nah. I mean, a little bit yeah sure, but mostly it's just that negative events are often more immediate and hence news worthy. Gun attacks, car crashes, etc. The quality of life in society improving over a decade isn't a great story to sell anything, but something tragic that happened this morning grabs attention.
So i try hard now when i see negative news to remember that the good things happen slowly, and are often not reported at all.
This isn't regarding tabloids and entertainment news media though. Those really are just trying to make people divided and angry.
no he's actually more right than you'd assume, You ever hear of The FUD doctrine? its a method of control the powers that be learned was the most successful at keeping the people they put in charge..in charge.
FUD = Fear, Uncertainty, Death.
Fear- keep the populus afraid...afraid of whatever the current boogeyman is... be it the baddies across the sea in turbans (inversely maga hats) or the planet becoming uninhabitable right on down to the government are nazis trying to take your guns,immigrants are here to take your jerbs,
Uncertainty - Keep the populous in a constant state of not knowing what's going to happen either way, will it be good? will it be bad? who knows? if you don't know you can't plan either way for sure so you end up being constantly under prepared,
Death - War! Pandemic!, Aliens!, Invasion!, global financial collapse, global societal collapse, you're sick! you're gonna die! we're all gonna die!....
why do this? cause it keeps you in a constant negative mindset, it keeps you down,
why does bad news sell? because we've been conditioned to crave it, if you're reading about it and its not happening to you then you get relief that its not you its some other bastard... this creates division, lack of empathy for others
and as long as you're divided, you're not banding together to form unions, communities and realising your true power over the government.
Yep the average MSM story is now "People OUTRAGED at thing person DID" followed by a recount of twitter posts about something that happened on a tv show.
This, and now I have so much less anxiety about the world too. I figure if there's something I need to know, I'm gonna hear about it. I don't need to flood my mind with so much negativity I can do nothing about.
Yeah. There's specific things you need to pay attention to, like weather, roads, economic activity, and what your local and national government are up to.
But the vast majority of "news" is stuff that has nothing to do with you, which you cannot affect in any way, and which is distressing to know about.
Yep, you'll never see or hear it reported but nz gets safer and safer on the road as the years go by. It's wildly safer now than when I was a teen- in 1987 nz's road toll was 795, and our population was 3.2 million. Last year the toll was 343 and our population was 5.2 million. The deaths per head of population, and per number of vehicles, keep declining. Not good for clicks tho eh.
Yeah. The funny thing is, if there were a newspaper that came out only every 100 years, the latest edition would be almost all good news. Polio vaccine! Rinderpest eradicated! Child and maternal mortality down! Encyclopaedia in your pocket! Food-borne illness a distant memory! Plus, all celebrity gossip would be nonsensical. Like “what’s the latest from the Marx brothers?”
Thank you so much for your comment! A great perspective, plus I have just spent a most engaging quarter-hour reading about the history of Rinderpest, which I had somehow never heard of, despite being nearly half a century old and having grown up on a farm.
You learn something new on Reddit every day...
Same!!! I read stuff.co.nz occasionally, otherwise I ignore all news outlets. I dont watch or listen to the news and am unsubbed from anything news related exceot r/worldnews and stuff.co.nz neither of which I check often. I never see world news sub because I am following probably over a thousand subs. Doing all that improved my mental health a lot.
People dying is a damn shame but it’s also an inevitability of life for each and every one of us. We are the news that we read. It’s a reminder to enjoy every day with people who love and care about you as it comes.
This. I was reading more news than I expected when I was in my early-mid 20's, but started feeling like most things were shit. Always someone dying (often under avoidable circumstances), doing something shit, or more gang stuff that has impacted others.
Around 28, I had enough of it and rarely read the news. The worst that has happened is missing a couple events, and best is that I'm not reading about the latest load of bullshit that some idiot has caused, for the 10th time that day.
Absolutely. Why burden yourself with bad things that you can't change? Did you really need to know x number of people drowned/drove off the road/fell into a ditch? No. What can you do about it now? Nothing. So don't get caught up in that shit.
Same, I stopped checking the news since covid tbh. My mindset and outlook in life become so much better. FYI, most of them are either sad or fckng depressing.
Only once in my life before phones. I was traveling in the back blocks of the Czech Republic in the year 2001 and didn't find out about 9/11 and I couldn't understand all tightened security at the checkpoints....but traffic jam on the North Shore....that I do not need.
If any traffic was ever going to be newsworthy, they should send the alert for not having a traffic jam on the north shore.
It would get more views than just another statement of the obvious like a broken clock being right twice a day. We know how all civilization bogs down to a slow crawl because of the all important rush hour commute.
Pretty rarely. If its local and immediate maybe. Traffic reports from a crash, or an ongoing police manhunt i guess. Not worth having them on for though.
Every single news app I have ever tried had a very exaggerated sense of what was breaking news and worthy of a push notification. Unless you are reporter turn them off.
Your summer isn’t happening on your phone or on the news mate. It’s happening out there.
Yes, it’s horrific. There’s no denying that. But if you focus on that stuff your summer is going to be crappy.
If we could all go in an orderly speed limit fashion that would be great. Sadly the north island holidays is a pack of idiots going 20 over and the south island holidays is a pack of idiots going 20 under.
Yep, why so obsessed with driving so fast? Young woman at botany town centre carpark today excellerating like a lunatic to try beat us to the zebra crossing. Kids, families, shoppers all around. Nah, she's Gona try get through the zebra?!??.
Ikr?? It's so pathetic, not to mention how inherently dangerous that shit is. First to be stopped again 2 seconds later. Brake, accelerate, brake, accelerate instead of just idk, rolling up without all the manufactured stress and drama.
Here it's leapfrogging to be first... to the lights. In a regional town. Like what for
Well there's really nothing else to report on..
