I recently heard a statistic that started me thinking about this. Presently, about 66% of Americans overall turn to social media for news, including 86% of Gen Z and 84% of Millennials, versus 66% of Gen X and 36% of Boomers.1 This is concerning because most of the news that pops up in my feeds is of dubious sources. I’ve learned to skip over it as I mostly use social media to keep up with family, friends, specific organizations, and businesses. I get my news from NPR and CNBC. But it got me thinking about how hard it is to trust all news sources these days.
The TV news is the worse. CNN and MSNBC have become mostly liberal entertainment and we all know Fox News was built from the start to entertain conservatives.2 All the other networks lean right or left to some degree. I like CNBC because it’s hard to spin news about business and money. It just is what it is, like math sort of. NPR and BBC news is slightly left of center3, but the opinion pieces are all very left. So, how to get just straight news without all the spin and selective reporting?
Not much research was required to come up with Associated Press (AP) and Reuters as the closest to center for news. They mostly provide news items to the consumer media networks. But, they do have social media feeds you can follow to get the unspun unfiltered reports yourself. Reuters also has a podcast. So, that’s the answer if, like me, you are tired of the constant barrage of hyper-news. Follow AP and Reuters and do a Hide All for the others to clean up your feed.
If you like to get your news on the tube I highly recommend Consumer News and Business Channel (CNBC)4. A word of warning, you will have to put up with a lot of “Day Trader” type news. Unless you are a Day Trader this news isn’t very applicable to everyday life. But, much other business news is, as we all need food, shelter, clothing, SUVs, and retirement savings. It’s hard to put a spin on financial news since it affects all our lives directly in so many ways. These reporters don’t care what party a government news maker is in, only how their actions and words affect our finances.
Meanwhile, I’ve got NPR on the good old radio going in the background most of the day. I focus on the good news reporting and can easily filter out the opinion pieces. Please, let’s all stay informed in these turbulent times. As Plato said 2400 years ago, “The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”
- https://www.stagwellglobal.com/what-the-data-say-85-of-young-people-get-their-news-from-social-media/
- From Wikipedia – Murdoch hired Roger Ailes, a Republican strategist, as CEO to build Fox with a conservative lean.
- https://libguides.consortiumlibrary.org/c.php?g=1178095&p=8678540
- No longer affiliated with NBC.
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