More people turning away from news, report says
More people turning away from news, report says
News avoidance is now at record high levels, the Reuters Institute's 2024 Digital News Report says.
More people are turning away from news, describing it as depressing, relentless and boring, a global study suggests.
Almost four in 10 (39%) people worldwide said they sometimes or often actively avoid the news, compared with 29% in 2017, according to the report by Oxford University's Reuters Institute.
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A total of 94,943 adults across 47 countries were surveyed by YouGov in January and February for this year's Digital News Report.
I live with my mom and she has to have the news on borderline 24/7 while she's awake. I hate it because I have very good hearing so I constantly listen to music instead.
when I lived alone, I simply didn't have any sort of streaming service or cable, or what have you. my tv was exclusively for music and gaming on. that was even years ago.
frankly, I hate having to be around the news for the most part. I will sometimes read stuff on beehaw, but otherwise, no, not for me.
Its all sensationalist bullshit that supports garbage people for clicks
If it wasn't for Lemmy I'd have no idea what's happening.
I mostly avoid major world news now for the most part. I prefer to read hobby-specific news and local news, such as my municipality.
Haven't really directly paid attention to the news in about a decade or maybe a bit more. And I think I'm personally much better off for it. I hear about things that are worth hearing about from other people who degrade their mental health to watch that crap. Like, if it's a big story or a big event, I will hear about it. But those little things just pass me by, and that's okay.
News outlets make a fraction of the money they did 3 decades ago, people having previously payed directly for a newspaper. Now they basically have to rely on web page ad revenue and subscriptions which most people won’t sign up for since they can get the news for free somewhere else.
So news outlets understaff to cut costs, leading to more mistakes and less due diligence. journalists get under paid, so independently wealthy people have an easier time taking the positions and pushing personal agendas. And news outlets need outside funding to stay afloat, making them beholden to the interests of those outside interests.
So yah, the quality is worse, objectivity is down, sensationalism is up to drive clicks, and they’re pushing agendas and world views way harder than they used to.
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"You've had the pandemic [and] wars, so it's a fairly natural reaction for people to turn away from the news, whether it's to protect their mental health or simply wanting to get on with the rest of their lives."
Mr Newman said those choosing to selectively avoid the news also often do so because they feel "powerless".
"These are people who feel they have no agency over massive things that are happening in the world," he said.Some people feel increasingly overwhelmed and confused by the amount of news around, while others feel fatigued by politics, he added.Women and younger people were more likely to feel worn out by the amount of news around, according to the report.Meanwhile, trust in the news remains steady at 40%, but is still 4% lower overall than it was at the height of the Coronavirus pandemic, the survey suggested.In the UK, trust in the news ticked up slightly this year, at 36%, but remains around 15 percentage points lower than before the Brexit referendum in 2016.The BBC was the most trusted news brand in the UK, followed by Channel 4 and ITV.
"Consumers are adopting video because it is easy to use, and provides a wide range of relevant and engaging content," Mr Newman said.
"But many traditional newsrooms are still rooted in a text-based culture and are struggling to adapt their storytelling.
"There is more comfort with the use of AI in behind-the-scenes tasks such as transcription and translation; in supporting rather than replacing journalists," it added.
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Sadly, an uninformed populace is a controlled populace, so this aligns with monied interests very well.
Care to expound on this thought? I’d argue that not watching news hardly makes someone uninformed. For example, Sinclair communications owns something like 200 local tv stations in the US, and they all parrot the exact same right wing BS on the local market nightly news. Nexstar is another example - they write a BS diatribe and every news station they own repeats nonsense disguised as news.
I’d argue that being able to distinguish propaganda from “news” is an important part of critical thought, more important than being informed by local “news”.
This survey is about people who do not engage with news at all, not just syndicated, local news stations. People in the comments here are likewise also talking about how they don't read any news. What part of my comment did you take to imply I was encouraging people to be uncritical in their choice of news?
Advocating that people distinguish news from propaganda is only something you can do, if you actually read news. If you step away from news altogether, you have by definition lumped actual news and propaganda together as "things you don't engage with".
And if you're not engaging with any (non-propaganda) news, how exactly are you planning to remain informed?
News is:
newly received or noteworthy information, especially about recent or important events.
If you get it from another person, who is monitoring news sources, then you're still engaging with news, just second-hand, and without the ability to verify information or choose sources for yourself. If you don't get news, you are by definition 'without noteworthy information especially about recent or important events', i.e. "uninformed".
The Undeclared War had a nice opinion on this.
I guess they really believe that ignorance is bliss, but I believe that it's much easier to get fucked if you don't pay attention to what's going on around you