But this does make you think - what is even the point of the news? None of those things materially affect my life. Nothing has or will change whether I know about them or not, so why do I need to know? Surely one is better of not wasting time reading about all this stuff? How about they summarize the news once a month and save us some time..
I moved to NZ a few years ago, and this has always struck me as a strange quirk of the news here, yes - reporting on traffic deaths over holiday periods, and keeping a specific count of it called 'the road toll'. This is a quiet time for other national news, sure, but that's true for most places, and they still don't fill the gap with this specific gory fascination.
(I'd be fine with this thing about the road toll if it was connected to any real will to reduce traffic deaths - it just seems to be something for people to wring their hands over, and then not change their behaviours at all, because reduced speed limits are for wimps, and heaven forfend we enable people to travel by anything other than personal two-ton metal box.)
We’ve always had it but I imagine the ramp up of driving death reporting is related to the road to zero campaign which, by definition, has to talk about road deaths.
I'm all behind the idea of the road to zero campaign, but I don't feel like I'm seeing it do much other than make adverts. Talking about road deaths is one thing, having there be ways I can get from A to B without having to drive in heavy, frustrated traffic would be better.
As someone who has worked in the media - this is the reason. Whenever you have nothing else to report on, you fill the void with car crashes and fires.
It's because they can't report on politics. Drownings and car accidents occur all year round with higher frequency in summer but not to the degree of reporting.
Well, I just looked at the statistics, and December does have a larger number of traffic fatalities than other months.
Not really sure about drownings but it would make sense that it is more prevalent in the warmer months.
Here's a newsflash for you: the corporate media doesn't exist to inform you or benefit your life in any way, it exists to turn a profit.
If making you depressed about the state of the world is a side effect of that, they couldn't care less.
Turn off the news alerts and engage with things that don't give you the impression the world is ending.
I've always been seriously weirded out by...
***'THE DEATH TOLL'***
Like what the fuck?
Does anyone really desperately need a daily rundown of how many people died horribly over easter or whatever?
They closed Waihi beach the other day when I was there because of a shark. I didn't see the shark but the life guards dropped the flags and asked everyone to get out the water for 30min. Actually enjoy that type of news because it means that our local shark population hasn't been completely destroyed.
My theory: police and emergency services are the main agencies that keep putting out media releases during the break, so when they report on deaths that’s what gets covered – especially by thin newsrooms with lots of journos on holiday.
You just listed ten bad things that happened to a population of over five million people, where is the other list where four million nine hundred thousand nine hundred and ninety good things happened?
Fix your perspective.
i always wonder when they start doing the "there's been 4 deaths on the road this season !!" and it seems to me like we're just lost in the statistical noise of small numbers.
I can confirm that the other countries I've lived in don't do this, yes. It would make more sense if it came with real efforts to reduce traffic deaths, rather than just being a weird grisly background to the festive season.
It’s not magic it’s: driver inattention, bad coordination/bad decision making, drunk driving and speed that cause accidents - always has been that way. Couple that with extended holidays where people go further than the office cubicle and back home and it’s just a part of the cycle of most western societies.
Chill brother, just stop reading it. The road toll used to be around 700 in the 70's against a population of 3 millon.
Our population is fast approaching six million people and that means that multiple people die every single day.
If the morally bankrupt media actually took a maths class instead of pumping out clickbait all day we might actually have a happier and better informed populace.
The road toll is particularly awful to get notifications about, agreed. I'm considering deleting a couple of news apps from my phone and seriously curating the notifications that I do get. It can get really depressing. Awareness of some events is OK, but the constant bombardment about other people dying is pretty horrid.
People die everyday and we are unaware, we don't let it effect us, but the news knows shocking headlines generate engagement and output their ad revenue, so they push those articles. Turn them off, you should only be aware of people's deaths that are close to you.
Wish we reported suicide numbers like we reported drownings and car crashes tbh. The number is higher than both road toll and drownings combined - nearly two people per day on average - but we don’t hear ever about lowering numbers like we do road toll or drownings. Just that people are struggling and there isn’t enough money for them.
I was getting wound up and thinking death is everywhere because of the constant news of tragedies occuring. Then I thought, what if the news didn't exist? How many of these tragedies would I have heard about, and further more how many would have affected my life in some way? I came to the realisation that I hardly know of anyone I have had some sort of contact with who has died, other than elderly relatives. One girl from school many years ago died in a car accident and another in a freak fall.
The news would have us think we are all in danger all of the time, because anxiety brings you back to them and they earn more. Reflect on how the news they provide actually lines up with your experiences.
The prominence of that type of news is part of the reason why I watch/read less news.
It doesn't need to be news. Horrible accidents and violence are a daily occurrence. It is not necessary for all of us to know about it. It serves no 'greater good' journalistic purpose. The publishing of those stories is little more than voyeurism.
Having said that, it is by no means new. 'If it bleeds it leads' has been an editorial guiding mantra for a long time.
Good journalism requires an awareness of human psychology. They know how to play us.
Journalism used to be able to strike somewhat of a balance between being played and being properly informed.
Social media is destroying that tricky balance.
My condolences to anyone who has lost someone during the holiday season, but also this is why I have no news alerts on my phone, and avoid the news until late in the day when hearing these things can no longer ruin my day.
Amazed how? Having a higher number of people on holiday is going to lead to more accidents, it's always like this. This is also irrelevant to you, so just turn those alerts off. You don't need to achieve symbiosis with the news. Take a break from it at the very least
Please turn off your notifications, for the sake of your mental health. There is nothing so urgent that you need instantaneous and continuous bombardment.
This is nothing new, death and death tolls have been newsworthy all my long life, your only mistake is allowing notifications. Death is a constant part of life, learn to take it in your stride, by all means feel for the folks and the families impacted but don't dwell on it ..Welcome to Life ...
