In my recent piece on how this is no time to protect your peace, I briefly mentioned confirmation bias, and how we get our news. It’s not a perfect information world if all liberals get news exclusively from MSNBC and all the conservatives are watching FOX to “stay informed.” We need to consider our news sources. While I appreciate the rise of new media, there are too many so-called citizen journalists posting “facts” in ugly font brightly colored boxes, so every time I see a piece of information in front of me, I think: what’s the source?
On social media, feeds fly by with astonishing new headlines at rapid-fire pace. We’ve heavily influenced our exposure to information—because we have control over who we follow, and how much time we spend on the social media platforms. Twitter used to be a decent news source, until Musk-rat destroyed it, so Threads came along because Meta wanted a piece of the action. Then people wanted off Meta, so we have the rise of Bluesky, founded by the co-founder of Twitter Jack Dorsey almost apologetically for how X worked out. YouTube and TikTok are often how the younger generation consumes news, but how they curate their feeds or know who to trust is a mystery.
As an unapologetic bleeding-heart liberal (this week I bleed green for the Philadelphia Eagles, go birds), it often frustrates me to see how often people throw out the “MSM/cable news/legacy media. It’s too broad, and a bit ignorant, to say you “won’t watch any” tv news. I watch a lot, I’m just picky about which journalists. Credit was given to Jim Acosta for leaving CNN, and I enjoyed seeing him learn to use a phone to go live for his new reporting on Substack.
CNN gets heat: they’re too conservative for liberals and too liberal for conservatives. The tv news equation is simple: watch the individual anchors you like, and skip the ones you don’t. I’ll always watch Jake Tapper because he’s from Philly and I love the little barbs he throws at the end of interviews. I like Anderson Cooper better on New Year’s Eve, but will watch him even though I wish he’d let himself be the badass he wants to be—maybe he’ll evolve, like a Pokémon. I’ll admit to my CNN news crushes Erin Burnett and Kaitlyn Collins; Collins is a badass Trump foe who no doubt will have her White House press pass revoked for not kissing the ring, but she isn’t going anywhere as a journalist.
MSNBC is called “MSDNC” by Trump. I wasn’t sad to hear Andrea Mitchell was finally retiring: her last day is tomorrow and with due respect to her long career, I won’t miss her a bit. I also can’t stand to watch Nicolle Wallace for a second. I regularly watch Jen Psaki, Ari Melber, Joy Reid and Lawrence O’Donnell. I’m happy Chris Hayes has a bestseller, but he has a whiny voice and gets on my nerves. My favorite journalist is Rachel Maddow. When she announced she was going to be in the anchor chair for the first 100 days of the Trump administration, it was the first good news I’d heard since the election.
There are independent journalists covering the news who are doing a notable job. The only complaint I have about Maddow is that I wish she’d acknowledge this independent reporting more on-air. MeidasTouch News has four million YouTube subscribers and has risen to become a leading progressive new source. American historian Heather Cox Richardson has over two million subscribers on her Substack newsletter, where she presents the daily news in a no-nonsense, fact-driven way. Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich also writes a great Substack, ditto legacy journalist Dan Rather. Point: go to Substack and take a look around, you should be able to find excellent independent journalists to read.
There are more traditional print media that have risen to the challenge, and surprised some with their ongoing coverage. Wired launched a political coverage team and seen renewed interest since then. Rolling Stone saw the chance to increase readership and has put out blaring headlines since the election. And the Wall Street Journal is going harder than anyone probably would’ve guessed. I’m too broke for legacy media with paywalls, so I’m always grateful when someone posts a gift article.
We need to choose how much news to consume and there’s no point in denying that we all have confirmation bias and will choose the news that makes us nod our heads because we told you so. But it’s good to take a view of the news landscape once in awhile and consider how we’re going to garner an understanding of what’s going on around us in a rapidly-changing landscape.
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