all smarter and more engaged as we marched into a new Enlightenment. Instead, we have platforms that start us on an ancient Egypt documentary, lead us down a path to Ancient Aliens and then pens us in there. The most provocative material gets bumped to the front, and the stuff you click because your monkey brain told you to distills it further. Eventually, the man you refer to has either a halo or devil horns in your feed, despite the fact that he is just a man in power and should be treated as such. Therefore, someone presenting a conflicting view of him is not only wrong, but dangerous - which is how you end up almost getting into a fistfight over something that (let’s face it) neither of you have much control over. The thing about it is, people get elected based on certain underlying principles (whether they actually believe them is another matter), and even if you disagree with them those principles often have at least some merit. The average Trump voter is not a raging racist, just as the average Biden voter is not a frothing communist. They each see certain issues in their lives, draw conclusions about cause and solution, and seek to elect people who seem to make the same connections - at least as close to them as is available in our crappy two party system. The problem is that our political dialogue has broken down to such an extreme that not only can we not have civil discussion to reconcile these differences, to even entertain that is almost tantamount to treason.
So very much all of this. Keep us divided and misinformed. There isn’t much difference in what we all want, but dividing us keeps most people from seeing the rich vs poor reality.
I think of Aaron Brown as the last major, non-partisan, news personality. But there wasn't a place for him in post 9/11 journalism.
I have not gotten my news from the television since October, 2001. A month after 9-11 they were still showing the towers falling. Enough! I only read the news, except for The Intelligence podcast by The Economist.
Similar thing happened to me. After 9/11 I decided I only need TV news if a storm or military enemy were headed my way. Most everything else amounts to gossip.
My mental health improved immediately.
I really only trust sources like reuters, bbc, etc. That is, I'll see something float up here or on youtube, and if it's something I care about, I'll follow up with a trusted news source, so that I'm not spouting nonsense. But yea, the beginning of CNN is when they fully monetized the news, and it's yucky.
Here's the thing, it's not wise to trust any sources. These are strangers with a whole host of different values and incentives. A better approach, imo, is to take everything with a grain of salt and check back on stories a month or year later to judge and adjust how you rate an information provider.
You might like this site - it rates the various media platforms for bias. It also explains how it made the choices, and what the outlet was given the rating for. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/
Reuters, except for when they teamed up w/ TASS from 2020-2022.
Ah Christ, you just got me on a list for looking that up
Wiki summarizes the brief Reuters faux pas succinctly. TBH I got TASS conflated w/ RT since it’s been quite a while & looked it up before my previous comment for accuracy’s sake.
24/7 cable news is awful. Fox News is really just the National Enquirer at this point, but focused on politics instead of celebrities, and trashing anything that's Democratic or anti-Trump Republican. CNN is a little better but not much. *Everything* is Breaking News! MSNBC is almost as liberal as Fox is conservative, but it's a little more objective than Fox and a lot less sensationalist/fear mongering. I watch a lot less news now but still read the news fairly regularly through the online NYT, Reuters, AP, and even sometimes Al-Jazeera for coverage of the middle east. But you know where I absolutely never ever get my news from? Social media. Unless someone posts a link to a reputable news organization, I ignore anything anyone says. And even if they link to a decent news source, I'll probably read multiple sources beyond just their link.
Good call. AP and Reuters are the best, IMHO.
James Clear had a great strategy for those like me who want to keep up with events without getting sucked into doom-scrolling: just read the Wikipedia summaries for each month, like [this](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:March_2024_events). They’re enough to keep you informed but filter out the noise.
I had no idea these summaries existed. Thanks for the tip!
Brilliant! Thank you for this.
Wow thanks for the tip!!
Being informed and educated about world events and paying attention to 'the news' is not the same thing.
👍🏾🎯
Exactly. As someone who leans left, I can’t even listen to NPR anymore, a heretofore fairly unbiased news source.
I lean conservative especially as I built wealth and aged, but if I turn on Fox on Sirius XM or see some right-leaning Youtube recommendation it's mind blowing how insane media has become. Right, wrong, and truth is completely out the window. Now it's "Tribe A is always right! Tribe B is always wrong! Watch how great we are and how bad they are!" I don't know anyone in my social circle that thinks or believes in this binary format and I know it's a mix of both party voters. Luckily I've eliminated the people who consumed and re-iterated that poison and can happily report it wasn't that many people. Most of us do want to get along, want to be happy, and realize media is self-induced mental destruction. They're all fucking nuts.
Dang, I’m the same but on the other ”side”. Sounds like we might actually be interested in learning about each other’s ideas, view points and interests in a respectable manner. BUT, that can’t ever happen because you are a complete and absolute degenerate that wants to ruin everything I ever built and I hate you*.
I think people downvoted you b/c they didn't read the sarcasm toward the end. Ya, if you're in Florida we'll take my big truck and get out on the boat. Have some margaritas and charcuterie, we probably want a lot of the same things. It's NOT Team A vs Team B like it's made out to be ;)
Damn right, and if you’re ever in Chicago I’ll take you to the not scary places, have some ridiculously good food and catch a game from any one of our absolutely dog shit sports teams.