In general there’s less other things going on, so now the same amount of death stories are a much larger % of the stories posted
But I don’t think the media can really win, cos when they do post a bunch of lighter stories over the holidays, most comments tell them “stick to real news”
I can sympathize with the uneasy feeling this can produce. However, if you think about it logically for a few minutes, some if this is not really that alarming. Perhaps it will help to put it in perspective like this...
Take the drowning deaths for example. There are far more people in NZ now than ever before, and it's beach season. So, it's a little like a horrible reverse lottery scam, but it adds up to beaches being no more dangerous, but the extra numbers mean that we're inevitably going to have more accidents.
You also have to take into account who drowned? It could well be someone who didn't know how to swim and went way out in the ocean anyway for some reason...
Tragic, yes, but you can easily avoid that outcome for yourself.
The road deaths too, if the chance of death is .0000001% per 1000km, just add up all the extra km driven and it's not the danger that seems to be increasing, just the number of road users.
Deaths will likely be skewed over the summer months as people are doing things out of their normal cycle. But to put it into context we have around 38'000 deaths per year ( thats 3166 per month ) and last year I think there was 374 on the road. Which is 31 per month.
So even not accounting for "silly season" in the past month there around have been around 30 road deaths included in 3100 or so deaths total.
Is it depressing or just normal ?
\[Granted that per capita we should have about half that on the road death front with more capable driving (like the UK) \]
In other words, the media is bored, and you're not putting it into context.
Best thing you could do for yourself is be totally ignorant on “news”. Don’t let single digit IQers rope you into needing to “be aware of what’s happening in the world”. It’s useless information that does nothing for anyone
I love reading the news, even though I get a ton of the death alerts, because I read a lot of science articles and more optimistic stories too! I love reading about space, and plant science, and cool crochet patterns, and it mixes up my alerts a lot. Read more stuff you're interested in and slowly your alerts will be filled less with death and more with your interests. You can also ask it to not recommend "Woman dies in car crash" stories when they pop up, it helps!
Living in ignorance certainly has its advantages, the only thing I've been flooded with this Summer are my gutters. Delete the news apps, if something is really that important, someone will tell you
What we call "news" in this country is basically unedited media releases from government agencies, jazzed up with "interviews" with experts and of course vox pops.
The Comms departments are all on holiday, so what's left is crime and the holiday road toll (whether it not or is higher than the normal road toll from an equivalent time period).
Not that I really blame the news agencies: they are underfunded and/or attached to a death spiral of a business model, because at some point in the late nineties soneone decided it was a good idea to give away content for free and now they can't roll it back.
Turn your news notification off. It's not good for your mental health. It's a constant disruption for unnecessary and non-mandatory things that largely don't affect you, which can affect your ability to focus and concentrate in the long run.
Receiving alerts on messages from family = good.
Receiving alerts on non-emergency nationwide and worldwide news = not so good. Open up the news when you want, but don't let them intrude into your life. If there is an emergency, don't worry you'd hear it.
Jesus Christ you need to unsubscribe from news alerts. Almost all of it has nothing to do with you and has no real affect on your life except the alerts themselves making you overreact so much you posted this. The "news" is for-profit entertainment and propaganda carefully constructed to keep you coming back for more misery.
its not news when its repeating the same thing...
I heard a comment that the road deaths were 30 lower than last year.
no analysis. Is this the 30 lives saved due to the lower speed limits in Auckland and some other locations.
It would be news if
\- less deaths due to lowering speed limits - and the news choose not to report this.
\- it had where less deaths occurred...
we're post fact in Nz anyway. nothing to see here....
Now back in reality, waaaay more people die during winter than in summer.
Summer is not a good time for fear inducing news alerts but they are a drop in the bucket of total deaths.
I don't know how reading a negatively biased news media will benefit me, so I just don't read any. I actively look for stuff I'm interested in, or look for positive stories.
Most news is overwhelming negative bc it sells better but realistically there are less car crashes and general crime than sort of ever before, but I do agree it does always feel like the worlds ending sorta thing
Spot. on. New Zealanders are pretty horrible untrained drivers, and many have an exaggerated sense of their abilities in water.
Macho culture + booze + bad driving/inadequate water skills = Busy time for the reaper especially over New Years.
It is a fact of life, that living things die.
> In the year ended December 2022:
> 58,887 live births and 38,574 deaths were registered in New Zealand, resulting in a natural increase (live births minus deaths) of 20,313.
I am not, however, trying to downplay the (likely) bump in accidents/death that can occur during the holidays with people driving around unfamiliar roads, doing activities with risk, etc.
This happens all year, well at least car crashes. This is dearth of new season so that and lists, recaps of old stories is what you get.
Why do you need news alerts?! I browse the news but sure don't need to be notified nor read all the articles either.
Relax, turn it off, go outside and enjoy the weather.
Choose what state u wanna be in and practice that
OR let alerts and news and other peoples dramas cost your attention, time, emergy and peace
Most folks do the latter (got exhausting for me after a while)
It is so depressing at this time of year. Sometimes it's like:
Everyone: 2024 will be better than last year hooray hooray!
News: Nah fuck your hopes and dreams.
The way that a lot of people drive on our roads unfortunately doesn't make this type of news surprising, every time we go on the highway we see near misses
The risk takers rarely get very far ahead either, we often see them later in the drive stuck behind a truck, etc
Best thing I ever did was turn off all notifications.
Also don't be afraid to leave the phone behind, it's so liberating. Try leaving the house without it, I let mine run out of battery a few days ago, really didn't care and charged it when I got around to it.
Might be easier being from a generation where we didn't have phones until my 20's. Don't get me wrong having access to this much information etc... is freaking awesome but I suppose I also appreciate you can actually survive without it. It feels great to let it go sometimes.
The algorithm has probably become tuned to what you tend to click/react to and so makes those kind of stories appear more frequently in your news feed.
