I stole this from a friend. Its pretty good stuff! I feel like I give some version of this speech every other month, but I think its still important and necessary, and I stand by it 100%. Ive added bullet points this time, though! • Your media diet is your choice and your responsibility. If youre upset that youre not surrounded by real news, eschew your third-party sources for the real deal. No Fox. No MSNBC.No CNN. No Buzzfeed or Upworthy or Addicting Info or Higher Perspective or Jezebel or whatever. Im not saying you have to abandon these sites, but use them for what they are: entertainment. • Each news source excels at something different. Theres really no one-size-fits-all agency, so you need to go to multiple sources if you want the complete picture from many perspectives. Heres a good starter list: The New York Times, Reuters, Associated Press, BBC News, Center for Investigative Reporting, ProPublica, Washington Post, Al Jazeera English, The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, or Pew Research Center. Even The Onion can provide more insight into news than some so-called news sites, and thats sad. But funny. Definitely keep reading The Onion. • If you want to be informed, you cant expect to learn everything through a Facebook feed or trending list. Most of the time, its not the medias fault that you havent heard about something. News algorithms, especially on social media, are designed to give you things they know you already like, so sometimes important stories get buried under other content. Just because you learned of a news event late in the day doesnt mean news organizations havent been covering the story since it broke. Google that shit, man. If youre truly concerned about timeliness, set up push alerts on your phone, or curate a nice RSS feed. • The Onion, ClickHole, National Report, and Daily Currant are all satire. Please. • IMPORTANT: If you see an article that really pisses you off, like those shitty Mens Rights Activism ones about how all women like to be raped or why tattoos are slutty or a bunk-science article about how black people are scientifically dumber and worse than The Superior Race, do NAHT share it! Even if you accompany it with some great, biting commentary about how wrong it is, the original poster wont see it. All they see is more shares, more comments, and more views - and they eat it up. The reaction encourages them to produce more vitriol, and its a really horrible feedback cycle that wont end. I know how tempting it is, though. Instead, talk about the article without *actually* sharing it. Even better, find an article thats a reaction to the shitty article, or one that explains how wrong the original content is. • If youve never heard of the website an article is on, theres probably a reason. Look it up and see how credible it is. And if you cant find any evidence of the articles content through legitimate news organizations, its probably garbage. • Be aware of your own biases. I dont care if your favorite website is AllLiberalsAreGoingToHell or ConservativesAreBigDumbIdiots, but - cmon - if youre going to share stuff from those sites, at least acknowledge the fact they are probably biased as heck and may be filled with commentary that you agree with, but isnt representative of the entire truth of the matter. • Lastly, just ignore the comments section.
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 03:44:26 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015