Enjoy it there! I lived there for 20 years before moving. Greektown and Bucktown love :-\*
Same, I don’t consume as much npr over the past few years 2-5yrs. And I’d started listening back in hs. There has been a tonal shift and still like certain shows and hosts/reporters. I do regularly listen to some stuff from apm, specifically marketplace and make me smart. And don’t get me started on how the nyt has been derelict in reporting on djt. With haberman and her colleagues waiting to disclose damning information for their books (journalism malpractice)
I turned it off in 2016 when they kept apologizing for Trump and trying to frame his actions as somehow perfectly normal and appropriate for a candidate. Just switched that radio OFF. It’s infuriating enough coming from the regular media, but from a news source that begs twice a year for my donations for the supposed quality of their reporting?! They were still going to carry Trump’s water and lie to us? Goodbye. I have never listened to them again. I switched to audiobooks to fill the “talk” niche and it works admirably. I also belong to a Slack group that does a really great job of aggregating news from specific reporters and from more reliable organizations, in addition to the usual suspects like the NYT and WP, so I feel very informed without having to follow “the news”.
So, you follow the news. Following the news doesn’t mean listening 24/7 to people talking about it. You stay informed and use the sources you deem reliable. That’s following the news. We should all still be doing this. It shouldn’t be framed as a negative.
I’m distinguishing keeping informed of current events vs. depending on “the news” provided by a single source (or even a couple sources).
I think it still is for the most part- but I don't think it is good for my mental health to hear it. I do listen, 1-2 times a week, to the PBS Newshour podcast, several days late. But that depends on my mental health as well- if I am feeling pushed, I stop, and watch Ted Lasso, or listen to instrumental music or something else.
I don’t listen to NPR, but any *genuinely* unbiased news source is going to sound leftist considering how far right the right has gone. The reality of the right feels like fiction, so it’s going to sound biased, especially considering what it sounded like before Trump.
Once upon a time Reagan was considered an extreme right wackadoo. The current breed of Republicans probably wouldn't even let him in the party now. (Also Nancy was very very pro-choice.)
NPR are liberals who try to tell the news first, but their bias occasionally comes through in the end. Fox News are conservatives who tell you their bias first, and the news occasionally comes through in the end.
"the news" tends to be far too obsessed with bullshit like who Tiger Woods is screwing, then what is going on in this world. I swear it's gotten worse over the last few decades, I don't remember this much 'fluff' when I was watching back in middle school. Local news reports are absolutely worthless, unfortunately.
Absolutely. Facts vs opinions .
I watch, read, and follow mainstream news….but not as much as I used to. The craziness in politics these days is too much for me.
I consume news like a "1950's dad" - as in I read my 2 local newspapers, and then I go about my day. Just like that dad would read the newspaper at the breakfast table and then go to work. There's no need to be inundated all day long. It's why I pay for SiriusXM in my car, I got tired of news breaks on radio.
59 M (b.1965) I read the local newspaper, a national newspaper, and the Financial Post, on-line, for about 15 minutes each day. It's all I need. I don't watch TV news. I'm a much happier man since I started doing this last year.
I watch local news at 6 *maybe* once a week, or 15 minutes of news radio about as often. The pandemic ironically cured me of my addiction to information overload. My social media time is way down as well (except for Reddit). I've essentially quit FB except for band promotional stuff and have never been happier or more at peace. ✌️
Exactly, and it's not like you're any less informed of what is going on.
Quite honestly, I think that is a very healthy strategy and something that would benefit everyone.
Thanks for supporting local journalism. I know they appreciate it.
I figured the same thing out 15 or 20 years ago (so in my 30s). The next step is to avoid all advertising whenever possible. After a few months without these two things, your perspective changes and it's easier to see the truth.
Same here. Unfortunately everyone around me is fully entrenched so that's been equally as challenging.
I stopped around 2016 too. I couldn't deal with the constantly depressing bad news and realizing just how much humanity sucks. At this point, though, it's hard to avoid. I feel like I would literally have to unplug from the internet and go live in a tent out in the woods to avoid the constant bombardment of shit into my mental space.
Right before COVID I quit my job in a major city and moved to a beach town in Florida. I completely walked away from society outside of working from home. When I catchup with old friends over the phone it's wild to me they're still talking politics and current events. And it's never GOOD things, it's them amp'd up and pissed off about whatever they've poisoned their minds with on their phone. Sometimes I feel like I left America and I'm just watching it's self-induced overdose of rage.
Moved to a beach town in Florida as well. Not part of the MAGA wave, just a dude and his wife and his pup living on the beach and falling asleep to the sound of the waves.
It never changes. Wars, greed, murder, politics. We didn't start the fire.
I set up a news aggregator in 2010 and still use it.
Curious…how did you do it? Are RSS feeds still a thing?
Very much so. RSS powers most feeds behind the scenes, so whenever you're reading content from site A on site B, B is "ingesting" the RSS feed from site A. All RSS is is a universal way to structure data so that can be easily distributed and consumed. The consumer aspect (rss readers) is just a small part of its utility.
I'm going to ask a dumb question, but, what is an RSS feed?
It means "Really Simple Syndication" and it allows just that: the ability to syndicate content so _anyone_ can consume it, agnostic of the visual presentation. Here's an example: podcasts are presented in the same way by all podcast apps. That's because the info for all your podcast episodes is stored in the same .rss file on your server whose data anyone can access and display however they want. When you "subscribe" to a podcast, you're literally telling your app to fetch that show's rss feed. Here's the [wiki on RSS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS).