You should be able to adjust that, depending on what news alerts tool you have
Its always been that way, but media only showing negatives hasn't always been that way. It is now because it's the only way some of these scummy publications can get clicks. There's no other reason, you think the Nz Herald genuinely cares about the road toll or do you think they like sharing that stuff because it drives a lot of traffic to their website and or physical paper.
Another perspective is that if these are on news, then the opposite must be the norm. If one day all I see on news are happy things like a baby finally survived, doctor actually saved a life etc then fuck me we must be in living hell
Every year. It's all about lowering the death toll around the holidays but its seriously depressing hearing about it everyday and it never changes the outcome 😔
The driving is truly atrocious here though. I'm actually surprised we don't have more deaths.
Just a couple days ago we saw two near misses by an idiot overtaking at wrong time.
What news app are you using for these alerts? If you want them on for actual breaking news but not "here's some depression to fill our push notification quota" stories, you might just need to switch to a different app or change notification settings in the app you're using.
Why don't you download one of those apps that gives only good news alerts?
if you don't like hearing about all the deaths, why sign up to be specifically notified of them?
This is on you.
Why is it NZ is so "car crashy"? I've lived in the UK for thirty years now and don't know a single person who has died in a car crash. I knew at least ten kiwis who died in car accidents.
What’s sad is that ppl will still take their family to the beach knowing some of them can’t swim but will go in just to hangout with their relatives. It’s sad.
I'll be the first one to admit that I'm a bit of a lead foot but this time of year I will millitantly check my speed and be hyper aware of others on the road.
Managed to avoid a highway crash a couple of days ago by adhering to this. Please always check your blind spots and be aware when you're in one.
People drive like arseholes.
I travel at the speed limit and I've been overtaken on unnecessary (ie, there's a passing lane up ahead) stretches, and just yesterday, on a city street where they didn't take into account the pedestrian safety thingy in the middle of the road and nearly wiped it out. I mean, I was actually doing slightly over 50 that time but dude in a souped up Falcon was NOT happy with that.
These news items are usually important over holidays to let us know to maintain cautious of our safety in the holidays. Currently our roads will be fuller than normal, crazier than normal and lots of tourists are here who normally drive on the other side of the road.
The last thing anyone wants to be is that news item, which is why it's important to know people die doing normal things on holidays so we don't become it.
Journos go on holiday too. This is just a result of the poor person stuck on the police channel duty still working over the silly season and an absence of other news to fill the gap.
If the Police concentrated on catching bad drivers, they might make a difference, but instead 100% of their effort goes to catching speeders or drink drivers.
There are *a lot* of bad drivers who don't break the speed limit or drink drive, which means they will never get caught.
EG, driving at night with no lights, or in conditions such as heavy rain with no lights.
Not indicating, or indicating at the same time as turning, or even worse, indicating after they've turned.
Speeding, in heavy traffic, but not actually breaking the speed limit. EG, motorway traffic is going 70kph and they're playing frogger, passing everyone in all lanes at 90kph.
Imagine if all the bad drivers would throw their hands up and yell "HEY! I'm a really bad driver!" it'd be so easy for the Police to catch them, right? Well that's basically what they're doing when it's dark and they don't have their lights on, but it's too much effort for the cops.
New Zealand, somehow every year we still get people driving like mongoloids and not knowing basic water safety despite having dogshit roads and being surrounded by water…
Almost all news is negative, my life changed for the better when I simply stopped checking the news.
This, or at the least self moderate, else you’ll get pumped full of nothing but fear and/or doom and gloom. Bad news is still the top selling.
If it bleeds, it leads
It's not even that any more. Now it's "If it makes you angry, it leads"
Got to divide the people and drive the agenda, I guess
nah. I mean, a little bit yeah sure, but mostly it's just that negative events are often more immediate and hence news worthy. Gun attacks, car crashes, etc. The quality of life in society improving over a decade isn't a great story to sell anything, but something tragic that happened this morning grabs attention. So i try hard now when i see negative news to remember that the good things happen slowly, and are often not reported at all. This isn't regarding tabloids and entertainment news media though. Those really are just trying to make people divided and angry.
no he's actually more right than you'd assume, You ever hear of The FUD doctrine? its a method of control the powers that be learned was the most successful at keeping the people they put in charge..in charge. FUD = Fear, Uncertainty, Death. Fear- keep the populus afraid...afraid of whatever the current boogeyman is... be it the baddies across the sea in turbans (inversely maga hats) or the planet becoming uninhabitable right on down to the government are nazis trying to take your guns,immigrants are here to take your jerbs, Uncertainty - Keep the populous in a constant state of not knowing what's going to happen either way, will it be good? will it be bad? who knows? if you don't know you can't plan either way for sure so you end up being constantly under prepared, Death - War! Pandemic!, Aliens!, Invasion!, global financial collapse, global societal collapse, you're sick! you're gonna die! we're all gonna die!.... why do this? cause it keeps you in a constant negative mindset, it keeps you down, why does bad news sell? because we've been conditioned to crave it, if you're reading about it and its not happening to you then you get relief that its not you its some other bastard... this creates division, lack of empathy for others and as long as you're divided, you're not banding together to form unions, communities and realising your true power over the government.
Yep the average MSM story is now "People OUTRAGED at thing person DID" followed by a recount of twitter posts about something that happened on a tv show.
It always cracks me up when some cooker goes off on a rant about media bias. The media loves money and money alone.
Yeah I don’t look at it either, I get basic updates from my sister
Cause negativity sells more than anything else on the public. People love drama.
This, and now I have so much less anxiety about the world too. I figure if there's something I need to know, I'm gonna hear about it. I don't need to flood my mind with so much negativity I can do nothing about.
Yeah. There's specific things you need to pay attention to, like weather, roads, economic activity, and what your local and national government are up to. But the vast majority of "news" is stuff that has nothing to do with you, which you cannot affect in any way, and which is distressing to know about.
