I stopped reading news, including tech news, in 2012, while working at a large news site.
Seeing how the sausage is made, helped a lot realizing of just how little value reading news to a normal person is. (Note that that this is very different from saying journalism has no value or nobody should be reporting on current events)
I resolved, my news addiction, by redirecting the time I would have scanned ~12 different news sites multiple times a day, into reading more substantial content. Be that more long form (investigative) journalism, books written on a topic, studies, etc. Content, that let you actually understand the why of things, not just the what that is happening.
How to filter on which things to focus on, or tame the fear of missing out came naturally with the realization, that if something is important enough for me to care about (be that politcal or a new javascript framework), it will reach me eventually one way or another.
Also for big sudden events, like for example a terrorist attack, no matter how reputable and connected the news paper, in the beginning nobody has any solid information, which doesn't stop anyone from reporting and wildly speculating. It might be tough to just ignore that, especially since people will think you don't care, but beyond some basic facts, you won't be able to get any useful information for at least a couple of weeks.
Maybe sausage is the wrong analogy, since I love them and I find nothing wrong with the ingredients.
I'd say it is closer to a fast food meal. Yes they can be very tasty and satiating for a moment but the nutritional value is extremely low. If consumed too much it is pretty bad for you
Working in a office complex where about a dozen different news papers and sites were made, just made me realize that the "news" section is pretty much purely about relatively cheap traffic generation, nothing else. They license a bunch of wire agencies like Reuters, AP, etc. pick out and often blow up the stories that the target audience will likely click on. The site that is regularly the fastest in publishing something, will gain visitors.
So its not that there is per se something nefarious happening within any particular story, but the news feed is there to make you consume more and boost the numbers advertisement pricing is based on, not to inform you.
>Related Article from The Guardian "News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier"
The author, Rolf Dobelli may be worth checking out, though I don't 100% agree with the article.
A good approach may be to do some independent analysis with the widest variety of sources, then use that going forward.
Eg anti Russian and China bias is coming more and more to the fore these days (not saying their leaders are good, far from it) but once its characteristics are recognised it's easier to ignore and not be influenced by it.
Hard, unwavering discipline. Resolve to stop reading it, either entirely or outside of rigid conditions (eg, no more than N minutes at X in the morning and Y at night). Then do so.
Some people have good luck modifying their network configs to enforce this when their willpower or habits are weak.
Fortunately there isn't a physical component to the addiction so it is safe to go cold turkey. Usually after a few days or weeks it gets easier but if you slip up it is very easy to fall back into old habits.
I still seek this hit, but I do it in abstract knowledge like learning more about audio engineering (discovering the harmonic series for the first time or building an intuition for how FFT works is pretty neat). Then I get the hit, I learn neat stuff that may or may not be immediately useful, and I shut out the day-to-day noise.
Ditto, really, for how I engage with the industry. I'm looking at long-term principles like the fundamentals of distributed systems and not getting hung up on chasing certifications for Bob's New Cloud Platform. The details change slightly over time, but the principles remain the same.