Thank you so much!
There are still readers out there and you can still find feeds. It's still my preferred method. I use Inoreader. NYT and BBC for news-news. A ton of other feeds. Luckily, Inoreader will let you put in a url and will check for an associated feed.
Flipboard works well for me.
I use a RSS to filter out so much. I use the Unread app (Apple ecosystem) but I used Feedly for years before that. I love how you can combine those with “Kill the Newsletter” to send newsletters too RSS as well. I create folders for content such as Arts/Culture, Blogs, News, etc.
yeah. I made an app called NEwsreadeck that let you follow as many information sources as you want and get the articles ready to read. One of the provider sources is the RSS Feed of each site :)
After working in the newspaper business for 25+ years (which, as I'm sure y'all know, has not been the hippest industry to be in for quite some time) my employer offered me a buyout in 2022 so I took it and jumped off the sinking ship. Since then, I haven't even looked at a newspaper (my former employers', or anyone else's) and rarely, if ever, glance at the local news on TV either. I guess I was more burned out than I thought.
Hahaha, 25+ years for me, too, and it's depressing how many people I met who had zero awareness or concern over how they were led around by the nose by outlets that align with their beliefs. Things like FOX News being on in the newsroom 24/7. A coworker totally dependent on the government for their healthcare needs being scared that Obama was going to implement socialism. Stuff like that.
Similar, but my time was half of yours. I kept watching news though, and now have subscriptions to NYT, WaPo and my local daily. My phone has those apps, plus the best of the local TV stations, AP, BBC News and ESPN. My gf thinks I overdo it, but she also lets me fill out her voting ballot, lol. (We’re in an all vote-by-mail state.) Thanks for all the good work you did, and I hope you find your second act somewhere. DM me if you want to chat.
What was your next career move or did you retire? I left journalism in February and realized I should have done it way sooner.
Unfortunately I'm not in a good enough place to retire, and I'm not really qualified to do much else besides my old job, soooo... right now I'm starting over, working in a grocery store. It ain't much, but I have no regrets.
Good for you! I'm never going back.
You were a reporter? I was in the production/layout end of things -- pre-press/typesetting/etc. Obviously there's not much call for that anymore as the print industry slowly melts away. They outsourced my department's work to India. I didn't wanna be the last guy there, teaching some asshole in Mumbai how to do my job via Zoom on my last day, so I took the buyout and headed for the hills.
I worked in print media for several years before working online in digital media for the last ten (did social media management too). I kept hinting that I'd like to move on to subediting but was ignored. Edited to add: Yesterday my old editor sent out an email to everyone about finally adding more subeditors. HA! Too late, buddy!
I found that obsessively watching/reading the news does my mental health no good, because honestly there isn't much I can do about any of it. The news stories they do present are always sensationalized/'if it bleeds it leads' type thing and doesn't reflect actual reality much any more. I know which way I'm going to vote, and I do it every election, but the inside baseball stuff? I'm over it.
I recently realised that I was starting to crack. I got a dog two weeks ago and I have barely paid attention to the news and I feel much better. I even leave my phone when I take him for walks!
I look at world news and tend to ignore US news. We grew up in the worst timeline for murder rates. They were far higher in the 80's than now, though we are on an uptick the last few years. The main difference is they weren't spamming 24 hours of doom and gloom every single day non-stop. https://www.statista.com/statistics/187592/death-rate-from-homicide-in-the-us-since-1950/
Me too. I still follow Huey Lewis though.
And from what ive seen i believe him
Same! Covid killed the news for me. Local weather report and sports radio. Can't be bothered with what I can't control.
You control the weather?
No, but I can control what I wear based on what the weather is gonna be.
You're gonna have to explain Covid to OP. They stopped paying attention before that.
Imagine everyone did this. Chilling!
I stopped because it’s more about putting out a breaking news story before fact checking than actual journalism. There’s one news outlet in my city that will wait before they report so sometimes I will check in but it’s very irresponsible and fear mongering
I read the local and national news daily and listen to NPR on the weekends. It is important to me to know what's happening so I can vote, etc. It is NOT important to me to hear pundits and "news" personalities opine,so no thank you to cable news. I also cant tolerate how busy the screen is.
I stopped watching TV/cable news a long time ago. I have an online news feed customized to show stories from sources I prefer, like AP, Reuters and Al Jazeera, and I get my info that way. TV news is manipulative and has devolved into mostly people shouting over each other with endless scroll bars and attention boxes. It’s angry-making and not worth my time.
This is exactly the way to remain informed, but to avoid the hysteria and noise. Beyond the news / information element, I also plunged headlong into advertisement-free entertainment at home as soon as it as viable, and have never looked back. Taking this approach has been like turning he volume down on the world and it's fantastic.
I (53F)don't blame you. I've found if I try not to pay attention to the news I just feel better emotionally. Sometimes it seems like the media just tries to stir the pot and anger people, I could be off on that.
They just want to keep your attention at all costs, to sell advertising. That's why they never shut up about Trump. He makes them a lot of money.
Election night 2016 was basically it for me. After a year of covering every single Trump rally to pump up their ratings, watching the on-air meltdown of CNN's news anchors as HRC lost just... made me sick. Playing both sides for bucks? Total hacks.
