A GUIDE TO MEDIA CONSUMPTION IN THE ERA OF FAKE NEWS, TWITTER, AND THE NEVER-ENDING "CYCLE"

A GUIDE TO MEDIA CONSUMPTION IN THE ERA OF FAKE NEWS, TWITTER, AND THE NEVER-ENDING "CYCLE"

Here we are, America, wide-awake on the morning after of our worst nightmare: an internet troll is literally the leader of the free world. A man immune to fact, who shamelessly denies what he has said on camera, who at every turn undermines the credibility of the free press, all the while exploiting the wall-to-wall coverage afforded his incendiary bombast and belligerent, man-boy posturing.

Are we all partially to blame? I think the answer is yes. The echo chamber of social media feeds us content that tends to reinforce rather than challenge our pre-existing notions and beliefs. And it's not just the spin of these stories that limits our discourse. What gets reposted, memed, liked, and commented upon are not always the stories that, in the end, really matter. Cat videos, defiantly captioned pictures of Martin Luther King or Chief Joseph overwhelm our feeds, drowning out less read but significant articles of social and political import. So it's not just the spin of what we read that affects our thinking. Unlike the days when America tuned in to see Walter Cronkite deliver the same news to us all, and most homes subscribed to Time or Newsweek, information and its consumption have never been more fractured and diffuse. How can we know what to believe? And are we getting both sides of a story? What stories are we not even hearing about because our news is so partisan and specific?

One look at a New York Times from the early twentieth century reveals something we all know to be true in the age of information saturation: people read more, and they handled pieces with more text than most people have the time or patience for today. We get most of our news now on our phones, in a never-ending stream of constantly updated headlines and short summaries. Even longer pieces that are originally published in print end up flying by our eyes, as we skim, summarize, or read enough to get the gist. The constant onslaught discourages delving too deeply into any one article. By the time we finish it, how much breaking news will we have missed? How many pings, emails, tweets, likes, and updates will have landed in our palm?

The downside of the golden era of the Big Three (ABC, CBS, and NBC) is that there was an absolute hegemony of big corporations, dependent on massive advertising revenue that filtered the news for us, preventing certain stories from ever being told. Challenging investigative reporting that exposed corporate malfeasance, or government corruption, luckily found a home in large, fiercely independent big-city newspapers. And while many of these stories stayed local, Watergate proved the value of this brand of reportage, ultimately bringing down a President.

The upside of a top-down structure of particularly broadcast news is that it presented an irrefutable body of facts to which all debates and conversations about the issues of the day could refer. True, some stories were left out, and intriguing radical viewpoints and voices were elided. However, on substantive issues, such as the Vietnam War, differing factions were able to argue their sides against the others while referring to a commonly agreed upon set of information.

Today, that is all but lost. Print journalism is in decline everywhere, forcing papers to lay off staff and close once important foreign bureaus and investigative desks. TV news has to compete with "Ice Road Truckers" and content from hundreds of channels. Blogs and news sites proliferate, many feeding people exactly the ideological slant they are looking for, and writing stories that reinforce their already-held world views. The bar to entry into the world of journalism, once exceedingly high, can now be climbed with a domain name and a few mouse clicks. Information and entertainment have merged into a seamless stream of sensational crime stories, Beyonce news, and "sponsored" content promising to relieve you of your belly fat with one weird trick.

What is the way out? How can we both arm ourselves with a wide array of reliable news and help to rejuvenate those forms of media that offer what our country and culture need: incontrovertible facts, cogent analysis, and a healthy difference of opinion, both liberal and conservative. Here are my guidelines and suggestions:

Read a paper. At a minimum, subscribe to your local daily and the Sunday New York Times. I get both seven days a week. Get them in print. While online news is searchable, convenient, and sleek, nothing substitutes for that good old twentieth-century feeling of thumbing through the sections. For me reading the paper has a rigorous ritual to it: peruse the headlines, noting stories to which I want to return, and then it's straight to the editorials, as the papers I trust offer guidance about not only what to think, but about which stories are the most meaningful.

Curate your Facebook feed rigorously. I make sure to keep my news sources to a minimum here. New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NPR. You don't have to use these, although the Times has always been known as "the paper of record." Others to consider: CNN, Forbes, LA Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, Slate, and Politico.

Much as it is tempting to get that shot of partisan crack, avoid sites like Huffington Post. Go to the site if you want to, but having its feed pop up in yours can be distracting, pulling you into partisanship and away from a balanced reporting of the news. Rachel Maddow is great at analyzing the news, but you shouldn't hear it from her first. It has been widely reported that many millennials used to get their news straight from Jon Stewart. Such heavily partisan and satirical content creators are best enjoyed when you have a solid, independently gleaned grasp of the facts yourself.

Delve in from time to time. Let the latest breathless report wait until you finish something more weighty, that takes a longer view and drills down into a topic or an issue. Find these pieces in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and in other longer form print sources. Listen to a few highly specific podcasts such as "The Political Gabfest." Here you will find larger contexts and theoretical frameworks into which you can place the ever-breaking news. And if you really want to dive in deeply, read some books on education, social justice, political history, or the environment.

Seek out local stories on public radio, and above all in independent local weeklies, where you will often see the best reporting anywhere about stories that affect your day-to-day life. Everyone is crying about Trump, but how many people can actually name their city council and state house representatives? Have you ever gone to a planning commission or city council meeting?

Force yourself to read stories from the other side. If you choose judiciously, you can find highly credible conservative sources that have tradition and integrity. The Wall Street Journal is far and away the leader in this, but there and other sources such as Forbes that present the world more from the point of view of business. These are not Fox or Breitbart News which trade in sensationalism, misinformation, and racism.
Fact check, fact check, fact check. Let Snopes be your best friend. If you read an intriguing story somewhere, cross-check it against the Times or the Post. If you don't find it there, be suspicious. While "Feds Say Bernie Actually Won Primary Fight, Re-Vote Ahead" sounds mighty tempting, you may want to file that with "one strange fruit that cures heart disease."

Seek out columns by well known, respected conservatives such as David Brooks, Ross Douthat, and Bill Kristol. George Will is infuriating to me, but he is an eloquent spokesman for a particular ideology that is worth reading.

Listen to long-form radio programs such as "Here and Now" and "The Diane Rehm Show." Here you will find news put into a larger context, and often contradictory views expressed. Any show that has a call-in segment helps you understand what everyday people are thinking and feeling about issues.