The State of Journalism

I don't stay abreast of news nearly as well as I should. I go to school, I work, and have other responsibilities and hobbies, so I guess one could say that I don't make room for or prioritize news. This is partially laziness and busy-ness; it isn't that I don't care about it, in fact, I care deeply about a lot of it. It's also just because news is so poorly and biasedly presented, that sometimes I don't know where to start to find the truth, and once I find it, what to do about it. So, I mostly stay up-to-date on current events through in person discussion with others and sometimes in the classroom. Then, I look up what has been discussed. I'm sure that Google has created quite a little liberal bubble for me by now, try as I might to look at unbiased sources.

I also rely on radio programs for news, such as NPR, KBOO, OPB, etc. I rely on magazines I've subscribed to, such as National Geographic and Orion (neither is explicitly a news source, but they certainly use their particular lens to view and present current events). Making current events a more central part of my life is an extracurricular education that I desperately need to do, not only for my personal growth, but also for my social responsibility and my future career as a social worker. I realize this. It's just difficult to find the time. Whenever I see one issue, I feel the need to dig deep to the bottom until I find all the historical and cultural sources, including the ones no one here is telling us, and it all just seems so daunting. My answer to "How do you know the news source you are using is accurate and credible" is: I don't. That might be one of the only good things about having a President with a Twittering compulsion - at least we can see exactly what he said.

I don't generally pay for news sources. I'm not willing to pay not because I don't think good journalism and active media are worthwhile, but because I am unlikely to actually read what I have subscribed to. I read my textbooks and everything else I need to for school. Despite being a voracious reader from a very young age, at this point in my life, I ain't reading jack shit else. (except the occasional book I use for reference when I'm trying to figure something out).

So, this blog having been my confession, I would say that on a scale of 1-5 I am only a 2 as far as being informed, and the only reason that I'm not a 1 rather than a 2 is because I used to be much more on top of current events and politically active, so I have a good foundation upon which to understand current events, and I also have some really amazing friends of multiple ideologies, backgrounds, and communities who give me food for thought on a regular basis so that I have to go searching for more. If it weren't for surrounding myself with engaged individuals (which I am as well, just in different areas), I'd truly have been living under a rock since 2014.

As for Mr. Trump and his "fake news," I don't know if the issue is in the definition. I think "fake news" has expanded in meaning beyond just encompassing satirical news (like the Onion). He is actually using it in the same context that most of America is using it right now, except that what he labels as "fake" is just things which he doesn't appreciate, while he spouts many "fake" things out of his mouth as well. I can agree with him that the state of journalism is poor, but honestly, it is poor in his favor. Media is difficult to trust because it is based on what is popular (he is, while maybe not popular, at least very notorious), what is simple/digestible, and what will make money. The exact same corporate-run system that he supports is the one to which modern journalism has to answer to. i.e. if it's really so bad, it's his and his cronies' faults (at least partially; journalists and consumers bear much of the responsibility as well)

If the Russia scandal is "fake news" then so is Clinton's email scandal. However, Trump seems to think that the conservative media is the one being drowned out and that that is the source of the "fake news." Excuse me, isn't Fox News one of the biggest outlets? I really think that his campaign against the media, even the crappy media we have, is ridiculous. It is also (though potentially not entirely) harmful. For instance, most of us are aware that he did not win the popular vote. However, I work with many people who supported him. One of them kept talking all about the fake news that was being put out and how Hillary Clinton had only appeared to win because of widespread voter fraud and that a "large portion" of the people who had supposedly voted for her were actually already dead, but that the liberal media was just covering up the real story. My hope is that this idiocy brings people further away from this thinking and realize that actually our media does need to be better, stronger, and more even handed, but just not in the way Trump thinks.

So, he launched his own Facebook page of supposedly "real news." Some of the news sites he has criticized has some backlash against that, such as CNN:

http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/02/media/trump-real-news/index.html

I'm trying to think of the right adjective to describe what exactly it means when the person in one of the highest positions of power and visibility asks you to ignore everything else and trust that you can get your news directly from them. First, "terrifying" came to mind, but fear is immobilizing and not productive. I worry about what he may do in many ways, especially things like if we'll have any environment left once he is out of office, what he will do to divide all of our communities which had just begun making so much progress in working together and accepting each other, and escalating violence in the middle east and around the world as a backlash against his message of hate and superiority. I worry about a lot of things, but I know that he is a mortal and vulnerable human like the rest of us. So no, it is not terrifying. I don't want to say that it is laughable because, even though it is, it may have some not entirely humorous effects. Potentially, it is climactic. The exact person who is talking about the fake news is the one bringing about its climax. The push to wake us up and get us to topple the whole thing and find a better way to bring information to the people; one which is not ruled by greed, but instead by passion and integrity. We have a part in it, we are the key; we are the ones who wanted raccoon cat (cat raccoon?). Well, we've got ourselves raccoon cat, and he's got a super funny hair cut.

Democracy is weakend by a weak media and even further crippled when attempts to strengthen it are met with legal action. We've seen that in this week's video, as well as stories surrounding Wikileaks and other whistleblowers or platforms for whistleblowers. Democracy is also weakened by such an exhaustingly bipartisan system which creates burnout and apathy among its participants (us), who are just tired of dealing with the machine. Binary doesn't work for much of anything in life. How could it neatly package our ideologies? The media just feeds into this because, paradoxically, as much as we all hate the binary system, we still reward the system for perpetuating it. We are as afraid to step outside of it as we are weary of being within it. We see no hope for making a change, so we gripe on the internet (somewhat like this blog here).

On that note, I'm off to go make a ruckus.