I am not a regular consumer of Fox News Entertainment, but am familiar with famous pundits on the channel including Mr. Hannity. Politically, I’m more issues focused. Some social issues I lean left, some conservative, some I have no opinion about. I have voted for conservative/traditional republican candidates and liberal/democrat candidates.
After a recent discussion of current events with a family member, I was challenged to watch Sean Hannity for one week.
My takeaways:
- The level of propaganda is stark and worse than I thought. If one consumes only an opinion show as a complete picture of the news, there is no discussing current events because there isn’t a set of basic common facts that are understood.
- We no longer live in the world of Walter Cronkite/traditional journalism. With the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine under President Reagan, news outlets no longer have to report from multiple sides of a given issue. Enter far more polarizing media. Amplify that 1000x with the algorithms in social media feeding whatever a person engages with more. In other words, if you click on something, watch a reel all the way through, share a post, the algorithm is designed to feed you more of the same content. Not the truth, not a contradictory opinion, but more and more of the same. Engagement is the goal.
- “It’s us or it’s them,” “You’re either for us, or against us,” In-group/outgroup thinking is part of what got us here. Black and white thinking: it’s either this or that. There’s no nuance. There’s not viable third, fourth or more options. As an example: Portland is “war-ravaged” with highly edited or even fabricated footage, or Portland is a land of utopian weirdness. From friends who actually live in Portland: “There are protestors in a 3 block area near the federal ICE building. It’s been heated and there have been clashes between local law enforcement, federal ICE agents, and protestors. We are not war ravaged. We aren’t a wasteland of violence”. So often it’s not this or that, but something in the middle.
- Without basic historical knowledge, it’s difficult to put current events into context. It all becomes “unprecedented”. Guess what? It’s precedented. Consolidation of governmental powers has happened in many countries. There have been pandemics. It’s just the first time for many of us.
- If it bleeds it leads. Even local news affiliates seem to follow this ethos, but it is far more pervasive in cable news networks. If the doom and gloom 24/7 news cycle is on constantly in the background of life, that has impact. Say something as fact enough times, people will believe it. Ratchet up the intensity of “the world is on fire and going to hell” message, and to no one’s surprise, people believe the world is actually going to hell and on fire.
I looked up a couple of recent headlines on different sites noted in the caption of each image. The same headline is vastly different depending on the source. This is not coincidence. Some are reporting facts via journalistic criteria, others are deliberately inflammatory, feeding the audience what it wants to hear.
If we consume only what is spoon-fed to us, we will eat any number of lies and half truths.
To combat propaganda, party-talking points and try to get a more complete view of the news (without completely going insane), my approach is to consult multiple sources on a given topic. Reuters, Associated Press, etc. tend to be more in line with traditional journalism ethics. Heather Cox Richardson’s analysis of headlines puts news into historical context, also available in podcast format. The following are sites known for more centralized fact checking when consuming any news:
Straight Arrow News is a site that publishes not only the news, but also what may be missing. Here’s today’s screen shot of “Media Misses”. It’s what may be missing on the right or the left side of reports on a given headline.
Ultimately, relationships with our people are more important than any headline. Also, truth is something worth seeking, especially in the media. I’m probably not going to change anyone’s political opinions with my own, or vice versa, but it was a great exercise in critical thinking and taking the 10,000 foot view in context of a challenge.
Life and Other Stuff 
What do you think?