All the news that fits us

Several weeks ago I finally added the Fox News app to my phone, so now I check it along with CNN, BBC, USA Today, and NPR. Just scanning the headlines, and without pretending that my conclusion can be proven, I will say without a doubt in my mind that I know why so many of us are in personal news-bubbles. If all you watch is either Fox or CNN, you are not getting the whole picture. Fox seems to find a riot a day to report, each day CNN finds something newly awful to report about the current President’s behavior, and each pretty much ignores the other’s stories when they don’t fit its narrative. Both repeat their most partisan stories for days, assuring readers get so full of them they have no appetite for anything else.

(“A person hears what they want to hear, and disregards the rest.”)

Maybe that’s why I am not writing much on politics these days. I am confused by competing stories that I have neither the time nor the resources to sort out and check for myself. Whatever I write, someone can respond with, “Yes, but…” and cite a set of facts (more or less) to defend themselves.

These days, I feel strangely lacking in facts and yet somehow beyond them. I just know, in my heart, that we need a change at the top and all they way through the wretched, grossly-partisan party system that’s killing our own respect for our own democracy. I think we also need a change in us and in our information-absorbing habits, which may be the hardest change of all to make.