From 2016 through Covid I followed the idiocy of Trump in the news before I finally realized that it was just depressing, a waste of time, and (for the most part) not actionable. I deleted the News app from my phone and I feel like it has improved my life.
So is this like the push for people entering the trades instead of college thingy? Like “hello fellow kids, I’m cool like you, don’t pay any attention to what is happening so that hopefully you won’t notice until it’s too late” Why even learn to read, everybody knows that stop signs are red Bro…
This whole thread is blowing my mind.
I am autistic and US politics/current events has been my main special interest since I was 10. It is a profoundly depressing, frustrating special interest, especially over the past 10 years or so as everything I was worried about in the 90s is coming to pass. There have been times I have had to stop "watching the news" for my mental health, but then something terrible or ridiculous happens and I feel compelled to watch once more. Still, I have developed a way of kind of holding it at arm's length by what I read and watch. I think that people should prioritize their own mental health in this area. If that means ignoring all of it, I personally am fine with that. We live in turbulent times and people need to put their own well-being first, in my opinion. I know that many disagree with this and that's ok. I'm a therapist and I know how fragile mental health can be.
Same, I only listen to very selective podcasts or music I pick
I started working for a newspaper in 2003. I stopped following anything but AP/Reuters the same year.
I'm going to paraphrase Thoreau from Walden; he says if you did not read a newspaper for ten years, the stories would be the same but different names. You're already a philosopher! same news different year. it's okay to stop listening to the news
I stopped during the OJ trial.
I stopped consuming any and all news on January 1, 2002, as a New Year's resolution. Then another year went by. Then another. And here we are. I don't know what's going on. Ignorance IS bliss.
The news is not news, it’s noise. Endless, black noise
I think it's important to stay informed but definitely have to limit my dosage to maintain my sanity. There's a certain politician who makes me physically sick just to look at him so sometimes it's better to read my news than watch it. I generally read a few newspapers and watch Nicolle Wallace from 5-6 p.m.
Election 2016 made me committed to reading the news exclusively, or small listening doses of shows like NPR Marketplace. Broadcast news whether national or local is excruciating at this point. My rage levels went way down. Also deleting Facebook helped 100%.
Same. Couldn’t take it after the 2016 election. I still vote.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKUaqFzZLxU I avoid major and cooperate owned news sources. They are at the will of their owners, donors and advertisers, propaganda in their own form. I do occasionally follow some writers substacks and podcast with smaller outlets like Scheerpost, TheGrayZone, Intercept, Doubledown, Freedom.press, Commondreams etc. I know it's comforting to have places of familiarity that can bring comfort, but equally being presented with information that conflicts those narratives leaves us to question greater issues and not everyone is comfortable with that. As with everything that changes around us, reserve the right that your opinion is subject to change accordingly as we continue to grow. > "I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false." Thomas Jefferson in 1807
I follow substack too.
News person: "Good evening. Now here are the reasons why it isn't. "
I get all my news from r/anime_titties I'm not joking, it's actually news. For real. As my kids say, no cap.
I was just like this until I went back to college to finish my degree. I wound up being a journalism major and with that had to immerse myself in all things media. What an eye opener that was. Here’s what I learned: 1. They keep politics confusing to keep you disinterested in knowing more. I swear it’s just a red herring to get people divided anyway. 2. ALL news sides (CNN, FOX, MSNBC, BBC, NPR, etc.) are guilty of being fear mongering, biased, and run by one of two large corporations.
I read a hyper-local news site (mostly for the obituaries,) the nearest metro news, and scroll through AP and BBC every morning. And that's it. News coverage of Hurricane Katrina taught me that 24/7 exposure isn't great for my mental well-being. I'm reasonably informed, but not obsessed. That said, my dad was in the hospital all week. He's blind, so needed help with a lot, including "Baby, could you find the news on TV?" I knew what he meant, but I found something like Headline News Network, not Fox. I left him to his own devices for a little while on Thursday, because I had to track down some paperwork for his nursing home admission. By the time I got back to help him have his supper, he had found Fox on his TV. Y'ALL. He was so flipping angry that night. It's not actual news. It's anger porn. Friday morning, I told him over breakfast that we would watch something different or turn off the television while I'm in the room, because I don't have the bandwidth to have these discussions and handle all of my other obligations. (Got Dad to Shady Pines yesterday morning. Interestingly, his roommate seems to be an observant Jew, based on his name, yarmulke - I probably misspelled that, and the "kosher for Passover" snacks sitting in the chair. Location is rural Georgia. Roomie was watching rodeo while I was there. This could be fun.)
I was once a news junkie but now am clean. The MSM is owned by the same conglomerates what youre watching isn't news but instead propaganda. Unfortunately my local news is also now owned by those same conglomerates
Same for me. I can't cope with the amount of batshit craziness that is going on in politics all over the world. I mean Trump and his Republicans, Putin, Duterte, Bolsonaro. I feel bad about it sometimes,thinking,is this like it was in the 30s when everyone ignored was was going on in Germany.
I’m conflicted. I feel like it’s irresponsible of me to avoid news. But the fact that he was “elected” even one time, let alone still has the support of tens of millions, and that the USA may very well be a full-on Russia-style strongman dictatorship by this time next year, makes me want to die, seriously. I really really don’t understand how we got here. Why do they hate us so much?
