How I Get My Information in the Age of Fake News
Many have asked how I get information. I used to just listen to the partisans and where there was overlap there was truth. However, there is no longer an attempt from either side to make the lies even vaguely opaque. A complete disconnect exists between the competing narratives without overlap at all. I am told war is peace and black is white. Orwellian NewSpeak is in my face all day and all night. Here is my strategy in today’s era of Fake News.
It has always been hard to get good information on politics. A case can be made this is the reason for the Electoral College. The powerful attractions of partisanship are partially driven by this desire for good information. One can simply pick a side whose point of view most coincides with your own, then the partisans would do the digging for information. You have minions to do the vetting of facts.
As I grew up, I was on one side or the other as I evolved politically. Each time I steeped myself in the partisan talking points. I wanted to be able to defend my chosen point of view as best as I could. Eventually, I realized it was a “chosen” point of view, not one derived from my own hashing of the facts. Instinctively, I knew this was wrong. I began this long lonely non-partisan journey upon this realization.
Going independent was not easy. It was the late 20th century when I first made the break from the two parties. By then each party had embraced one of the two “isms” controlling America. There were ideologues everywhere. As an individual how could one gain sufficient facts on political matters? One needed to establish some facts as a basis for one’s opinions. How did one do that in the late 20th century?
In the nineties, I began to watch multiple news services. Though there was much noise about “liberal bias”, I felt much of it was gone by this time. The Democratic president was too easy a target. Also, America was growing too conservative for a “liberal bias” to get ratings. Conservative news really began to take off and was a formula which regularly delivered ratings bonanzas.
I used these polar opposite viewpoints in American politics to vet facts. Any facts which both sides used for their spin were most likely actual facts. It was the spin I needed to navigate, but there was enough factual overlap back then to make this a reasonable exercise. Things got much more complicated in the 21st century.
After 9/11, all news sources seemed to adhere closely to the narrative from the central government. There was little questioning of torture or violations of the Geneva Convention. That terrorism was a non-partisan existential threat to the United States was an unquestioned fact trumpeted by all news sources within the nation. The “story” that Saddam truly had weapons of mass destruction which justified a war of choice was not questioned by either side.
I began watching a lot more foreign news sources then. The NHK News and France 24 were regular watching for me. American news sources seemed to have no true information. They had become corporate mouthpieces for a government narrative which did not ring true for me any longer.
Getting to these news sources over the years has been challenging. France 24 was carried on my cable feed for the first few years after the WMD debacle. However, after a couple of years, Al Gore bought the station and turned it into something called Current TV. Getting French news in the US was no longer very easy. It was ironic the liberal icon Al Gore had pulled the plug on this source of news.
All throughout the last couple of years, the shrieks about Russians “hacking” the 2016 election have been frustrating noise. The Russians did nothing more than execute a well-coordinated propaganda campaign. Frankly, I believe it is just as Obama said, “If we were not so willing to believe heinous things about one another we would not be so easy to manipulate as a people and a nation.”
Over the years, I have become a sounding board for friends and family on “this or that” political drama. I try to deliver an even-handed analysis of what I think is going on. I base it upon my long observation of the American political process AND the input of those on the outside looking in..foreign news services.
I have been watching the Japanese and Chinese talking about novel corona virus since December. The Japanese were particularly upset about what was going on. I watched NHK closely in January and February. Other news sources were also covering the corona virus outbreak and documenting the efforts in Korea and Italy.
When the sh!t hit the fan in March, I was pretty booked up on what it was and what it meant. I was also pretty skeptical it was not in California in late 2019. The cross Pacific travel is just too heavy for it not to have colonized Cali. I wrote about it back then.
My news sources proved to be fairly accurate at a very stressful time, so I have been getting pinged a bit more. Lately, I have been debunking stories of a Chinese cover-up by telling people about the timeline I watched on NHK. It is certainly a bit of BS to claim there was NO transparency here by China. The whole world KNEW by the beginning of 2020.
Now people are texting me about this “Plandemic” BS. I tell them I felt Fauci was a career physician/public healthcare official who got along with the White House, because he felt duty-bound to serve. He had found his calling long ago. He is not really partisan to me. He has served under the Bushes, Reagan, Clinton and Obama. Fauci is a medical doctor with a desire to operate for the public good.
One friend who has a particularly liberal bias in my opinion just texted me yesterday. I was surprised by the content! He seemed to have come under the thrall of this “Plandemic” narrative. He pushed the opinion a bit about Fauci being a scumbag with plans to make money off of Covid-19. I started asking him to find a foreign news source covering the story.
Without a foreign news service backing an idea like this, it is easy for me to discount things these days. American politics and money are gaming the system is something everyone agrees on now. One side or the other is always engaging in these information/disinformation campaigns. With the elections upon us, the American citizen will be subject to all kinds of BS stories. It will start with an “investigative journalist” who uncovers the scandal of the century.
The Plandemic video fits this template. No documentary in the USA is being made right now without a political backer. In my opinion, this Fauci narrative helps the president by making Fauci a bad actor and linking him to the Deep State. This gives #45 wiggle room to cast blame elsewhere. Of course, this is NOT fact. This is MY opinion.
The below list can help you navigate the propaganda and false narratives being spun all across the media universe today. Look for overlap among these different news services. Here is my list of recommended news services to monitor. It is in no particular order other than “stream of consciousness”.
NHK News — This is a good source of the Japanese point of view in an English format.
France 24 — My source for English speaking news from the French point of view.
DW News — This is my preferred source for all things German
KBS — On occasion I will watch this Korean news outlet if I blunder onto a broadcast.
BBC — The national source of British news is not as prestigious to me as it once was. The invasion of Iraq diminished this as a source of news in my eyes. I also read the Economist and often find myself reading The Guardian online
rthk — I looked to this source during the protests which paralyzed Hong Kong. They are under a lot of pressure there, so they can be constrained in what they can report. However, it sometimes provides an insight into what is happening in China you could not get elsewhere.
CBC — If I want a North American perspective, then I look north. The Canadians are an eminently practical people as well as being unusually compassionate. Their point of view represents a real world melding of these two admirable traits.
We here are duty-bound to help filter out the propaganda. We must help our fellow citizens do so. American news sources have all become tainted by money and politics. Admittedly, I watch Bloomberg for a lot of market information but this is a very specific vein of information and their bias clear. We cannot trust most domestic news sources simply because they are often poorly run by staff with low morale. These news outlets are squeezed for cash and are easily gamed but I am not telling you to fly blind. The aforementioned foreign news sources remind me very much of the journalism I used to get from guys like Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley. They can be pretty dry and boring, BUT they are reasonably sanitized of opinion.
I am moved to quote Sgt. Joe Friday.
“Just the facts.”
