To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. —Henry David Thoreau
As the face of information gathering changes, we wonder if there is any news source left that we can trust
Well, fuck.
That just describes my morning, which started at 4:00 AM. Rain started falling while I was walking the dog. I accidentally punted a cat in the dark when we returned. I forgot to block the hallway and the damp dog decided to get in bed with Kat. I spilled my coffee. Then, immediately after clicking the link to a story that sounded interesting, a box pops up telling me this is the last of my free articles for the month. I’ve had better mornings.
The last item, the one about using my last free click for the month is happening more often. As an increasing number of newspapers have had to turn to paywalls to pay the bills, the number of reliable news sources accessible at any given time begins to shrink. A prime example is Business of Fashion, a UK-based fashion magazine that exists primarily online. Having been free since their inception, I’ve come to rely on its up-to-date information of everything going on in the fashion industry. Their news is not only timely but largely reliable. Starting this week, however, they’ve put everything behind a rather expensive paywall. Sure, it comes out to less than the price of a cup of coffee per day if I pay for the whole year in advance, but that would be quite a dent in our cash flow. So, I’ll have to deal with the five articles a month to which I am now limited.
Am I just cheap or is there a problem here?
Social News Junkies
I’ve always had an addiction of sorts to news. At one point, back when print was the only option, I subscribed to three different daily papers, four weekly magazines, and six monthlies. Our recycling bin was always overflowing and there was never any shortage of newsprint for craft projects. Mind you, at that particular point in time, I wasn’t writing a damn thing. All I did was take pictures all day. No one was interested in my opinion and I was much more careful about when and where I expressed such.
A lot has changed over the past 30 years, though. Print subscription rates have gone up, dramatically in some cases. Every major news and information source, from the New York Times to National Public Radio to your local television station has an online presence and, in most cases, when they first came online they were free. The number of news and information sources became so numerous that they gave rise to aggregators such as Huffington Post. The upside of aggregators is that they assembled all the really important stuff from a myriad of different sources. The downside was that they did so with a very marked and obvious political bias. Next came social media, which aggregated the aggregators, and as the volume of viewers grew into the millions the number of sources with blatant political motivations grew as well.
Now, we are faced with two problems. First, the original model of relying on display ads to pay the bills hasn’t worked. Over the past three years, the number of newspapers putting the majority of their content behind a paywall has tripled. They’ve had no choice. They still need to pay the bills. At the same time, however, the reliability of all news/information sources combined has declined, dramatically.
Freedom Of Information
Once upon a time, there was a reliable source of global information that was available to everyone: the public library. Any time I came across a reference to a source to which I wasn’t already subscribed, I could make my way to the library’s periodical section and most usually find the source I needed. Libraries are still there, of course, but as demand for space and revenue has shifted, resources have been removed from periodical subscriptions in favor of Internet needs. Walk into the beautiful downtown branch of the Indianapolis Public Library and the periodicals section is not only significantly smaller, it’s also hidden, relegated to a corner of the second floor.
While the shift away from print subscriptions seems to make sense on the surface, it hasn’t resulted in more online subscriptions. While libraries have invested thousands of dollars in computers with Internet access, those services don’t necessarily include online periodical subscriptions. Why? The majority of public computer use is not for reading periodicals. Job searches and educational programming dominate, right after checking one’s Facebook status. So, if the library doesn’t subscribe to the print edition of a periodical, access is still just as limited as it would be if one had just stayed home.
At the same time, as biased and unreliable sources of information increases, many sources we’ve long considered reliable are either downsizing or going away altogether. Titles that were once mainstays, such as Newsweek and US News And World Report are barely recognizable in their online forms. Reliable, honest information is quickly going the way of the Dodo bird.
Not As Informed As We Think
An informed electorate is necessary for a democracy to work. The entire system dissolves when the people doing the voting are no longer getting reliable, trustworthy information from which they can make intelligent decisions.
