Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/06/17/40-of-people-dont-care-about-the-news-survey-says.html
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I care a lot about the news. I just can only take so much for my mental well-being given the never ending cycle of awfulness.
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It’s kind of tricky to definitively parse “people want a range of perspectives” from “people want to see opinion pieces masquerading as news that provides affirmation for their existing beliefs and biases.”
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In other news, 60% of people feel quite strongly about surveys.
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… and meaningless outside the context of any specific list of “perspectives” to which somebody is proposing to give equal time 
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My big beef is that what gets the most attention is not really news. One terrible crash at an intersection, with lurid details, and heart-string-jerking human interest angles is tragedy porn. Telling me that that intersection has seen an increase in fatalities is news.
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That is very, very different than not caring about the news.
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40% of people have ALWAYS avoided the news. This is not a new phenomenon.
A lot of people are just occupied in everyday survival. They might know that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushed up global food and energy prices, as well as killing lots of people, but there’s nothing they can do about it, and it’s a mental drain to keep up with the latest stories. You need your psychological resources to deal with paying the rent and feeding your children.
Speaking as a fairly comfortable Boomer who owns their home mortgage free, I feel like that and ignore stories fairly often. The latest was a “The Guardian” piece about how the super-rich and governments had bought up and controlled all sorts of vital resources. I don’t know what these resources are because I just thought this was already perfectly obvious and it would be uselessly depressing to read any of the details. I mean I knew that UK water, transport and energy are significantly controlled by foreign governments and equity funds. That’s why the local rivers are constantly flooded with sewage while the area suffers from water and power outages and it takes 80 minutes to catch a bus to the local train station 8 miles away.
Who voted for any of this? Who thinks they can change it by their consumer decisions when a lot of these things are monopolies? Why protest when you can get a £10,000 fine and 10 years gaol for walking slowly or linking arms?
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Huh, whatever
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I am more just fed up of presenters letting people rant lies that every one knows is lie an not calling the guest on their lies, but doing an extra bit at the end after they have left calling them lier, just do it to their face, other wise they will carry on, why have them on tv in the first place!
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I would say that persoanlly, when I say “I want a range of perspectives” is more like “90% of the media I consume is owned in some form or another by right-wing econolib millionaires so it feels less like news and more like capitalist mouthpieces”.
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40% of people don’t care about the news, BoingBoing says
“The News” is not objective and informative, it’s just repetitive sensationalism and hidden agendas.
40% of people don’t care about the news, survey says
this is not what the survey says, @pesco…
e/@danimagoo;
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Interesting, what I want is less videos. I don’t want to see someone slowly narrate the part I already know, and explain how what the are about to say might surprise or frighten me, or explain yet again that EVs run on electricity, or fire is hot.
I want text where I can skip to the important part. Or skim ahead and see you are telling me a thing happened a bunch so it must be a problem, but no per capita numbers and no trends over time so I may as well not bother to read the rest because the author (or editor) left out all the actual data that may support or refute the concluding so I won’t get any value out of the conclusion, I may as well save the time and not see any of it.
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I’m not convinced that 80% of people could distinguish between news, opinion, or outright fiction.
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Me too, but I expect both of us watch the authoritative TV news on the BBC or whatever sometimes. It’s the Tick-Tocks and You-Tubes we don’t like. Which really are both just places where anyone can post up just about anything because there’s no editorial process and not much moderation.
That doesn’t mean every piece of social media video “news” is crap but it’s a pretty high percentage. That’s the downside of democratising media production with simple, powerful tools anyone can use. (Even before adding AI into the mix.)
Most of those behaviors I described are present on authoritative TV news. I mean, I’m sure YouTube news-ish channels do it too, since they rarely aspire to be a replacement for TV news. I’m less sure if BBC news does it because I tend not to get a lot of news from them, but if they don’t (or even do it less) maybe I should give it shot.
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