Personal each day it seems like there is a different crisis or disaster somewhere in the world. I feel like I have unintentionally shut out news from both TV and Radio because of things like the Oil spill in the Gulf. I'm not trying to pretend that it isn't happening but I feel like it is such a downer on day to day life.
Posted Jun 3, 2010, 9:37 PM UTC
It's not so much the "depressing" that stopped me. It's the sensationalism, and lack of objective truth. Many years ago I was watching national evening news. They were showing a bridge in Seattle sinking (yea it happens). The camera angle was such that you could not see the newly constructed bridge that was currently in operation. They did not say that the sinking bridge was not in use and being refurbished. They simply said something more like "Today storms in Seattle sunk a large portion of the interstate-90 bridge. Interstate-90 is used daily by thousands of commuters to get across Lake Washington."
So, knowing that local story was not truthfully portrayed... made me clearly realize I couldn't trust any of it... Good riddance anyway... reddit is enough for me.
It's not so much the "depressing" that stopped me. It's the sensationalism, and lack of objective truth. ... reddit is enough for me.
You must be new here... I have some bad news for you.
He's right - that's pretty much how I see reddit at the moment.
Good news everyone! You are now reading this in my voice!
Fuck you and the horse-bot you rode in on. GET OUT OF MY HEAD.
I see social news sites as partisan, sensationalistic, and constantly correcting themselves. The TV news can only claim two of these prizes.
Crap stories like this is why I only watch the news for the weather. I try to get my news information from other sources now. At least on the internet, I can choose to stop reading the story when it pisses me off.
Its improved my understanding of the news and limits my frustration nicely.
Why would you watch the news just for the weather when you can get the weather faster on the internet?
Its really a matter of convenience. When I get ready in the morning, I turn the tv on instead of booting up the computer. Get ready with half an ear on the news waiting for the weather. When the weather segment comes up, I walk out and watch, click off the tv after its done and get on with my day.
Wait a minute, wait a minute... you turn off your computer?
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Dammit, I was going to upvote the lone, downvoted dissenting and critical opinion... But that was just tangential, rambling, and too rage-filled to add anything to the community conversation.
Reddit may be highly politically biased, and it's a pretty lousy primary news source. Of course, I haven't seen anyone here (yet) pretending that it that's not true.
It's not the depressing news that bugs me as much as the fear-mongering. Now, every brown-skinned person is probably a terrorist, single men are rapists and pedophiles hunting down your children, and YOU might be secretly dying from mercury poisoning.
"Could you and your pets and children be secretly dying from mercury poisoning??? We have information vital to your survival and without it you might die in the next few minutes. Tune back in at 11:00 for details!"
so true man! anytime i watch my local news they always "entice" you with stories like that, but in defense of the news stations they do stories like that because it works. You know so many people tune in to find out what the newest deadliest danger lurking around them is.
dont forget how your showerhead may be harboring dangerous germs & every single time you shower.... you are taking a germ bath!!!!!!
Seriously... this shit was on my local news.
Even the non-news can't stray away from rape and murder. They can't shed light on the human condition unless it involves victimization. "Stay home, or someone will rape and murder you."
actually had a cop tell me recently that depending on what you do in your home people are coming to rape and murder you, and we can't do much to stop it. made me wonder why the fuck we're paying for cops.
I thought those were, like, universal truths?!
Depressing news got you down ?
Try porno, where there's always a happy ending !
Not always the case...shudder...not always the case.
cumshots on feet. WUT.
In the belly button.
The death of thousands of little soldiers at their feet. They never held a chance! tear
Quote from Bicentennial Man??
News is so full of meh.
Old stories repackaged as new.
News at 11:
Be afraid of things you don't know. Kids do stupid shit. Jail for life. Shit storm in the middle east. People are greedy. Check out this strange animal, human, thing. Someone local is really old. Blacks and browns are going to rob and kill you. House bubble. When will it burst. Stupid old people getting tricked. Stocks. How do they work? Magnets. Jetpacts comming soon. A disease is cured. Not really. Sike. Dumbed down science gibber jabber. Local team does good/bad. What are kids eating. Companies are bad. Do nothing. Politics is lies. Anti gay person is caught committing sin. Is gay. Are you spending enough? Are you saving enough? Africa is fucked. NK is fucked. Internet hackers. Aids.
... and EVERYTHING causes cancer!
... and then it doesn't until it does again.
