We outsourced the vetting of our news to “trusted” sources with journalistjc integrity. We adopted this idea that we’d let select news organization do the research and explain situations to us–with context and nuance. Their ethics and impartiality was a foundational tenant and we could trust that what they were telling us was generally well researched, fact checked, and had multiple sources and was generally nuanced.

But that shifted in the late 90’s and early 00s with the rise of 24hr “news” networks and the Internet…and an economic model where views and clicks generate revenue. Those old sources of information faced extinction and were forced to adopt more and more FUD approaches and catchy or outrage inducing headlines and articles to compete and get the views and clicks they needed.

I think we as a population and realistically our parents/grandparents have been slow to realize we can’t outsource our information feed. We have to take ownership of that and realize we can’t trust quite a bit of what we read online and even from formerly “trustworthy” news organizations.

I think the younger generations are already more skeptical and I hope that persists. We need more critical thinking and skepticism --but not so much that it turns into apathy and cynicism.