Since the news business has changed from reporting to profits, keeping eyeballs is what it is all about.
Fox found this out after they accurately reported that Trump was projected to lose Arizona. Tucker Carlson then ranted about how their viewership was going down, along with the stock price with which he was richly compensated. He understood that their viewers were there to hear what they need to believe. And if they didn’t get it, they would move to Newsmax, Onan and other alternative news sources that would feed the beast.
Rush Limbaugh always understood that and bragged that he was an Entertainer. Are you entertained?
For any democracy to it operate efficiently, it needs an informed electorate. So how do you sort out the news from the fire hose of information flow these days?
1)Realize that your. 00001 experience of the world contributes to 80% of your worldview. Approach your understanding with a scientist skepticism that he’s always willing to accept that he could be wrong.
2)Intentionally expose yourself to opposing views. We don’t like to do this because it makes us uncomfortable. Over the years I have developed a diversity of writers that I follow on the hellscape that is Twitter. Most of us don’t have a luxury of time to do that. It’s not easy being free, when you don’t have an emperor to make all the decisions for you.
3) Turn off the Crisis News networks . If there isn’t good video footage, or if the victim isn’t attractive, you won’t hear about it . Just like the print media, television is all about eyeballs. Now there are live news events that television coverage excels at. Television Studios nowadays don’t need to wait for their cameras to warm up to go live. Walter Cronkite had to wait to give the world the shocking news about Kennedy being shot in Dallas.
4) Read some news sources from outside the United States bubble. Here are some free websites that also have free apps for your handhelds.
A good one to see the southeast Asian perspective on the world is the Asia Times https://asiatimes.com/
Also, try the Arab news source https://www.aljazeera.com/
France 24 for another perspective https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/
The Guardian is one of the few British rags that isn’t just a tabloid http://thrguardian.com/
If you can afford subscription the Financial Times, The Week, The Economist, Wall Street Journal and NY Times will cover a lot of area.
A great little tool that I use is an aggregator that ranks stories by their number of hits in real time. Bookmark this handy page
5) Last, but not least, Social Media is just that and not a source of verifiable information. Outrage and anger build engagement. Realize that you are being baited with these emotions to click on their stories.