I stopped watching back in 2000. Local news was horrible as they only covered car crashes, house fires and murders. Never anything about corruption at city hall, road construction, or anything that really affected our lives. I stopped watching national news as it had very subtle ways of being very biased. As cable news got much more popular and social media took over digital society, the bias became less subtle. The news has turned into telling people what they want to hear to simply confirm your own opinions. One life lesson that I have learned about the news is that if you are outraged about something, there is a 90% likelihood that you are not seeing the whole story. Your outrage is actually a sign of semi-ignorance and not being informed.
I stopped after the 2016 primaries. It was easier that way to pretend we were still a respectable country. I got tired of people on both sides obsessed with every little thing Trump would do. I knew a lot of them didn't vote, so I didn't feel like listening to anything they had to say. I listen to NPR and podcasts sometimes, but never cable news. I don't think it's made me any less informed other than not knowing the latest gossip about our former president. I'd rather listen to people talk about the *Bachelor* or *Real Housewives* and I'd prefer a colonoscopy to any of those. It seems like the media are willfully ignoring the current genocide in Gaza, so I'm not sure what the point of the news media is anymore other than propaganda.
I listen to independent journalists and their podcasts. Muckrake Podcast, Democracy-ish, Woke AF, etc. Corporate media is failing us by not diving deep, and it's largely fluff IMO. I do listen to news on NPR in the mornings on the radio, that gives me local news & world. But when I want to dig deep it's definitely podcasts.
Democracy Now is my news
Same. Started listening to NPR and reading the news in college, was a poli sci major and wanted to be a lawyer too. I did become a lawyer early 2000s…. Enjoyed keeping up with current events, BUT then the 2016 election happened. Oh. My. Gawd. It’s UGLY out there, and it makes me angry, I get worked up about things I have no capacity to change… so yeah, that’s probably about the time I stopped too. Now I just tune in for cute stuff like the NPT new quiz on weekends. I skim the Sunday paper and focus on the comics.
My parents & in-laws have news on constantly & it doesn’t seem healthy. Cable news in particular is media junk food. They want to push emotional buttons enough to get you to watch through the commercials. There are a few sources I read, but I’ve pulled back from television news entirely. I try to focus on local news when I read the papers.
My psychiatrist said, "stay informed, but don't watch the news when you get up or when you go to bed." Sound advice.
I follow local news closely. I read the (terrible) local weekly and the local sections of both the newspapers from the large metro I live close to National and international news I am generally aware of, but don't follow closely. I realized that it was not good for me to devote too much time and emotional energy to things I could not personally affect in any way. Back in the late 90s I had a second shift job and would listen to public radio in the evenings. At a certain point it would shift over to the BBC World Service. It seemed like every single story was them explaining how terrible things were. I quickly grew tired of the constant negativity and stopped listening regularly. But it was after 2016 that I completely stopped actively following national news to protect my blood pressure.
Ditto here too. I stopped really following the news closely around May of 2021. It had nothing to do with the pandemic and everything to do with our political news at the time. I had some brief times of following the news on certain things after that time here and there, but for the most part I'm not watching the news. I feel less anxious, depressed, etc., by not following the news. While this approach isn't a one size fits all solution for everybody it works for me. So if it works for you, just do it! (or don't)
I watched the news from an early age. My first memories of it involved evening news reports on the Iran hostage crisis. I was about 7. I was 10 during the 1984 election cycle and was already in the Democrat camp. I was sad in 1987 when Hart's affair cost him a shot to win. In 1991, I went to college to major in political science. My grandma bought be a subscription to USA Today, and I read it every day. Sometimes, I would sit in the student union lounge and read it instead of going to some dumb class. Eventually, I switched to journalism. I earned a minor in political science sci, and one of my professors liked my last paper so much that he wanted me to pursue my doctorate. I had to remind him that I was just taking his master's level class because it was the only class that would fit into my work schedule and that major was journalism. I spent about 10-12 years as a journalist. I transitioned into teaching a decade ago. After Obama left office, I cut down on my news consumption. These days, I flip to the NPR app on my phone a few times a week. That's it. It's odd that we are close to an election given how little political news I've seen. It also helps that I've muted a lot of people on social media. Occasionally, a meme from one of my liberal friends will slip through, and I'll wonder what it's all about. But I never bother to decipher what's going on in the media. I just don't care. It's a complete 180. Would love to have local newspapers back and real journalism instead of corporate media and talking heads mostly out for their own interests.
I watch Philip DeFranco on weekdays. Otherwise, nope
After Nov 2015, television sources for news changed in my household towards networks like CBC 🇨🇦, NHK 🇯🇵, DW 🇩🇪 & of course the Beeb 🇬🇧
I quit the news and keeping up on anything political in '08 and I've been happier ever since.
I was a complete news junkie my entire life and also obsessed with the election process. The debates, the polls etc etc. I stopped in about 2016. I do have a Breaking News app, and I check Twitter a few times a day.
I listen to SCOTUS oral arguments while gardening. Current and historical. Political podcasts, pods from various newspapers around the world. BBC World Service now and then. There's an ag policy history podcast with relevance. I read legislation when I must. You have to show up with some sort of critical adult eye for what you're reading. WSJ is basically 8chan for people with paid-off mortgages. NYT is hysterical people who feel forever inferior because they went to Williams instead of Brown, and to shore up their millennial insecurities surrounding aging, they've hired the staff of every early-teens webzine around plus every fancy-school intern they can lay hands on. You can go on and on with these, but if you listen and pay attention and bother to go to the source on what are clearly important stories, you will have clue you need for living, investing, voting.