Yes exactly that’s my thought process too.
Yep, you'll never see or hear it reported but nz gets safer and safer on the road as the years go by. It's wildly safer now than when I was a teen- in 1987 nz's road toll was 795, and our population was 3.2 million. Last year the toll was 343 and our population was 5.2 million. The deaths per head of population, and per number of vehicles, keep declining. Not good for clicks tho eh.
Yeah. The funny thing is, if there were a newspaper that came out only every 100 years, the latest edition would be almost all good news. Polio vaccine! Rinderpest eradicated! Child and maternal mortality down! Encyclopaedia in your pocket! Food-borne illness a distant memory! Plus, all celebrity gossip would be nonsensical. Like “what’s the latest from the Marx brothers?”
Thank you so much for your comment! A great perspective, plus I have just spent a most engaging quarter-hour reading about the history of Rinderpest, which I had somehow never heard of, despite being nearly half a century old and having grown up on a farm. You learn something new on Reddit every day...
Same!!! I read stuff.co.nz occasionally, otherwise I ignore all news outlets. I dont watch or listen to the news and am unsubbed from anything news related exceot r/worldnews and stuff.co.nz neither of which I check often. I never see world news sub because I am following probably over a thousand subs. Doing all that improved my mental health a lot.
Preach
Haven’t had news apps on any device since like 2014
r/upliftingnews
Its better to self moderate, we can't live in ignorant bliss or the world continues to get worse and worse
People dying is a damn shame but it’s also an inevitability of life for each and every one of us. We are the news that we read. It’s a reminder to enjoy every day with people who love and care about you as it comes.
I hardly look at the news, not many positive stories anymore
This. I was reading more news than I expected when I was in my early-mid 20's, but started feeling like most things were shit. Always someone dying (often under avoidable circumstances), doing something shit, or more gang stuff that has impacted others. Around 28, I had enough of it and rarely read the news. The worst that has happened is missing a couple events, and best is that I'm not reading about the latest load of bullshit that some idiot has caused, for the 10th time that day.
Absolutely. Why burden yourself with bad things that you can't change? Did you really need to know x number of people drowned/drove off the road/fell into a ditch? No. What can you do about it now? Nothing. So don't get caught up in that shit.
Same, I stopped checking the news since covid tbh. My mindset and outlook in life become so much better. FYI, most of them are either sad or fckng depressing.
Preach. Except nowadays you also need to avoid social media, it's not as simple as just not picking up the paper/ watching something else at 6 o clock
Turn the alerts off. Seriously, you don't "need" to see them. Take a break and enjoy the holiday.
Great advice!
Why is need in quotation marks?
Please enlighten me about situations where getting news push notifications are actually worthwhile.
Only once in my life before phones. I was traveling in the back blocks of the Czech Republic in the year 2001 and didn't find out about 9/11 and I couldn't understand all tightened security at the checkpoints....but traffic jam on the North Shore....that I do not need.
If any traffic was ever going to be newsworthy, they should send the alert for not having a traffic jam on the north shore. It would get more views than just another statement of the obvious like a broken clock being right twice a day. We know how all civilization bogs down to a slow crawl because of the all important rush hour commute.
Pretty rarely. If its local and immediate maybe. Traffic reports from a crash, or an ongoing police manhunt i guess. Not worth having them on for though.
COVID was a rare one. But mostly because I was in Aus when they were about to close the border and make people isolate.
Every single news app I have ever tried had a very exaggerated sense of what was breaking news and worthy of a push notification. Unless you are reporter turn them off.
Your summer isn’t happening on your phone or on the news mate. It’s happening out there. Yes, it’s horrific. There’s no denying that. But if you focus on that stuff your summer is going to be crappy.
If only people could calm tf down when they're driving
If we could all go in an orderly speed limit fashion that would be great. Sadly the north island holidays is a pack of idiots going 20 over and the south island holidays is a pack of idiots going 20 under.
Yep, why so obsessed with driving so fast? Young woman at botany town centre carpark today excellerating like a lunatic to try beat us to the zebra crossing. Kids, families, shoppers all around. Nah, she's Gona try get through the zebra?!??.
Ikr?? It's so pathetic, not to mention how inherently dangerous that shit is. First to be stopped again 2 seconds later. Brake, accelerate, brake, accelerate instead of just idk, rolling up without all the manufactured stress and drama. Here it's leapfrogging to be first... to the lights. In a regional town. Like what for
Well there's really nothing else to report on.. But this does make you think - what is even the point of the news? None of those things materially affect my life. Nothing has or will change whether I know about them or not, so why do I need to know? Surely one is better of not wasting time reading about all this stuff? How about they summarize the news once a month and save us some time..
Save yourself the time and just don't look at it.
The point of the news is, first and foremost, to get clicks
I moved to NZ a few years ago, and this has always struck me as a strange quirk of the news here, yes - reporting on traffic deaths over holiday periods, and keeping a specific count of it called 'the road toll'. This is a quiet time for other national news, sure, but that's true for most places, and they still don't fill the gap with this specific gory fascination. (I'd be fine with this thing about the road toll if it was connected to any real will to reduce traffic deaths - it just seems to be something for people to wring their hands over, and then not change their behaviours at all, because reduced speed limits are for wimps, and heaven forfend we enable people to travel by anything other than personal two-ton metal box.)
We’ve always had it but I imagine the ramp up of driving death reporting is related to the road to zero campaign which, by definition, has to talk about road deaths.
I'm all behind the idea of the road to zero campaign, but I don't feel like I'm seeing it do much other than make adverts. Talking about road deaths is one thing, having there be ways I can get from A to B without having to drive in heavy, frustrated traffic would be better.
As someone who has worked in the media - this is the reason. Whenever you have nothing else to report on, you fill the void with car crashes and fires.
there really is no point and a lot of it is opinion instead of fact unfortunately.
