A “Free” Press?

This is what really happened, reported by a free press to a free people. It is the raw material of history; it is the story of our own times. -Henry Steel Commager

As romantic as our ideas of the newspapers are, we are almost all universally wrong. By “newspapers,” I mean our modern day equivalents, such as news shows, or national press and websites, and so on. We are so segmented as a society that the news that I see may not contain one single fact that may be included in the news you’re reading or following or listening to. We are both citizens. We both are responsible for ensuring that our country doesn’t devolve into chaos. How can we make such a decision together, if we don’t get the same facts.

It’s not ever true that the news agencies only report the news. How can they? There is so much news happening on a daily basis, it necessarily comes down to these agencies to prioritize which stories are shown. In Texas, the coverage of death caused by their abortion laws is anemic at best. In other parts of the country, there may be no coverage of crimes committed by immigrant communities (note: at a lower rate than full citizens, but still crimes do exist). In a very real way, these communities, as well as our social media companies, twist our minds, whether intentionally or not.

In some cases, I’d suggest both intentional and unintentional slanting is occurring.

How can we ever make good decisions if we can’t get all the same facts? And barring those same facts, how do we avoid being manipulated by those who claim to have knowledge about topics of which we have no information? During this podcast, we discuss all of the above and more, seeking for an answer as we head into season 4. We are trying to answer one very serious question: can our democracy survive overt and unintentional manipulation on the scale we see today?