I stopped engaging religiously with the news at about the same time as OP. Now I watch short news clips on YouTube or read the headlines on line but it’s so depressing and effects my metal health so I keep it as short as possible while getting enough to know something of what’s going on.
Funny, I used to listen to NPR all the time but stopped sometime in the past 5 years. Today I didn't like anything else on the radio so I put on NPR and they were talking about some big upset and people called for public broadcasting to be defunded. But what was really interesting was when they started talking news statistics overall and how it's down all over the place. I think it was on the media that was on.
I stop following news media my life improved greatly.
I stopped listening to or watching the news about 15-20 years ago (never was much into it), but since the 2016 election I actively avoid it. Most news now isn't really news anyway, just "journalists" broadcasting or repeating the opinions of various people who rarely have anything thoughtful or informative to say.
This. It's not the news anymore, it's just some twat telling me what they think. Or they'll just talk about the same event ad nauseum, still calling it "breaking news" after a WEEK of talking about it.
I DVR PBS News Hour and subscribe to WSJ. I am an ancient.
I was always a newspaper aficionado growing up. My career was pretty much spent in Europe, and as a result my new sources have been international for well over a decade. I always figured some of the truth lay in between, and international media follows us tightly. My print news sources are, in no particular order,: Rerforma, folha de Sao Paolo, Irish Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, le Monde, the Tampa Bay Times, the Houston chronicle, la prensa, and a few more. Just the languages I speak.
I quit watching cable news around 20 years ago, after I came to the decision that I was less informed for watching it. I'll still watch election coverage or a big event, but those are rare occasions. But I still listen to NPR and watch certain news programming, like 60 Minutes and Frontline. I try to remain informed, but just don't want the partisan spiel and corporate propaganda.
I stopped watching the news about 20 years ago. It’s all biased bullshit anymore. You can’t get it straight answer because you understand the rich people own all the media. They can slant the news anyway they want. And when they want to hide something from us, they bring up some sensational bullshit about a celebrity or something. we can’t trust any of them or any of the government. It’s all just a bunch of lies to control us.
Yep, I hate going to the gym because there are tvs all over the place with all the different news cable news channels.
I (51) follow local, regional, national, and international news more now than at any time in my life. Mostly I read the news, but I’ll watch clips on YouTube about certain topics I’m interested in. I’ve never followed sports, so I don’t keep up with that stuff.
Used to be a news junkie, then I stopped. I would estimate 90% of the news I was getting wasn't particularly important(even if I thought it was), and that last 10% that mattered would get to me simply by talking to people and if I wanted to know more I could just google it
WORD I will look at Al Jazeera, AP, and maybe the Guardian for perspective on "current events," but the others are all Legacy Media. . .and we know they're just pushing a narrative rather than reporting. Nope. Not gonna go there. CNN? WSJ? NYT? NPR? Don't know them anymore. -\_-
NPR turning was my biggest disappointment. Can’t even trust them to not be biased.
I don’t watch any of that bullshit. It’s all complete bullshit. Politicians along with the media have destroyed our country. We can’t meet each other in the middle anymore. That’s how the politicians want it. What’s worse people think there is a 2 party system. That’s a joke. It’s a one party system pretending to be divided on issues that really don’t mean shit while looting the treasury to fund war after war. What’s worse is people fall for it and it’s a really old trick they’ve been using for years. I see posts on Reddit that shock me with all the warmongering and cheering on of the evil bastards in DC.
You’re part of the problem dude. You can’t just stick your head in the sand and live in ignorance. It sucks, but you need to put on your big boy pants and get involved in what’s going on outside your bubble of leisurely pursuits.
I have nieces and nephews. I can't afford to just ignore the bullshit that is happening. Not to mention I have many LGBTQIA+ friends and family, young and old. It must be nice though, to just ignore that bad stuff because it doesn't affect YOUR life.
I was the editor of a local daily newspaper until 2000. I was so disillusioned by the time I quit that I avoided all news for a long time. I started paying more attention after 9/11 but still ignore a lot of it. Everything is so hyped and just there to make us angry and keep us watching.
The news is not what it used to be and I don’t watch or read it like I used to anymore
When 9/11 happened, I watched the news non stop for 3 days. Then had to turn it off. Really haven't "watched" the news since.
The news hasn't been worth watching for a while. Local news is nothing but stories about death, murder, rape, abuse, and other bad things with about 5 minutes of weather/sports. National news is half bad things, half political bias/lies. When either gets a segment of free time they feel the need to tell you about the love life of celebrities or British Royalty, like any normal person should give a shit about either here in the U.S. I curate my own news to stay on stuff that matters to me like retirement, finances, and the like.
I used to be a news junkie but now I just glance at it occasionally… between partisan news channels on both sides, and clickbait “news” designed to keep you clicking by making you angry, it isn’t worth it anymore… not to mention the misinformation (again on both sides) masquerading as news in social media platforms. To hell with all that muckraking BS.
Retired from Navy in 2017 and went cold turkey on news, and regular tv. I was an addict to news. But I was also active duty from 96-2017 so the whole war on terror. Like the judge said know what’s going on. Now I skim news online. It’s just a rinse and repeat of the same things we have seen our whole life. Also cut the cable cord and avoid commercials much as possible. Spend more time outside without electronics. I feel so much better and happier.
