I'm tired of this ludicrous insinuation that a free and independent press either doesn't exist or if it does it should never be trusted. I regularly read opposing viewpoints or even self criticism in the established media. Your claims are wild and impossible to disprove.
There is a free and independent press, but they're not the ones owned by Bezos and friends. This leads into OP's point - that you need to always be doing the work yourself of triangulating on the best approximation of the truth. If you give that up, then you're a prime candidate for manipulation.
Make no mistake, there are strong and concerted efforts by very powerful organizations to control what the masses see. And you will see some dissent even within places like the NY Times, but there are real bounds to expressible thought (all the news that's fit to print). Others have covered this ground for decades a lot better than myself.
> I'm tired of this ludicrous insinuation that a free and independent press either doesn't exist or if it does it should never be trusted.
I don't think all journalists deliberately serve some agenda, but it's very easy to find instances of reputable medias being incorrect or extremely biased. It's not that they should never be trusted, but it's important to remain critical even with reputable new sources.
It's not the free or lack of free press that's the problem. Fox's audience wants to be lied to, and there are countless people in the US and elsewhere that are honestly just done thinking about the complexity of the world. No free press can break through that.
"Eveyone that disagrees with me is stupid and easily manipulated, not smart like me"
I think alot of people watch Fox because its currently the only news channel that provides coverage of poor Democrat behaviour. That doesnt mean they agree with everything that is said.
To be fair, they’re guilty of not silencing a couple of their opinion hosts for a couple of days. Multiple anchors angrily shut down the story on-air on more than one occasion, and Tucker Carlson was so skeptical he made an enemy of Trump.
Maybe someone should have gone after the politicians and media and filmmakers that claimed Diebold stole the Ohio election for Bush and this could have been nipped in the bud.
>>I'm tired of this ludicrous insinuation...I regularly read opposing viewpoints
>The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.
What specific claims are wild and impossible to disprove? I didn't see anything of that in the above statement. Only, don't rely on once source for your information. Also the article, paired with the tone of this site, causes me to second guess the premise because it looks like this site writes a lot of sensation pieces, similar to daily mail which does in fact, skew the facts to get people to be polarized. There is an article on Wikipedia banning source information from Daily Mail [1] that you would do well to read as this site seems to fall right under that spectrum.
> The authoritarian elitist crowd doesn't seem to like it when the unwashed masses develop these skills; they'd prefer to have a population of brainwashed zombies who get all their propaganda from a government-provided list of 'acceptable sources' and who don't have the cognitive capacities and practical skills needed to independently test claims for veracity.
That is true, but this particular author is from F.I.R.E. - a nonprofit free speech advocacy group. You can probably assume that such a group would present a particular kind of opinion.
The media love to report on the media. There is no bad press and the self criticism praises as much as criticizes. 'How they got it wrong' is a common story you get to buy.
Yeah but that's not helpful for primary sources. For instance, if the NYT reports that WMDs have been found in Iraq and that a trustworthy source says so but Fox News says this is not the case, what do you consider the truth?
For national security reasons, you can't look at the evidence.
> For national security reasons, you can't look at the evidence.
If we can't look at the evidence, then it's probably highly distorted. Especially if it's for 'national security' reasons -- the ultimate 'ends justify the means' context. No matter what nation we are talking about.
I don't think your experience is mutually exclusive with theirs. Do you think "you're not always looking for independent alternative sources of information and cross-checking claims from different sources" as per OP's comment?