True. I watch morning television and at seperate times on the same program I have seen chocolate be linked to both curing and causing cancer.
facepalm
I see the general message as "BE AFRAID. WE CAN HELP YOU".
I don't watch the news because I don't like the stories they give the most time to. They always give time to some story about someone I've never met getting murdered or something and I wonder why it's newsworthy. Crime figures would be news and maybe if there was a serial killer going round it'd be worthwhile knowing but there's no reason for individual cases to be broadcast to the whole nation. Also random the way they randomly pick up the story of a missing kid and cover it beginning to end while ignoring all the other majority of missing kids. Idk there's no reason for them to be telling me half the stuff they are and this is the BBC I'm talking about so I'm not too concerned with the objectivity of the content.
I'm trying. I'm really trying to stop. It's an addiction. The anger is starting to destroy me. For months I was in Europe without a TV and it began to subside, but as soon as I got back I picked up the habit right where I left off. I'm on step one: I have admitted I am powerless.
I don't miss TV at all. I sold my TV for weed, haven't looked back.
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People who think their lives are worth a damn will make their voices heard no matter how insignificant it may play out to be. The alternative is laying down like a victim.
Yes. It's not the oil spill stuff that gets me, although the sucks. It's more the political news about how our leaders are corrupt. I think I just read reddit too much. An alien reading this would think we all got tazed 3 times before lunch, thrown in jail for thinking about marijuana, and charged high bandwidth rates in the prison computer lab to read HuffPo but really low rates to read the NYTimes.
Come join r/happy.
:-D it like the rainbow subreddit but doesn't kill your eyes! I like it.
Wow - thank you. That's the stuff.
EDIT: There's a little to much "I got an A+ in my exams" and "A girl smiled at me", but the idea is cool.
Yup, about 20 years ago.
closing your eyes won't make it go away.
No, you have to see it for what it is: entertainment. Anything you see on TV should be viewed as such. Watch how hard they try to push disaster and fear. Laugh at how little informing they are actually doing.
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That's their fault.
But yeah you're right. And it's sad. Every night: Accidents, death, terrorism, arrests, murder..TV news anyway.
No, its our fault. we all have to live with the world view created by such 'entertainment/news'. Personally, im more inclined to lay fault at those who erode our collective education and those who encourage the generation and consumption of entertainment/celebrities as though humans dont exist to do anything else.
Amen! All people seem to give a fuck about is philandering celebrities and reality TV. When a celebrity dies "ohhh this is so sad boohoo.." but when someone who made a contribution of a larger scale dies: "Oh yeah by the way, so and so died.. In other news, Britney Spears.."
TV news is all about the pictures, not the stories. So much of it isn't news but just a chance to show some footage. If a news story can't be easily shown with pictures, on the whole TV news skips over it.
While they do rely on a lot of pictures, and the gorier and shocking the better, the material really isn't all that deep unless you like killing, fear of "terrorists", street crime or bad economic news.
Yep. I also stopped caring who got shot recently, I wish the news would show more news, and less obituaries and fear-mongering bullshit.
Still wouldn't watch it, though.
I unsubscribe from r/politics and r/worldnews on a regular basis. I can't take it every day
Why on earth do you resubscribe?
I can't help myself. After a little while I get curious and then I see pictures of birds covered in oil dying and Israel doing whatever it is they're doing and the Koreas pushing everyone to the brink and our government getting torn apart by crazies and immediately regret reading any of it.
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BBC News I hear is pretty good. As is the Economist.
The BBC news website is good, and the radio news is also decent, but the BBC TV news suffers the same problem all TV news suffers: an over reliance on footage means that complicated non-visual stories get glossed over in favour of some easily film-able human interest tosh.
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Are you my long lost twin? You sound just like me. I was born and raised in Central Texas and I too used to got to the coast several times a year.
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Uh, no. :( I'm one of the weird ones, I think. I love the water, but I don't like being in the water. The closest I'd get to being in the water is being in a boat...
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Life is such a downer on day to day life. The news just tells you about all of it and makes it worse.
Uhh... the news? Try reddit. I've had to install a filter to get rid of all your BP/cop/fox/facebook/israel moaning.
What filter, I can't seem to get rid of the israel crap. I don't want to unsubscribe from worldnews
I stopped following the news on r/worldnews and r/politics because it's just so Israel.
I know. Every time I turn it on it's like Brad might break up with Angelina.
