zlacker

I stopped following the news

submitted by mertbi+(OP) on 2026-01-28 08:33:57 | 187 points 192 comments
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7. nhatch+d6[view] [source] 2026-01-28 09:20:07
>>mertbi+(OP)
Aaron Swartz has a nice blog post about it[1].

It's been discussed several times on HN[2]. I had periods I go through without news. It's been harder to do that lately.

[1]: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews

[2]: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=i+hate+the+news

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10. M95D+x6[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-01-28 09:22:44
>>voidUp+m4
Then why read news and not directly read the new laws and regulations that were voted and passed, or new proposed laws under discussion?

https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-sa...

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35. ben_w+A9[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-01-28 09:43:11
>>keifer+x7
Excerpt from link:

  For the rest of the news, I am considering subscribing to a magazine that covers important events in Germany, the EU, or the world every few months. This kind of format filters out short-term noise and fear-driven stories.
Elections happen even less frequently than this. If your democracy disintegrates with less than a few months of warning, you were probably invaded and noticed even without the news; At this point, that would probably lead to a civil emergency notification on your phone, and by design that happens even without any apps installed.

As we said in the UK in my childhood, "Today’s news is tomorrow’s chip* paper".

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_and_chips

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49. tmcz26+Bb[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-01-28 10:01:50
>>james-+va
Would that be this? Just checking:

https://www.economist.com/the-world-in-brief

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60. duskdo+uc[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-01-28 10:08:50
>>apppli+xb
I don't use it, but I saw this similar idea on here before >>35795388
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72. popalc+kd[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-01-28 10:14:28
>>kornak+e7
When the world is on fire and people are suffering, we have a moral obligation to be aware of it and take part in the healing. To turn off your access to the media is a temporary solution that may well be justified in the short term, but you do not have the luxury of forgoing your part in this world, because if you do, it will burn all the way to your doorstep.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXgWZyb_HgE

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78. acuozz+be[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-01-28 10:22:01
>>ivolim+yb
https://www.hgtv.com/shows/tv-schedule

"Home & Garden Television". Lots of shows about flipping houses, etc.

It used to be far more instructional (Julia Child-esque) before it and Food Network got swept up in the reality TV craze. It still has the "bones" of its former self though.

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93. c16+8h[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-01-28 10:44:51
>>Effraf+Be
Yeah, it's available here https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/start-screen-a-busi....

Can't say it's the best extension in the world, but it scratches my own itch and I'm happy with it. Sometimes that's good enough.

96. Brajes+Pk[view] [source] 2026-01-28 11:14:03
>>mertbi+(OP)
I come from one of the most disturbed and violent states in India. During high school and college, I worked with a few local Newspaper Publishers, finishing up layouts in Aldus PageMaker. Along with the reporters, I was involved in many parts of the final decisions that made the news mellowed/changed when printed in the Paper in the morning, making it more consumable for readers. I have seen photos of bloodshed and mutilations that trained my brain to normalize rotten.com in later years of my life. The ones printed in the morning paper were always curated; the ones that got away unprinted were things we would keep under key and lock.

More than a decade ago, I stopped following general news and learn about things asynchronously. However, I had picked up a few topics that I like to follow and do follow them. Since the Pandemic, I had settled on just a few niche areas of Tech and Science to follow — which, of course, quite a few of them land on Hacker News when I submit them.

Around the end of 2025, I picked up the actual printed Physical Newspaper again. A lot of the news seems like yesterday’s Jam to me. I’m going to continue reading the newspaper, Slow and Smooth, picking the ones I want to read and ignoring everything else.

https://brajeshwar.com/2026/newspaper/

102. Zealot+kn[view] [source] 2026-01-28 11:34:51
>>mertbi+(OP)
I would suggest following the news with a delay, for example you can subscribe to a monthly publication like Le Monde Diplomatique[1] that'll give you a relatively fresh analysis of news but without the noise. They invite experts to contribute and give a saner perspective to world event, with more context.

[1] https://mondediplo.com/

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103. alamor+xo[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-01-28 11:43:39
>>ozlike+ag
It sounds like he touched a nerve but I don't think the comment to which you replied was suggesting it's everyone's duty to follow American politics, and complaining that we're egomaniacs because we discuss such topics here is akin to me whining that Panorama[1] on BBC One devotes too much time to the royals. In America, we have a common piece of advice for avoiding that problem, popularized by one of our past presidents (very different from the guy somehow in office today). It goes, "if you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen."

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panorama_(British_TV_programme

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117. sotix+sN[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-01-28 14:11:46
>>sjw987+O5
If anyone is interested in keeping up with current events in a manner closer to "reading the history" rather than reading the news, check out Wikipedia's Current Events portal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events
119. hagbar+xP[view] [source] 2026-01-28 14:21:36
>>mertbi+(OP)
The Dutch term for the German 'neurgierig' is 'nieuwsgierig' which translates to 'greedy for news' and as such is even closer to the subject of this post. I also use an RSS reader - Nextcloud News - to follow the 'news' (including this here site, HN) and I sometimes feel the same about what is pushed by the legacy media and its more recent competition. Much of what is published is tailored to fit some political agenda, often a 'progressive' one for most of the legacy news media and - due to my conscious choices - a more 'conservative' one for the more recent counterparts. I made this choice to get a somewhat more balanced view of what actual facts the stuff published by 'left' and 'right' seems to be based on but... man, is it often tiring to see 'both' sides go on and on and on pushing their agendas.

Even more tiring is to see how useful idiots [1] happily take the propaganda pushed by the media and trumpet it as if it were pure gospel, often with dire consequences. Should I just quit following the legacy media and the more recent anti-dotes and try to live here in quiet and solitude on the farm? Well, no, I don't think I should. I will be confronted with te results of the media poisoning the minds of their victims the next time I go to a city and find the roads blocked by a crowd of people shouting inane slogans. Where did they get those from, what are they blathering about, why does this crowd of screechy weasels hollering about some supposed misdeed performed by some government somewhere far from here occupy the station? Almost invariably it comes down to the propaganda pushed by the media - nowadays usually some on-line version which is amplified up by the legacy dinosaurs and trumpeted by the other titles which are more often than not owned by the same conglomerate - which the useful idiots uncritically pick up and use as their guide star. I read this stuff because I want to know what ideas the media is trying to amplify and which they are attempting to suppress. I read it because I sometimes have to quench whatever fuse has been lit by them in the heads of my children. So, tiring as it is I'll keep the feeds running and try to follow my way through the mire of deceptions, half-truths, outright lies and other propaganda which is what goes for 'news'.

[1] https://wordhistories.net/2021/03/26/useful-idiot/

129. judahm+DD1[view] [source] 2026-01-28 17:48:50
>>mertbi+(OP)
Everyone should know that they can view HN posts ranked by activity without the flag filter through https://news.ycombinator.com/active

Personally, I see no reason that the active page shouldn't be added to the navigation menu above.

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134. m463+vb2[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-01-28 20:20:22
>>sjw987+O5
you could read wikipedia news:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

163. ensoco+zO3[view] [source] 2026-01-29 08:20:50
>>mertbi+(OP)
There is a great book about this from Rolf Dobelli "Stop Reading The News" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48581422-stop-reading-th...
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