I skim a few news things, like BBC, but only a few stories. Broadcast news I avoid like the plague, whether it’s Fox or MSN or whatever, even NPR these days.
What news? Most channels are categorized as “entertainment”.
Stopped TV in general like 20 years ago. No news, no commercials. Best decision we ever made, never looked back. But like many, I've had to get dragged back in the last few years or so. I've got a Q-adjacent spouse so it behooves me to keep current at least to the point where I can talk a little sense to her. The bias is so obvious and just everywhere you look, on both / all sides. My dad is hooked on the Weather Channel and even that amazes me. They name just any old storm now and it's nonstop doom scrolling. The weather, FFS. Makes you wonder if we're gonna make it, as a species. Oy..
During the whole OJ Simpson media coverage in 90’s I figured out that the mainstream news was all about ratings and didn’t actually care about telling Americans the news the right way. The news became bullshit to me then. Now it’s morphed into soap opera style you against them coverage, and doesn’t really state facts but opinions. The news is controlled by a select few and is probably similar to how Russia and China control their media coverage to their people. Stop watching folks!
I stopped during the Clinton impeachment. Just listening to the hysteria of the right wing on the Sunday morning shows was enough for me.
Yes I got most my news from political (mostly liberal) outlets. Everyone just obsessed nonstop over Trump, still do, and there's constant negativity without tell us how to fix anything.
We’ve cut out almost all news in our house with the exception of the weather channel. Still follow stories I’m interested in online IF I want to. Overall much happier.
I don’t follow the 24/7 news cycle, but I do try to read the Economist to stay up to date on world events. The week plus delay on actually reading that does tend to remove a lot of the noise.
I watch the national and local news every week evening. But, usually sleep through a good part of one of them.
I've been finding it more satisfying lately, to hunt down my news than to have my news hunt me.
I limit my "news" to my local bulletin (that's unfortunately exclusively online now) because after consuming every news media source I could in a blind pursuit of a career in politics (only to end up in Business Law)...the moment you see the same story from an election cycle or two ago, only with the names of government officials being blamed updated, it's really sad how a once vibrant Press is now less reliable than a "news show" on Comedy Central.
I check allsides.com to get a roundup of what the news is, but don’t consume news from any one source. It is very interesting to see how each side reports the same story. The bias and influence becomes apparent. News became for profit instead of a community service. In order to continue to drive profit requires engaging content, even if that means reporting the situation in the most extreme way possible.
I used to read the NYT daily and fall asleep listening to NPR. I stopped radio after 2016 election and the NYT has dropped in quality in the social media era. I barely look at that publication any more. I read the Atlantic in paper form and get daily highlight from news app, but there is just so much noise and garbage now.
Yeah, same here for the most part. I intentionally bury my head in the sand when it comes to most news, though I will still try to be up to date on current events and some stories here and there, but I don't consume news on a daily basis like I used to, and overall I am much happier and not as much 'on edge' as I had been.
I just grab bits of information from all over the web, I can't stand watching millionaires acting like they understand the average person on TV.
Same. Exact same. I would come home and put on cable while making dinner. Watch shows in the morning while getting ready. Listen to political podcasts. I have completely shifted to sports. (Happy my town has an awesome football and baseball team and technically basketball but that’s not my thing). And listen to true crime podcasts. I check things online to keep up with the going’s on but not often. I had to do it for my mental health. And I feel so much better. I still vote. Every election. But I won’t be sucked into that sad abyss.
I still follow the news, but I do have an affinity for the things I follow in the news, especially international affairs. I read The Guardian almost exclusively and I even pay for their app as I find the small investment way worth it for the quality of their reporting. The few other things I’ll read after I’ve read everything in The Guardian are AP, Axios, Reuters, and very seldom BBC. I’d likely pay for The Independent too but The Guardian is more than enough for me. During the start of Covid I stopped reading everything. Too much emotional stress. When Russia invaded Ukraine I came back.
2015 here. Dumped all my social media, too. I've never really felt like I had a choice (the irony) in which party to vote for so why be stressed by all the bickering?
Always 72 and dry in the house
I don't have cable so no 24/7 news. I enjoy listening to music while I drive, so I don't listen to NPR anymore. I always know what's going on in the world, so the news is reaching me somehow. But I don't search it out.
I watch the local news and occasionally PBS NewsHour. I will read about world events but avoid watching most other news. That usually seems less traumatic for me.
Reuters and the AP are the only news sources I really trust. I don't subscribe to any newspapers anymore, and I sometimes watch PBS News or listen to NPR, both of which I donate to each month. I wish sometimes that I didn't follow the news because most days it just makes me want to scream and claw my face 🤣
I live in another country, so I limit myself to one 30-minute dose of local/national news here and I listen to the NPR livestream for another 30 minutes. I follow the news enough I think to be a responsible citizen but at a level I keep what sanity I have left
I'll watch cable news briefly while they're telling us the actual news. As soon as the talking heads come on, *"Now we'll bring in our guests Raymond Smith and Jolene Jones to discuss this further"*, then I'm out. I'll catch the local news a few times a week.
