On text-only news

でもな、人と違う生き方はそれなりにしんどいぞ。何が起きても誰のせいにも出来ないからね。
~月島靖也 (1)

Introduction

Criticism of gatekeeping qua gatekeeping arises from confusing it with insecurity and failing to recognise that transparency is not inherently more valuable than opacity. Just as the human body filters physical substances via cell membranes and lymph nodes, so too should consciousness impose filters between self and noosphere. What follows is a description of a path in the space of possible filters.

What

I recently decided to default to rejection of multimedia in personal news consumption. This doesn't mean never looking at photos in articles. If someone I know thinks something is important enough to share with me, I will look at it. If an article references a portrait or map that seems worthwhile, I will open it in a browser. But I am curious to see the result of doing something unique over an extended period of time. In order to ensure I would only ever see text, I stopped visiting websites with Firefox and started using Newsboat to follow RSS feeds. Newsboat is named after the charming image of little vessels in olden times which would meander between anchored boats in ports to deliver information. Lynx can then be launched within Newsboat to read the text of articles.

> Neuroscience

With respect to implicit emotional processing, words and pictures are handled by different parts of the brain, and the plaintext format has less ability to touch the parts more susceptible to addiction.

An analogy: reading about an event is like running a command in the terminal as a user, whereas reading about an event with photos is like running a command with sudo. Event-related potential evidence has also been found "for preferential processing of emotional pictures compared to words, manifesting as larger amplitudes, shorter latencies, and/or additional ERP components" (1). In other words, compared to text, the processing of images discourages thoughtfulness: reactions are generally more dramatic and less time is spent on processing. Finally, "....results associated with emotional words were generally left-lateralized" (1). The more rational part of the brain takes charge when the input is language.

Why

The news exists because direct experience of all events is impossible for an individual. Assuming that the goal of obtaining information is to conduct oneself better in the world, the question naturally arises: what is the optimal way to receive information about events? Epistemologically, as the content of the news is usually inductive and empirical rather than deductive and rational, one should approach it with principles already established. It is probably an exception when an indirect experience should be emotionally prioritised over a direct one. Thinking mathematically for a moment, what do we want to minimise, and what do we want to maximise?

Here is one possible answer for each. We should aim to minimise the risk of fruitless emotional or spiritual pollution. We should aim to maximise the extent to which new information empowers us. "Contrary to what occurs with negative pictures, negative words are, in general, not capable of interfering with performance in ongoing cognitive tasks in normal subjects" (2). Sensationalism is more powerful the more of your senses it can engage.

How

Install Newsboat. To add RSS feeds to your list, edit the file ~/.newsboat/urls. Each line is a new entry, and you can give feeds your own titles by typing "~yourtitlehere" after the URL. For example: 

https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/rss.xml "~BBC Top Stories"
https://www.hpcwire.com/feed/ "~HPC Wire"

One annoyance with using Lynx to load websites is that website headers and footers are rendered as text, so some scrolling can be required until the actual text of the article is reached. However, awk can be used to filter: 

#!/bin/bash

url="$1"

if echo "$url" | grep -qE '^https?://(www\.)?bbc\.(com|co\.uk)'; then
  lynx -cfg=~/.lynxrc -accept_all_cookies=0 -cookies=0 -dump "$url" |
    awk '
      BEGIN { show=0 }
      # skip headers
      /^[[:space:]]*\[[0-9]+\]/ && show==0 { next }
      /^[[:space:]]*\*/ && show==0 { next }
      # actual article
      /BBC News|Top Stories|Live|By [A-Z][a-z]+ [A-Z][a-z]+/ && show==0 { show=1; next }
      # skip footers
      /Related topics|Top stories|More to explore|More from the BBC|More on this story/ && show==1 { exit }
      show
    ' | less
elif echo "$url" | grep -qE '^https?://(www\.)?asiatimes\.com'; then
  lynx -cfg=~/.lynxrc -accept_all_cookies=0 -cookies=0 -dump "$url" |
    awk '
      BEGIN { show=0 }
      /^\[[0-9]+\]Skip to content$/ { next }
      /Posted in/ && show==0 { show=1; next }
      /Sign up here to comment on Asia Times stories/ && show==1 { exit }
      show
    ' | less
else
  lynx -accept_all_cookies=0 -cookies=0 -dump "$url" | less
fi

