Each individual adult, especially those who use their power of voting, MUST evaluate the news sources they use. I pray that anyone reading this will decide to take seriously the news from sources that are low in bias, low in opinions, and high in facts. The truth of what’s happening in our government today is difficult to find.  Many news sources present themselves as sources of truth, but the reader/listener/voter must decide for themselves who to listen to.

Do you listen to your Mom? Dad? Cousin? Former college roommate who went on to earn advanced degrees and you only see on Facebook?  Why do you make the decisions you do about who you listen to?

Your Mom and Dad love you, but they may not have the skills to learn the truth of what’s happening in the world or make the same decisions on who to vote for that you would. They may get angry about different things than you do.

I used to read CNN for my news. No longer. Now I will look at it with a grain of salt knowing that the Ad Fontes Media Bias Chart shows CNN as lower in the scale of “News Value and Reliability” than other news sources like Associated Press and BBC.

What Ad Fontes Media Bias Chart???  It’s this thing I hope you’ve seen already or will choose to click on today.

The Ad Fontes research also shows hard data to show that sources like FOX and MSNBC are both low on the scale of “News Value and Reliability.” Brietbart is shown as very far down the scale of “News Value and Reliability” as well as extremely far right in ideology. I used the interactive link https://app.adfontesmedia.com/chart/interactive to find this view below of that publication.

 

“That’s lib-tard crap!” or “That’s BS!” or “My news source is just fine!”  I hear someone cry…  Please read up on the methodology Ad Fontes uses to create their chart. They are publicly accountable, better than many of us, for their unbiased methods of judgement: https://adfontesmedia.com/methodology/ 

I will read news from multiple sources, but check what the Associated Press, BBC, and USA Facts has to say about the facts. THEN I make my decision about what to say when I call my senators. 

Reading news from highly biased and low reliability publications means the reader is lacking facts. It can be emotionally enjoyable to see the authors complaining about the same stuff you complain about, but it can be misleading. If you are reading news from biased or low reliability sources, you are making decisions based on a lack of facts. 

 

Please take time to evaluate your news sources with the Ad Fontes Media Bias Chart.

 

Are you making decisions based on fact or emotion? Are you reading biased articles? Are you making healthy decisions or not? Are your decisions affecting other people?

 

Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor said recently “We will lose our democracy” if we do not ALL engage in media literacy. See the video from Associated Press here: https://youtu.be/-Z74NSvekuE

 

“We will lose our democracy” if people, particularly young people, don’t make it “their responsibility to be literate about the basis for your decision-making,” Sotomayor said. She encouraged listeners to develop the skills to identify lies, misdirection, misinformation, and confusion that are common online.  I agree strongly with her that our democracy will turn into a government ruled only by very rich people if we, the rest of the people, do not learn this skill.

Again, I strongly recommend using the Media Bias Chart from Ad Fontes Media to help you see the difference between facts and opinions. https://adfontesmedia.com/ 

In the SCA*, we do not do a great job of this. Our community points to the Order of the Laurel to lead the way into historic research and sharing reliable information sources. I was recently shamed and attacked over email for suggesting that a Laurel candidate should make an effort to demonstrate their skills in research. I was told that was too hard and too demanding to expect from a Laurel candidate. The three options I offered for this effort were turned into a new requirement in one Laurel’s fearful response. “Who’s making that a new requirement for Laurel??” they replied, angrily.

The angry, fearful, and defensive responses to my suggestion demonstrated to me that the skill of discerning sources, writing down what you learned, and publishing for the world to see is a terrifying concept to many people.  Even those who lead the SCA in the realm of research are often terrified of doing this.

So, yes, it’s hard to publish. But it’s pretty easy to look at the Media Bias Chart and simply choose to read from low bias, high fact based sources. The cost of not doing this is losing our democracy to rich, selfish people.

*The SCA = The Society for Creative Anachronism, www.sca.org, a non profit group I’ve volunteered in since 1992.