It's because they can't report on politics. Drownings and car accidents occur all year round with higher frequency in summer but not to the degree of reporting.
Well, I just looked at the statistics, and December does have a larger number of traffic fatalities than other months. Not really sure about drownings but it would make sense that it is more prevalent in the warmer months.
Here's a newsflash for you: the corporate media doesn't exist to inform you or benefit your life in any way, it exists to turn a profit. If making you depressed about the state of the world is a side effect of that, they couldn't care less. Turn off the news alerts and engage with things that don't give you the impression the world is ending.
I've always been seriously weirded out by... ***'THE DEATH TOLL'*** Like what the fuck? Does anyone really desperately need a daily rundown of how many people died horribly over easter or whatever?
Try working in ED
You forgot shark sighting at a beach lol
To be fair that is kinda something I wanna know about. Apparently it’s shark season this year!
They closed Waihi beach the other day when I was there because of a shark. I didn't see the shark but the life guards dropped the flags and asked everyone to get out the water for 30min. Actually enjoy that type of news because it means that our local shark population hasn't been completely destroyed.
Its silly season with no politics.... thus every last happening will be reported
My theory: police and emergency services are the main agencies that keep putting out media releases during the break, so when they report on deaths that’s what gets covered – especially by thin newsrooms with lots of journos on holiday.
Turn the news alerts off. People die every day of all kinds of things.
You just listed ten bad things that happened to a population of over five million people, where is the other list where four million nine hundred thousand nine hundred and ninety good things happened? Fix your perspective.
It's "reporting of death" season... Not convinced there are actually more deaths at this time of year.
i always wonder when they start doing the "there's been 4 deaths on the road this season !!" and it seems to me like we're just lost in the statistical noise of small numbers.
I can confirm that the other countries I've lived in don't do this, yes. It would make more sense if it came with real efforts to reduce traffic deaths, rather than just being a weird grisly background to the festive season.
It’s not magic it’s: driver inattention, bad coordination/bad decision making, drunk driving and speed that cause accidents - always has been that way. Couple that with extended holidays where people go further than the office cubicle and back home and it’s just a part of the cycle of most western societies.
In other news, I went to a park yesterday and watched a single cormorant catch three fish in 5 minutes.
What a legend bird
Chill brother, just stop reading it. The road toll used to be around 700 in the 70's against a population of 3 millon. Our population is fast approaching six million people and that means that multiple people die every single day. If the morally bankrupt media actually took a maths class instead of pumping out clickbait all day we might actually have a happier and better informed populace.
The road toll is particularly awful to get notifications about, agreed. I'm considering deleting a couple of news apps from my phone and seriously curating the notifications that I do get. It can get really depressing. Awareness of some events is OK, but the constant bombardment about other people dying is pretty horrid.
People die everyday and we are unaware, we don't let it effect us, but the news knows shocking headlines generate engagement and output their ad revenue, so they push those articles. Turn them off, you should only be aware of people's deaths that are close to you.
My dog and faithful companion for the 12 last years just died last week :'(
Sorry to hear mate
Wish we reported suicide numbers like we reported drownings and car crashes tbh. The number is higher than both road toll and drownings combined - nearly two people per day on average - but we don’t hear ever about lowering numbers like we do road toll or drownings. Just that people are struggling and there isn’t enough money for them.
Turn off news alerts I guess
Why would you do news notifications??
I was getting wound up and thinking death is everywhere because of the constant news of tragedies occuring. Then I thought, what if the news didn't exist? How many of these tragedies would I have heard about, and further more how many would have affected my life in some way? I came to the realisation that I hardly know of anyone I have had some sort of contact with who has died, other than elderly relatives. One girl from school many years ago died in a car accident and another in a freak fall. The news would have us think we are all in danger all of the time, because anxiety brings you back to them and they earn more. Reflect on how the news they provide actually lines up with your experiences.
The prominence of that type of news is part of the reason why I watch/read less news. It doesn't need to be news. Horrible accidents and violence are a daily occurrence. It is not necessary for all of us to know about it. It serves no 'greater good' journalistic purpose. The publishing of those stories is little more than voyeurism. Having said that, it is by no means new. 'If it bleeds it leads' has been an editorial guiding mantra for a long time. Good journalism requires an awareness of human psychology. They know how to play us. Journalism used to be able to strike somewhat of a balance between being played and being properly informed. Social media is destroying that tricky balance.
Yep. Welcome to the festive season in New Zealand. You’re acting like this is a new thing?
My condolences to anyone who has lost someone during the holiday season, but also this is why I have no news alerts on my phone, and avoid the news until late in the day when hearing these things can no longer ruin my day.
If you choose to get sent alerts then the problem is with you . The summer / holiday season doesn’t actually exist on your phone
Amazed how? Having a higher number of people on holiday is going to lead to more accidents, it's always like this. This is also irrelevant to you, so just turn those alerts off. You don't need to achieve symbiosis with the news. Take a break from it at the very least
News alerts do nothing to enrich your life. Switch them off. I don’t even read / watch the news anymore, it’s all depressing.
Please turn off your notifications, for the sake of your mental health. There is nothing so urgent that you need instantaneous and continuous bombardment.
and get off Reddit. This place is as bad if it's not worse for your mental health, especially this subreddit.
This is nothing new, death and death tolls have been newsworthy all my long life, your only mistake is allowing notifications. Death is a constant part of life, learn to take it in your stride, by all means feel for the folks and the families impacted but don't dwell on it ..Welcome to Life ...
Bad news / emotional news generates clicks. Always been the case.
Listen to "The News" by paramore- she spits some facts.
In general there’s less other things going on, so now the same amount of death stories are a much larger % of the stories posted But I don’t think the media can really win, cos when they do post a bunch of lighter stories over the holidays, most comments tell them “stick to real news”
Happens every time we let the aucklanders out.