The above script resides at ~/.newsboat/lynx_clean.sh. This code takes care of the headers for the BBC (UK) and the Asia Times websites and is fairly easy to extend to others. See newsboat.org for more documentation. It is incorporated into the Newsboat config at ~/.newsboat/config like so: 

browser "~/.newsboat/lynx_clean.sh %u"

color listnormal cyan default
color listfocus black yellow standout bold
color listnormal_unread blue default
color listfocus_unread yellow default bold
color info color41 black bold
color article cyan default

highlight article "^Feed:.*" color5 color0
highlight article "^Title:.*" color3 color0 bold
highlight article "^Author:.*" color2 color0
highlight article "^Date:.*" color223 color0
highlight article "^Link:.*" color4 color0
highlight article "^Flags:.*" color9 color0
highlight article "\\[[0-9][0-9]*\\]" color66 default bold
highlight article "\\[image [0-9][0-9]*\\]" color109 default bold
highlight article "\\[embedded flash: [0-9][0-9]*\\]" color66 default bold

Consequences

There is nothing to get my attention, and everything to freely focus on. No ads, no autoplaying gifs, no popup content, no unsolicited recommended content...just phrases of potential relevance. I've found myself wanting to look at the news less, revealing the mildly addicting effect that photos and videos in journalism had before. My imagination has no choice but to do work; I can notice what parts of articles cause images to appear in my mind now, like reading a book. Whether writing is good or bad is more obvious.

Some websites aren't compatible with this way of life. For example, the New York Times and Dark Reading have RSS feeds, but say that the website "requires" JavaScript and cookies if you try to load an article in Lynx. Farewell, anachronists. Like fog after sunrise, my mind is slowly clearing up.

Less energy is used in rendering webpages.

Beliefs

  1. The emotional impact news has on you should be a function, in part, of the extent to which that news is actionable for you. This is not coldness, but meaningful heat. It should probably not be merely a linear function. That would be too much of a potential barrier to being influenced in some cases and too little of one in other cases. I don't know if it is possible to exactly specify an ideal here.
  2. When people say to limit your sphere of concern to your sphere of influence, what they are implying is: there is some part of reality you simply cannot affect.
  3. Every photograph should be seen as an opinion.

The leanternet

From 2019 - 2025, Alex Dragusin used the domain www.leanternet.com to promote a little manifesto called The leanternet principles and maintain a short list of websites that were in keeping with them. r/SpartanWeb and Michael Anckaert's Guidelines for Spartan Webdesign are of a similar spirit. There is also a "classic" search engine, Wiby, devoted specifically to indexing websites without JavaScript that are suitable for vintage computers to visit. The phrase "digital minimalism" seems to mean a near-absense of the digital for some people. I think it is more apt for these sorts of things. For web designers, here is a lengthy article on accessibility best practises for websites made primarily of text.

YouTube

YouTube is a source of news. In order to be consistent, I should choose which news videos to watch based solely on the title of the video, not the thumbnail or number of views. Fortunately, it is possible to follow channels as if they are RSS feeds, and then watch the video in the terminal. This website allows you to get a YouTube channel ID.

This script (~/.newsboat/browser-wrapper.sh) will open mpv for YouTube videos, or use Lynx for anything else:

#!/bin/sh

URL="$1"
echo "DEBUG: URL=$URL" >&2
# Detect yt urls
if echo "$URL" | grep -qE 'youtube\.com/watch|youtu\.be/|youtube\.com/shorts/'; then
    mpv	"$URL" --ytdl-format="bestvideo+bestaudio/best"
else
    ~/.newsboat/lynx_clean.sh "$URL"
fi

Update ~/.newsboat/config like this: 

browser "~/.newsboat/browser_wrapper.sh %u"

YouTube channels can then be added to ~/.newsboat/urls like this: 

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC-eegKVWEgBCa4OzjnK_PtA "general-news" "~TLDR News EU"

Miscellaneous

Conclusion

For now, reader, I leave you with this question: what images will you allow into your life?

References

  1. Feng, Chunliang, Ruolei Gu, Ting Li, Li Wang, Zhixing Zhang, Wenbo Luo, and Simon B. Eickhoff. "Separate neural networks of implicit emotional processing between pictures and words: A coordinate-based meta-analysis of brain imaging studies." Neuroscience & biobehavioral reviews 131 (2021): 331-344. https://oadoi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2021.09.041
  2. Carretié, Luis, José A. Hinojosa, Jacobo Albert, Sara López‐Martín, Belén S. De La Gándara, José M. Igoa, and María Sotillo. "Modulation of ongoing cognitive processes by emotionally intense words." Psychophysiology 45, no. 2 (2008): 188-196. https://oadoi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8986.2007.00617.x
  3. Johnston, W.M. and Davey, G.C.L. (1997), The psychological impact of negative TV news bulletins: The catastrophizing of personal worries. British Journal of Psychology, 88: 85-91. https://oadoi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1997.tb02622.x

Appendix I: Other articles on news and mental health

Impact of Media-Induced Uncertainty on Mental Health: Narrative-Based Perspective, JMIR Mental Health

Media Excess & Mental Health, Psychiatric Times

Protecting Our Mental Health from Negative News Coverage, John Hopkins University of Medicine

Appendix II: Some RSS links

To be written

Appendix III: The opinions of A.I.

To be written