I stopped watching the news because it's no longer the news. Major 'news' outlets stopped practising journalism a long time ago. They're selling misery, not reporting news. If I happen to hear about a world event I'll look it up and find multiple confirming sources. Plus there is always reddit to notify me that something may be happening somewhere.
Poor Tiger Woods =(
They led with that shit for weeks, at least when I passed by a telescreen.
I got sick and tired of the gossip and thinly veiled infomercials a long time.
wasn't as bad as MJ.
MJ dying was at least a valid news story (perhaps not to the extent they covered it, but still valid). Tiger Woods having an affair is not news.
niggers will be niggers
A telescreen? Do we live in Oceania and I just haven't realized it yet? If I just realized that thought though, that must mean I'm not using doublethink. I better stop before the thought police break do
I wish I had sexy problems :(
He's a hero and a patriot! Sadly, he couldn't save Gary Coleman.
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You're right, that is a decent news source. But I hope you're confirming what you read there with other sources. The flip side of main stream news media being so trashy is that the consumer doesn't take the time to get the facts. Most people are okay with seeing a quote or a paragraph and extrapolating their own conclusions based on that alone. It's one thing to blame outlets like fox but the viewing public has to have some accountability for watching and just assuming that what they see is the truth.
It's a fast paced world and most people aren't willing to spend the time on the facts.
The average IQ is 100. Which means half of the population has an IQ less than 100. No wonder people believe the news.
that's false. remember the bell curve, and you will realise that half the population does not have an IQ of below 100.
Whats even worse is that over half of the people are below the median!!!!!!!
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I reject your form of zombifying propaganda and substitute it with my own.
News is depressing + worthless these days. I just checked CNN.com and the headline story is "Celebs Keeping a Low Profile on Oil Spill." If I want real news about my country I have to read a foreign news service.
What's really, really depressing is that even the international sources are reporting on the same thing. Who knows the current situation in Afghanistan? Has anybody heard what's happening in Zimbabwe? What's happened with Haiti, I assume since it's no longer news that everything is sunshine and lollipops? Right? Main stream viewers aren't interested so no one knows. As much as you can take the Daily show with a grain of salt, more actual journalism is done on that show than just about any news channel, and that right there, is the real comedy.
If you read good international news, you'll find out these things: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/default.stm
Did you know Japan has a new PM? Did you know there was a fire in Bangladesh? Did you know peace talks in Afghanistan are in their last day?
The situation in Haiti hasn't changed significantly and there haven't been any major events. Surely you can't expect news organisations to, every day, put up an article that says 'nope, still the same as yesterday'. The news covers new events - it's up to the public to remember them after new information ceases to come out. If something significant changes in Haiti, I fully expect there would be coverage.
I'd also like to mention NPR as, thanks to it, I knew two of the three things you mentioned in your second paragraph. And they've done a number of "How things are in Haiti" stories as well (summary: Still bad).
Unrelated, but what I'd like to hear more about is the situation in Iran, specifically the student protests in response to the (probably) rigged election. Whatever happened with that? It seemed like they had a lot of support but I hardly hear anything about it anymore.
It's a tragic comedy.
The daily show only points out how absurd the major news networks are. They don't need to do any more than that.
Heavy sigh for the truth you speak.
National Public Radio has been covering all of these things. Public TV is also a better source for non-sensational news.
I stopped watching and reading the news for that exact same reason. Also due to it's depressing nature. Much rather read about new discoveries, tech and positive things in our world. And yes I'll get the stuff worth knowing from sites like reddit.
I feel like I'm choosing between propaganda for democrats or propaganda for republicans!
That is, propaganda for the center-right, and propaganda for the extreme right, respectively.
You are so right. There is no such thing as unbiased, factual-based news anymore. Its all opinion and "experts". There are facts within but you need to view multiple sources to put the true story together. Personally I hate it. I also think 24 hour news coverage of most stories is nuts. How can you seriously cover one topic for so long? EASY bring in a bunch of "experts" and get them to droll on for hours on end spewing BS opinions while endlessly showing clips of whatever disaster/event/etc took place from 100 different angles while these morons speak. F THE NEWS. Sorry for the rant. lol.
I couldn't agree with you more. There are still a few decent journalists out there with integrity though.
http://www.propublica.org
I find it fascinating that some of the most accurate information seems to be found on sites like wikipedia for example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill
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AlJazeeraEnglish has unbiased world news (youtube)
That is what they show is because that is what the people want.