Media Literacy with Caroline: You Need a News-gathering System
Feeling overwhelmed by the news on the internet?
That’s intentional!
According to the FBI, the U.S. has been under attack by Russia’s disinformation campaign for 10 years, and if that weren’t bad enough, now fellow Americans and our own government are also spreading lies. Last year, Tennessee YouTubers were found to have been covertly paid $10 million by Russia to spread its lies. Meanwhile, DOGE removed hundreds of pages of information from government websites and everything that comes out of RFK Jr’s mouth is a lie. (Except the classic: “I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.”)
Historian Jason Stanely explains that fascists don’t expect voters to believe every falsehood. They don’t even try to make their falsehoods credible (Stanley 60-61). Rather, the point of disinformation is to change the culture and people’s attitudes towards information. Fascists want people to feel confused and helpless—so confused and helpless, in fact, that they are easy to control.
Journalist Anne Appelbaum elaborates on the purpose of disinformation in The Atlantic: “Given so many explanations, how can you know what actually happened? What if you just can’t know? If you don’t know what happened, you’re not likely to join a great movement for democracy, or to listen when anyone speaks about positive political change. Instead, you are not going to participate in any politics at all.”
Citizens who feel that participation in politics is useless are a dictators’ ideal type of citizen.
The point of disinformation is to change the culture and people’s attitudes towards information. Fascists want people to feel confused and helpless—so confused and helpless, in fact, that they are easy to control.
So how can we avoid this confusion, this helplessness, this nihilism, this overwhelm that Russia and Trump are betting will break us?
You need a newsgathering system! This should be a process that you can depend on to regularly produce generally reliable information for you about a variety of topics.
If this feels daunting, it may help to keep in mind that things can get even crazier: the White House’s lies will grow in size and number. Bots will increasingly take over internet traffic. AI content, especially deepfakes, will make it impossible to believe what you are seeing.
That’s why the process is so important.
You could be reading a variety of sources that are unreliable, but maybe you’re reading about a topic that you already know about: maybe the lack of funding at your kids’ elementary school, the tariff’s effects on the price of electronics, a union strike, or your field of work – say real estate. You may be reading about these topics from unreliable sources, but you know these specific articles are correct because you attend community meetings, you read a lot about tech, or because it’s part of your job to know. An unreliable source can totally get things right sometimes, but you can’t always know when, because maybe you don’t pay as much attention to small businesses. And you don’t work in education or international shipping or the military. You can’t be asking questions at the LAFD press conference and interviewing dockworkers at the port of Long Beach and filming ICE agents at Home Depot at the same time. One of the tragedies of life is that nobody can know everything about everything!
This is why you can’t rely on your own expertise to know when an unreliable source has published something incorrect. When an unreliable source shares exaggerated, inaccurate, or misleading information, it may have just enough truth to sound believable to laypeople. After all, the best lies are the ones that include a little nugget of truth.
An unreliable source can totally get things right sometimes, but you can’t always know when.
That’s why we need to focus on the process. That way, regardless of whether you are familiar with a field, you’ll know that the information will be as accurate as it’s possible for information to be.
Your system can be made up of two or more standards:
First, don’t get your news from social media. Even if it’s from leftist accounts you enjoy. If you do see news there that evokes a strong feeling in you, look it up on a reliable source. Don’t get your news primarily from leftist social media accounts.
Second, stick with reliable sources for your news. Pick a variety of sources to read from—these could be newspapers of record (Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Chicago Tribune – pretty much any major American city’s newspaper), wire services like Reuters or Associated Press, or news channels such as CNN, ABC, NBC.
You can also choose to read news from across the political spectrum – as long as it’s reliable! That’s the key. Check out mediabiasfactcheck.com to see how your favorite sources rate on the reliability scale.
Read the news before you watch or listen to your favorite podcaster, YouTuber, writer, or any other opinion-based entertainment. That way, if a hyper-partisan left- or right-wing podcaster expresses an opinion or exaggerates part of a story, as they do, you’ll be better at recognizing the opinion or the exaggeration. And when you know that something is exaggerated or that an opinion has been inserted into the story, then you can decide for yourself whether you agree with that choice or perspective. This practice also begins to create a filter in your mind for the future.
Finally, there can be such thing as too much news, even for junkies like us. Part of your newsgathering system could include a time limit or video limit to modulate your intake. Consuming a lot of news can be overwhelming even when it’s all good information. If it’s starting to get to you, turn your phone over and take a nature break. Or, instead of consuming, turn to small actions: do one small thing, like using the 5 Calls app to complain to your congressional representative.
See you around the internet! Check back later to read about how bad actors manipulate our emotions to get us to share their disinformation!
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