I believe it imperative that people stop being willfully ignorant and start paying attention to what’s really going on in our nation. I believe that those who get all their “news” from social media need to get real … with real, established, professional news sources. And I believe they must read not only those sources they agree with but also those with which they disagree … especially those with which they disagree. You don’t know the whole story until you’ve heard both sides.
I’m not going to suggest which sources people should read. I’ll let them choose their own, or choose from a graph the Pew Research Center put together in a study called Political Polarization & Media. Or from any of many other available sources. (Wikipedia details history, reputations, and political leanings.) Read some from Column A and some from Column B. Maybe even Column C. Read the article from Pew. Use available fact checkers: Fact Check, Flack Check, PolitiFact, Snopes, and The Fact Checker.
For one’s own good and the good of the country, try to be informed. Now more than ever, we need to know when we’re being lied to.
Amen. It does take a little effort to check sources for reliability, but being well-informed is well worth it. And in the present political atmosphere knowing what’s going on is essential.
I’ll never understand people who willingly accept one version of things without trying to verify it. The truth is out there. “Trust but verify.”
I completely agree PT. I do admit, however, that my ever increasing cynicism makes it difficult to take any news source seriously…
That’s why I check different sources. I don’t have much confidence in any of them anymore.
Absolutely! I never go by just one site/source.
I’m with you, IzaakMak. I don’t trust any of them to tell the complete story on anything. And, the more you happen to know about a specific thing, the more you realize they have no intention of putting everything in context. The idea that MSNBC and FoxNews are unbiased news sources is mind boggling.
The agenda now (of nearly all news outlets), is apparently to delegitimize Trump’s victory.
And also, in spite of the fact that I didn’t vote for the guy, I’m compelled to find fault with many of his detractors because they consistently wind up supporting existing government programs and decisions that are failures.
It’s time to start trying to make lemon aid with the lemon we’ve been handed instead of complaining about it’s sour taste.
MSNBC and Fox have both announced they are proudly, intentionally biased.
So.,. in essence they are the only honest opinionated news outlets.
Heh, hadn’t thought of it that way before, but yes, at least they admit their bias.
I keep hoping that I’ll wake up one morning and the world will be normal again, and the formerly ill-informed realize their mistake in just seeking out what makes them feel good. Still waiting.
At my age I’ve begun thinking I might never see “normal” again. So depressing!
So very important. Trump isn’t even in office yet but he’s already started screwing us over in a big bad way.
The man scares me to death. He’s shaking up some very delicate foreign relations. There’s just no end to the damage he could do, up to and including starting a war (possibly nuclear).
and yet it seems that one of your regular followers, and contributors, would disagree with you entirely, and appears to place all blame/responsibility on the media, mainly those to the left of centre. but still cannot see the forest for the trees; which is kind of scary, as there appears to be many of a similar persuasion.
I don’t expect everyone to agree with me. Differences of opinion keep things interesting.
There were many factors influencing the election results. I happen to think our mainstream media really blew it by not taking Trump seriously from the very beginning and by giving him a disproportionate amount of free publicity he didn’t deserve. That’s one reason I say people should check several sources.
I think he wants to partner up with Putin. Not sure why yet. Invade an oil-rich country?
Or be invaded. I feel like he’s going around dismantling all the security that we’ve spend decades establishing. And if he gets all infatuated with Putin … what’s China going to think? You can’t get chummy with one at the expense of the other.
I was discussing things with a Trump supporter not long ago, trying to grok their viewpoint. During a particularly disputed topic I provided references to details I thought were relevant from PolitiFact. Her response: ‘you went full PolitiFact on it! You never go full PolitiFact.’
It was at that point that I realized that the fact checking sites I normally rely on are under assault. Disreputable alt-right sites are listing them as proliferation points for lies and discrediting them among their followers. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you aspire to, if you were to go out and create a news site, some people would believe everything you say and some people will think everything you post is a lie. The difference between them is simple. It’s what they WANT to believe.
Tell her hell no, you don’t go full PolitiFact. No more than you go full Fox News or full New York Times or full anything else. Sounds like she went full Breitbart, though.
“Grok.” RAH remembered.