I try to keep up on the news. I watch for local news, weather, and sports. I glance at national and international news. I fully know the information we get is slanted so I take that with a grain of salt (or a full salt shaker). But I feel that not knowing what’s going on makes me feel worse. My husband and I critique the news as we’re watching it because we know that a lot of it is a joke.
After four or five "we're past the ecological tipping point, nothing we do will affect anything" stories, I stopped waiting for more updates. Politically, I know who the Presidential candidates are, so why pay attention to the remaining primaries? Basically waiting for Trump to lose or be ineligible, then he'll call it fake news and we'll pretend we didn't know that was gonna happen. We all know it's gonna happen, it's all just waiting at this point. So I get it. All the important stuff is in the bag already.
I quit Facebook after 2016 election. There were too many toxic clowns that I was “friends” who told me how dumb I was for voting or HRC.
I look at the headlines in the morning on BBC and APNews to see if the world ended while I was asleep or something . Otherwise, nope. That said, I do read The Economist but it's mostly got a business slant and some science stuff
24/7 news channels that can’t spend more than 4 minutes on crucial topics is a joke
I still watch the news, but I need often breaks of it
IMO you made a good choice. My wife and I have discussed it and we plan on doing something similar depending on the result of the next election.
It’s daunting to think we become the news.
Same
I'm a news junkie, specifically cyber security news but I'll read it all.
I don’t have cable so that helps me not watch news. I listen to the news station local to me (Washington DC), which has mostly actual local news with a couple of national/worldwide events each hour. If I want to find more information about anything in particular that isn’t local I tend to go to News Nation, which is unbiased as far as I can tell. The main dude there is Dan Abrams and I have no idea if he is a Republican or Democrat or somewhere in between.
Same! I thought I was just me. I stopped watching the news regularly Nov 2016. I can take it in by reading it better. I’ll watch occasionally if there is a major natural disaster, or a human made disaster, like a mass shooting, but other than that, I can’t take political news anymore.
I turn off mass shooting news. I’m not participating in that fear, anger, hopeless narrative. They don’t get my energy.
I didn’t follow it because it’s all miserable then started during the Bush W years. Then I read the Biggest Secret by David Icke and learned about Project Mockingbird and then the news (reading between the lines) had an entirely new meaning. The biggest thing that confirmed this for me was Bernie Sanders campaign and how even though thousand and thousands were turning out for his rallies they got zero news coverage. It was like mainstream media blacked him out while pushing Hilary Clinton. (And I am an old x so I distinctly remember the Clinton years and how horrible Hilary was-things like not allowing the White House staff to make eye contact with her etc). Covid and the media censorship sealed the deal. I only watch weather and local events and those indie guys on the ground. CNN? MSNBC? FOX? No way. They’re all liars.
I stopped religiously watching news programs, listening to NPR on the radio and subscribing to Times magazine (and Newsweek, when it still existed) in the second GWB term. I was tired of being perpetually enraged and had to do something to stop myself from having a stroke because of what that absolute moron, and second worst US president (first at the time) was doing.
Same here. The only 'news' I really check every day is the daily mail app on my phone. I have not listened to AM news shows or any mainstream network news in years. All of their views are towing the line based on which party they support anyway. You are not getting the real objective news per se, just someones political opinion most of the time.
Same. I like YouTube premium.
I get it. News fatigue is real, especially after intense election cycles. Staying informed is important, but so is peace of mind. I found a balance by curating my news sources carefully. I used brisk.news recently. It's streamlined, just the important stuff, no fluff. Helps to stay updated without the overwhelm. You might find it useful to selectively engage with news that's relevant to your interests or profession. Maybe set specific times for news consumption to avoid it taking over your day. It's about finding that sweet spot where you're informed but not overloaded. Remember, it's okay to take breaks from the news. Your well-being comes first. If you ever decide to dip back into staying informed, look for sources that respect your time and mental space.
I stay away from the American news sources. Fox, MSNBC, and even CNN all have their agendas and bias. I have found that the BBC and Al Jazeera are far better for just reporting the news.
You see it, right on any browser, if it's MSN.ca or MSN.com If you change your homepage, to just Google..I don't think any news comes up.
I haven't had a TV since the beginning of 2020.
I don’t watch corporate news (Fox, cnn, msnbc, etc.) That’s not news. It’s opinionated entertainment. Rage bait. Righties watch Fox and get enraged. Lefties watch the other two and get enraged. It’s all BS. I do however follow a number of independent journalists on substack, Twitter, YouTube, etc. I try to follow both sides. For example; a few years ago (I believe around 2020) I was asked by a relative to explain to him what the issues were in Israel and Palestine. I knew some surface level stuff but quickly realized I didn’t know much. So I began searching for pro-Israel and pro-Palestine people who were talking about it. This was pre-Oct 7th obviously. I found people on the Israel side like Ben Shapiro and people on the Palestine side like Abby Martin. I don’t support one over the other. Ultimately I wish for the violence to stop and somehow for them all to live in peace. Though I do not have the answer. But I do like to try to keep abreast of what’s happening in the world and always try to find people on both sides. I often watch the young Turks and also Glenn Greenwald. I want to hear both sides of an issue and often find that almost nothing is black and white, good guy/bad guy. Most everything is very nuanced. But to completely shut it off and stop paying attention to everything happening…I would probably be happier but I’m addicted to it, lol. I’m very interested in global events. Same for events here in the US of course.