I hate the news. That the perception of staying informed takes priority of reading something actually useful to me. Or interesting. Or relevant.
Incentive for news is to be first, and to get readers
Being correct is less important. Clickbait is page 1, corrections are on page 9. And this isn't like the newspaper page 9, where people would actually flip past it. In digital news, page 9 is more like page 9 of Google results - noone sees it.
Farnam Street's You should stop reading the news
From a podcast (I think also FS)
- try reading just yesterday's newspaper. Likely not nearly as interesting
- if you are going to read something, will it still be interesting to you in a year?
Aaron Schwartz's I hate the news
None of these stories have relevance to my life. Reading them may be enjoyable, but it’s an enjoyable waste of time. They will have no impact on my actions one way or another.