A Few Notes from Stop Reading the News by Rolf Dobelli
Anything that might pique readers’ interest and boost sales was considered newsworthy by the publishers, regardless of whether it was actually important. This fundamental fraud – the new being sold as the relevant – has persisted to this day. It remains the dominant model in print, online, on social media, the radio and television.
It’s also worth pointing out that many of these long, high-quality pieces are surrounded by vacuous nonsense that rains down on readers like cheap confetti. In other words, they’re often contaminated by the news. And I don’t want to drink from contaminated sources. I’ve chosen a radical path, I know.
The world is a complicated place. Try to read a book a week. If after twenty pages it hasn’t expanded or altered your world view, or otherwise managed to capture your attention, put it aside.
You’ve probably devoured roughly 20,000 news items in the past twelve months, approximately sixty per day at a conservative estimate. Be honest with yourself, can you think of a single one that helped you make a better decision about your life, your family, your career, your well-being or your business? A decision you wouldn’t have made without the news?
The news they supply us is irrelevant, but it’s sold as relevant. ‘The relevant versus the new’: it’s the fundamental battle facing us today.
Liberating myself from a news addiction took time, willpower and a readiness to experiment. Above all, I was seeking answers to the following questions: what is the news? What makes it so irresistible? What happens in our brains when we consume it? How can we be so well informed yet know so little?
These ‘negative obstacles’ are what make the news so insidious. I didn’t realise this until much later, by which time I’d spent tens of thousands of hours consuming the news. I asked myself two questions: do you understand the world better now? And: do you make better decisions? The answer in both cases was no.
When I ask you to give up the news, I can do so with a clear conscience. It will make your life better. And trust me: you’re not missing anything important.
Sometimes the media rather grandiosely calls these snippets of information ‘breaking news’ or ‘top world headlines’. This doesn’t change the fact that they’re largely irrelevant to your personal world. You can safely assume that the more ‘breaking’ the news, the less it actually matters to you.
All Excerpts From
Dobelli, Rolf. “Stop Reading the News.” Hodder & Stoughton
Ltd, 2019-11-18. Apple Books.