Rolf Dobelli, a Swiss author, writes essays and papers arguing that consuming news is harmful and promoting a low-news diet.
Commenters link his 'Avoid News' paper as insightful in discussions about quitting news, and also discuss his plagiarism dispute with Taleb.
related, possibly of interest:
[1] R. Dobelli. Avoid News. Aug 2010. --> http://dobelli.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Part1_TEXT.pdf
[2] C. A. Johnson. The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption. O’Reilly, 2012.
i myself am conflicted about the news. i agree with most of the negative points both by OP and the above; but i also feel i actually do learn something from the news, esp. as i have a relatively organized note-taking system, file and reference articles above a certain threshold of interest in bibdesk, etc.
i think the reason i learn something is that i take the 5 secs to take a screenshot or copy-paste the relevant snippets of information in my system. over time, you can see interesting patterns. sometimes, i run across a reference to some other, deeper source of information (presumably the background material the high-level news article was based on), and file a to-do to check it out in my task manager. usually i wouldn't have thought of this source or reference if i hadn't seen it cited in the news. last but not least, just scanning the headlines and summaries can give you a sense of what the hivemind of "the market" (or "the public") is preoccupied with at the moment.
so, at least to me, it's not all bad and yet i agree that it often feels like a waste of time and mental energy. i haven't figured out a solution yet but completely quitting the news is not going to cut it for me.
I recall reading and saving (in my Instapaper) a super relevant essay[0] written by a Swiss entrepreneur/author -- Rolf Dobelli -- that talks about how news systematically alters your 'risk-map' of the world, thus making you worry about things that'll almost never affect you while distracting you from things that actually might; as an example, the author talks about how terrorism is overrated and chronic stress is underrated, as portrayed in the media.
He suggests going on a news diet by mindfully curating the news content one plans on consuming, and thinking about its relevance to everyday life.
Personally, I can attest to experiencing increased clarity of thought, creativity and productivity once I blocked all of the junky news sites and the ilk out. This combined with practicing mindfulness has had a massive impact on my state of well-being and lowering of stress. My overall happiness has increased as a result.
[0] http://www.dobelli.com/en/essays/news-diet/
What you should really be doing is finding a way to consume as little news as possible, only picking up what really matters. Most of it is useless. Even HN has an inordinate amount of stuff that's either clearly political or local US news which I don't care about, that's why I generally don't follow the news page.
The AskHN is however a source of good discussions which can often provide you with new and useful insights into things.
The must read on the subject:
http://dobelli.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Part1_TEXT.pdf
http://dobelli.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Part2_FAQs.pdf
So... basically a bunch of talking points, and no real in depth analysis of what exactly is going on. How is that different from what we are getting now?
This is what 24 hour news cycle and constant new published articles has lead to. News organizations giving us something new for the next 15 minutes every 5 minutes.
That Vice show on HBO seems like the right direction to me. Does anyone know of an organization that does news similar to Vice?
Maybe I should just abandon the news altogether.
http://dobelli.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Part1_TEXT.pdf
It's not just Aaron Swartz (he's wrong about this part).
Many people think the news is completely junk:
http://dobelli.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Part1_TEXT.pdf
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/10/01/the-low-information-diet/
http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/why-tv-news-is-a-waste-of-human-effort-one-video-is-worth-a-trillion-dollars
http://www.stansberryradio.com/James-Altucher/Latest-Episodes/Episode/652/Ask-Altucher-Ep-69-Why-reading-the-news-is-a-waste-of-your-time
As it mentions at the bottom of the article, this is a shortened version of an article Rolf Dobelli wrote in 2010 called "Avoid News" ( http://dobelli.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Part1_TEXT.pdf ). The first one was longer under the immediate challenge that people too mired in news would probably not finish it, so it's interesting to me that he shortened this prose specifically to post it on a news site.