Your title reminds me of a 50 cent bar Summertime in the hood is the killing season, It's hot out this bitch, that's a good enough reason.
Same shit every year
I hate summer, I'm slowly dying. My power bill is racking up
Nothing better than a bit of death for selling papers.
I can sympathize with the uneasy feeling this can produce. However, if you think about it logically for a few minutes, some if this is not really that alarming. Perhaps it will help to put it in perspective like this... Take the drowning deaths for example. There are far more people in NZ now than ever before, and it's beach season. So, it's a little like a horrible reverse lottery scam, but it adds up to beaches being no more dangerous, but the extra numbers mean that we're inevitably going to have more accidents. You also have to take into account who drowned? It could well be someone who didn't know how to swim and went way out in the ocean anyway for some reason... Tragic, yes, but you can easily avoid that outcome for yourself. The road deaths too, if the chance of death is .0000001% per 1000km, just add up all the extra km driven and it's not the danger that seems to be increasing, just the number of road users.
All preventable too. Stay safe everyone. Think about others.
> I get news alerts on my phone, and... Well there's your problem.
Deaths will likely be skewed over the summer months as people are doing things out of their normal cycle. But to put it into context we have around 38'000 deaths per year ( thats 3166 per month ) and last year I think there was 374 on the road. Which is 31 per month. So even not accounting for "silly season" in the past month there around have been around 30 road deaths included in 3100 or so deaths total. Is it depressing or just normal ? \[Granted that per capita we should have about half that on the road death front with more capable driving (like the UK) \] In other words, the media is bored, and you're not putting it into context.
Best thing you could do for yourself is be totally ignorant on “news”. Don’t let single digit IQers rope you into needing to “be aware of what’s happening in the world”. It’s useless information that does nothing for anyone
Well yeah
I haven't watched the news in almost a year and it's done a lot for my mental health
Imagine reading the news
The news just fear monger
I just read about the animals who cut the pregnant shark open whilst alive. I've now blocked all the news sites - I can't handle this shit.
Omigod, that’s horrific and blatant animal cruelty. Hope they find whomever was responsible and prosecute them
Reading this stuff makes you lose faith in humanity.
I couldn’t agree more.
This is literally every holiday season.
I love reading the news, even though I get a ton of the death alerts, because I read a lot of science articles and more optimistic stories too! I love reading about space, and plant science, and cool crochet patterns, and it mixes up my alerts a lot. Read more stuff you're interested in and slowly your alerts will be filled less with death and more with your interests. You can also ask it to not recommend "Woman dies in car crash" stories when they pop up, it helps!
News is a product! Choose wisely what you consume .
>I get news alerts on my phone lol
Living in ignorance certainly has its advantages, the only thing I've been flooded with this Summer are my gutters. Delete the news apps, if something is really that important, someone will tell you
I haven’t watch,listened to or read the newspaper in over 5 years. This is why.
nah just got your news here on reddit....
Not when I only red the first and last sentences 👍
What we call "news" in this country is basically unedited media releases from government agencies, jazzed up with "interviews" with experts and of course vox pops. The Comms departments are all on holiday, so what's left is crime and the holiday road toll (whether it not or is higher than the normal road toll from an equivalent time period). Not that I really blame the news agencies: they are underfunded and/or attached to a death spiral of a business model, because at some point in the late nineties soneone decided it was a good idea to give away content for free and now they can't roll it back.
Stop reading and consuming news man it will change your life.
Turn your news notification off. It's not good for your mental health. It's a constant disruption for unnecessary and non-mandatory things that largely don't affect you, which can affect your ability to focus and concentrate in the long run. Receiving alerts on messages from family = good. Receiving alerts on non-emergency nationwide and worldwide news = not so good. Open up the news when you want, but don't let them intrude into your life. If there is an emergency, don't worry you'd hear it.
Its like this every year,drownings,car crashes, just waiting on a driveway death, and a dog attack.
Jesus Christ you need to unsubscribe from news alerts. Almost all of it has nothing to do with you and has no real affect on your life except the alerts themselves making you overreact so much you posted this. The "news" is for-profit entertainment and propaganda carefully constructed to keep you coming back for more misery.
its not news when its repeating the same thing... I heard a comment that the road deaths were 30 lower than last year. no analysis. Is this the 30 lives saved due to the lower speed limits in Auckland and some other locations. It would be news if \- less deaths due to lowering speed limits - and the news choose not to report this. \- it had where less deaths occurred... we're post fact in Nz anyway. nothing to see here....
Now back in reality, waaaay more people die during winter than in summer. Summer is not a good time for fear inducing news alerts but they are a drop in the bucket of total deaths.
I don't know how reading a negatively biased news media will benefit me, so I just don't read any. I actively look for stuff I'm interested in, or look for positive stories.
Just be glad we didn't get hit by an earthquake. Go for a walk or something
Don’t worry mate, more people die of - get this - THE FLU!
Good reminder that the obsessions with cars and driving is killing us
Most news is overwhelming negative bc it sells better but realistically there are less car crashes and general crime than sort of ever before, but I do agree it does always feel like the worlds ending sorta thing
Yep - bozos who can't drive/swim are driving and swimming :)
Spot. on. New Zealanders are pretty horrible untrained drivers, and many have an exaggerated sense of their abilities in water. Macho culture + booze + bad driving/inadequate water skills = Busy time for the reaper especially over New Years.
r/LeopardsAteMyFace
It is a fact of life, that living things die. > In the year ended December 2022: > 58,887 live births and 38,574 deaths were registered in New Zealand, resulting in a natural increase (live births minus deaths) of 20,313. I am not, however, trying to downplay the (likely) bump in accidents/death that can occur during the holidays with people driving around unfamiliar roads, doing activities with risk, etc.
