How to be Informed

When the news environment seems to lean "right" or "left?"

A lot of people have soured on “news.” We wring our hands over the “biases” of information sources. We doubt that “democracy” actually works.

I believe that for 250 years, in a world of conflicting ideas and experiences, we have been good at figuring things out. Even without ideal, spoon-fed “news,” we have understood our own interests and reached essential agreement.

So why not today?

There will always be differences in what is reported by different news sources. Many times it will be difficult if not impossible for journalists to get the “whole story.” And from the beginning of the Republic most news sources have been partisan. One part of the “game of politics” has always been to operate one’s own propaganda network or to capture one already in existence. Many towns and cities had at least two papers, each leaning to a different party.

I’m not saying that most editors and journalists set out to be biased. They usually try to do justice to both sides of an event or dispute. They have their opinions, and they make personal choices about what to write and what facts are important. Everyone has ideas about what is credible, what needs to be is qualified, what is speculative, and what is poorly evidenced. Journalists are people with a job to do and, like the rest of us, they do it as well as they can.

Let’s accept this and see how to make the best of it. In this post I’m interested in how people like us can play our roles as citizens in a news environment, where many of our primary sources lean partisan.

Only suggestions: When the government is basically controlled by Republicans, read the “liberal” press and when the government is controlled by Democrats, get some of your news from the “conservative” side. Particularly give the Party out of power a good listen. The government will always be able to get its side of things out to its voters, and any in the general public willing to listen. The problem is how well the other side is heard outside of its own echo chamber. That is, if you are a Republican and the government is Republican, watch MSNBC. And, similarly, I suggest, Democrats, during a Democratic Party government, you should watch Fox News. All governments are likely to overreach, to get ahead of the evidence, to take their own ideology too seriously and to over-value their own experience in the world. The “opposition press” helps get “the rest of the story” out. It is their reporting that holds the present government accountable, even if they do “lay it on” a bit thick.

I’m saying this because I have confidence in people. When Americans recognize that what they read leans one way, they adjust, keep their balance, become skeptical. An intelligent citizen with a good general sense of what is going on and an ability to identify loaded word choices, can read between the lines and not be mindlessly “fooled” by either side.

(And if I’ve just blown up your trust in what I’m saying, because you question whether US citizens are intelligent, then raise hell about what we are offering as “education” in this country and think long and hard about what it means to be intelligent and how we can get to a point where most of us ARE intelligent. Hint: the answer isn’t getting everyone to agree with you.)

This obviously isn’t a perfect strategy. And there is more you can do to be well informed. Perhaps you have identified a truly neutral news source. Keep looking for alternative sources of news and read more of the “long news” in journals and scholarly sources that claim to be “fact checked” or evidence-based.”

Oh, and also don’t lose your partisanship. Be a responsible partisan. We need two parties. There is more than one path forward that needs to be considered and, when chosen, is worthy of citizen support. Actually, members of a political party need to be their party’s chief critics. Both parties need citizen criticism and ethical judgement from their own members. That’s how we control the ambitions and flaws of our leaders—critical support from friends and strong supporters. And the occasional vote in protest. Voting against one or more of one’s own party’s candidates is how Americans have always made free elections work.

All this, it seems to me, is particularly necessary at this moment in our history. I think that the present government has gone “off the rails” and that most thoughtful people will see this and try to do something about it, provided that they read/hear more than just Fox News.

By the way, just before pushing the “send” button, I thought about something else. Maybe we should do less personally arguing with each other and instead suggest (maybe earnestly) that we both read outside our own normal reach. We could ask each other for suggestions.)