Blog Post #1
While I make an overt effort to diversify my media outlets, it took only two days to realize that my diversification was more routine than I intended. Sure, after watching Rachel Maddow I might switch to Fox News to get Bill O’Reilly’s take on a specific subject matter, but doing this everyday is counterintuitive to diversifying sources of information.
My day starts with news consumption. As most people do when they wake up, I roll over and sit on my phone for a good 15 minutes. I unlock my phone, check my email, and immediately come across the New York Times and the Skimm headlines that I am subscribed to. After taking in the day’s primary headlines, I often check Twitter to get a more rounded perspective of what I missed overnight and what is happening that day. My Twitter feed is intentionally chaotic as far as an identity goes. My feed is made up of posts from BBC, Al Jazeera, NYT, and hell, even Breitbart. My morning consumption is much more text based than later in my day (not sure why this is… winding down in the evening, perhaps).
After my heroic efforts to get out of bed are met with success, I’ll turn on Morning Joe or some other broadcast news (which acts as background noise more than anything else) and hear more analysis of the headlines I’ve already come across — from my chosen source of bias, of course. I have a NYT subscription sent to me, so I’ll try my best to read most of it in one setting, although it often becomes an “on the go” type of task. Throughout the day that my news consumption is more scarce. Apart from an occasional article that I came across on Facebook or Twitter, I didn’t go out looking for headlines as much. There’d be some light reading throughout the day, although most of it was more informative work that news per se. This is undoubtedly a consequence of having classes throughout the day, but I noticed this was the case even on my down time — at least enough to recognize.
It isn’t until the evening where television becomes my primary means of consumption. By the time I come home, Hardball is usually the first source I watch. Most of the evening involves me switching back and forth between different networks in order to get different perspectives. I’m a big fan of political comedy and satire, so I usually tune into the Daily Show on a nightly basis (if Real Time With Bill Maher and Last Week Tonight With John Oliver were currently playing, I’m sure they’d be recorded). I choose to watch broadcast shows in the evening because by this point, I’ve obtained most of the facts on each issue; by the evening, I want to hear analysis. Of course, I could always do this through a print source as well, but at the end of the day television is the easiest way to wind down.