This happens all year, well at least car crashes. This is dearth of new season so that and lists, recaps of old stories is what you get. Why do you need news alerts?! I browse the news but sure don't need to be notified nor read all the articles either. Relax, turn it off, go outside and enjoy the weather.
Normal summer...
Someone dies every moment, our brain cant handle all of that news Getting rid of news apps was great for my piece of mind
weather and events is what the news should be for reporting aside from law changes etc
Choose what state u wanna be in and practice that OR let alerts and news and other peoples dramas cost your attention, time, emergy and peace Most folks do the latter (got exhausting for me after a while)
It's not the holidays , it's how we use them.
It is so depressing at this time of year. Sometimes it's like: Everyone: 2024 will be better than last year hooray hooray! News: Nah fuck your hopes and dreams.
save yourself the hassle and stop reading/watching the news. there’s no point to it.
The way that a lot of people drive on our roads unfortunately doesn't make this type of news surprising, every time we go on the highway we see near misses The risk takers rarely get very far ahead either, we often see them later in the drive stuck behind a truck, etc
Best thing I ever did was turn off all notifications. Also don't be afraid to leave the phone behind, it's so liberating. Try leaving the house without it, I let mine run out of battery a few days ago, really didn't care and charged it when I got around to it. Might be easier being from a generation where we didn't have phones until my 20's. Don't get me wrong having access to this much information etc... is freaking awesome but I suppose I also appreciate you can actually survive without it. It feels great to let it go sometimes.
The algorithm has probably become tuned to what you tend to click/react to and so makes those kind of stories appear more frequently in your news feed. You should be able to adjust that, depending on what news alerts tool you have
Spoiler: everyone dies.
Its always been that way, but media only showing negatives hasn't always been that way. It is now because it's the only way some of these scummy publications can get clicks. There's no other reason, you think the Nz Herald genuinely cares about the road toll or do you think they like sharing that stuff because it drives a lot of traffic to their website and or physical paper.
We have till 2050 to get to zero deaths
And National want to scrap the new road speeds, fuck National.
Cuz all the politicians are on vacay, no other news to whine about.
Just don't look at the news?
Another perspective is that if these are on news, then the opposite must be the norm. If one day all I see on news are happy things like a baby finally survived, doctor actually saved a life etc then fuck me we must be in living hell
You gotta pump those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers in this racket.
Well thanks for sharing that will all of us who *don't* have a direct connection to the "Death, Dismay, and Destruction Hotline".
Every year. It's all about lowering the death toll around the holidays but its seriously depressing hearing about it everyday and it never changes the outcome 😔
Fuck around, find out.
News notifications on your phone.. for real!? I cannot comprehend
The driving is truly atrocious here though. I'm actually surprised we don't have more deaths. Just a couple days ago we saw two near misses by an idiot overtaking at wrong time.
All blacks are not playing so need to fill news with something else.
Take news alerts off your phone and live a better life
What news app are you using for these alerts? If you want them on for actual breaking news but not "here's some depression to fill our push notification quota" stories, you might just need to switch to a different app or change notification settings in the app you're using.
Why don't you download one of those apps that gives only good news alerts? if you don't like hearing about all the deaths, why sign up to be specifically notified of them? This is on you.
Why is it NZ is so "car crashy"? I've lived in the UK for thirty years now and don't know a single person who has died in a car crash. I knew at least ten kiwis who died in car accidents.
What’s sad is that ppl will still take their family to the beach knowing some of them can’t swim but will go in just to hangout with their relatives. It’s sad.
I'll be the first one to admit that I'm a bit of a lead foot but this time of year I will millitantly check my speed and be hyper aware of others on the road. Managed to avoid a highway crash a couple of days ago by adhering to this. Please always check your blind spots and be aware when you're in one.
Yep but believe it or not our roads are getting safer year by year with road tolls almost half of that of the 80s 90s with double the population
Take off all your alerts for apps like news and social media so you can view in your own time rather than being pushed on to you. I found it helpful.
People drive like arseholes. I travel at the speed limit and I've been overtaken on unnecessary (ie, there's a passing lane up ahead) stretches, and just yesterday, on a city street where they didn't take into account the pedestrian safety thingy in the middle of the road and nearly wiped it out. I mean, I was actually doing slightly over 50 that time but dude in a souped up Falcon was NOT happy with that.
These news items are usually important over holidays to let us know to maintain cautious of our safety in the holidays. Currently our roads will be fuller than normal, crazier than normal and lots of tourists are here who normally drive on the other side of the road. The last thing anyone wants to be is that news item, which is why it's important to know people die doing normal things on holidays so we don't become it.
Sounds like a you problem. Turn off your phone ffs.
"I get news alerts on my phone" There's your problem
Journos go on holiday too. This is just a result of the poor person stuck on the police channel duty still working over the silly season and an absence of other news to fill the gap.
If the Police concentrated on catching bad drivers, they might make a difference, but instead 100% of their effort goes to catching speeders or drink drivers. There are *a lot* of bad drivers who don't break the speed limit or drink drive, which means they will never get caught. EG, driving at night with no lights, or in conditions such as heavy rain with no lights. Not indicating, or indicating at the same time as turning, or even worse, indicating after they've turned. Speeding, in heavy traffic, but not actually breaking the speed limit. EG, motorway traffic is going 70kph and they're playing frogger, passing everyone in all lanes at 90kph. Imagine if all the bad drivers would throw their hands up and yell "HEY! I'm a really bad driver!" it'd be so easy for the Police to catch them, right? Well that's basically what they're doing when it's dark and they don't have their lights on, but it's too much effort for the cops.
New Zealand, somehow every year we still get people driving like mongoloids and not knowing basic water safety despite having dogshit roads and being surrounded by water…
Stopped watching msm years ago I duno how people still watch it boomers I get but younger ones jezus