Look at us. Look at this election cycle. Consider the absolute nonsense one hears being spouted at political rallies. This is not an informed electorate. In fact, I would be willing to go out on a limb and guess that, at the very least, 70 percent of those who are voting in the upcoming election are making their decision based in part on incorrect and unfounded information. Whether it has come from Fox News or CNN or MSNBC is irrelevant. None of them are reliable. None of them can be trusted. Yet, those are the sources from which an overwhelming number of Americans get their news.
We need new sources of news. We need to know that the articles we’re reading have been vetted, that sources have been confirmed, and that the people and organizations doing the reporting are being held responsible for what they report. Americans, and citizens around the world, need to once again be able to trust the news and information they receive.
At the same time, I am of the opinion that there needs to be a greater distinction between actual news, that information that directly impacts our lives, and more casual forms of information. I may go to the newspaper for the box score of last night’s Cubs/Indians game, but if I want to know the ridiculous pre-game superstitions of the starting lineup I should have to find a different source. Our propensity for finding everything in one place is severely diminishing the value of everything we consume and news is at the very top of that list.
We’re Tired Of This Shit
A new research report from the Pew Research Center states that “More than one-third of social media users are worn out by the amount of political content they encounter.” I have to wonder if any part of that fatigue comes from the fact that, not only has this election cycle gone on far too long, we know all too well that the information being distributed through social media is either horribly slanted or an outright lie. We’re exhausted from trying to parse out what is true (very little) with what isn’t (far too much).
Something in my gut tells me that if the good folks at the Pew Center were to ask, they’d find that a large number of people are equally exhausted with all the social media content they encounter, with the possible exception of kitten videos. In an effort to make themselves more attractive to the masses, news sources have too often become little more than slightly modified versions of what People magazine once was, while sources such as People have become more like The National Enquirer. When we sit down to read what we presume to be a legitimate news article, we shouldn’t have to wonder whether the content and its sources are legitimate!
I understand the need for publications to resort to paywalls. The ad model just doesn’t work for them in an online environment. However, the more distance we put between the American populace and legitimate news sources, the few that remain, the more our democracy continues to erode. Uninformed people make stupid decisions in the voting booth. As bad as this election cycle has been, it can, and will, get worse. We need news sources that are reliable, honest, and accessible. Short of that, there is no hope for democracy to return to our country.
Going Rogue
Alt, Rogue, and Ungagged Twitter accounts may change more than social media
Side-stepping censorship
[dropcap]Amidst all the tension and worries regarding the actions of the 45th president this week, someone, somewhere, brilliantly side-stepped the new government’s apparent ban on climate science by creating an alternate Twitter account for Badlands National Park and tweeting climate facts. The tweets have since been removed, but the act of defiance struck a nerve and people allegedly, somehow, related to other government agencies started doing the same.[/dropcap]
Here are some samples:
There may be more, and if so, please let me know, but these are the ones we’ve located so far. Follow them. All of them. This movement is pretty damn important.
Why the sudden resistance?
The new president doesn’t believe in climate change. Since the fateful day of his inauguration, a number of different memos and email have gone out to the heads of various federal agencies, specifically those who deal in some way with climate change, curtailing their publishing activities. Everyone from the Department of Agriculture to the Department of Health and Human Services was included.
Public furor immediately rose up and social media exploded over the censorship, especially that regarding science. What the new administration has yet to figure out is that they work in a glass bubble. They don’t get to do things in secret and sneak up on us. They don’t like that situation, which is one of the reasons they’ve taken to calling the press the opposition party. However, given that the uproar against those memos and emails was so severe, they backtracked quickly, at least on the public front.
Still, once their intentions were made public, people began to respond. We already knew we would have to fight this administration tooth and nail, every step of the way. The hashtag #Resist was already procured and ready to go; it’s even been hung on a large banner from a tall crane thanks to the folks at Greenpeace. Americans have never been too keen on government censorship and we’re certainly not going to start supporting it now.
No #AlternativeFacts here
As the number of alternative social media accounts continues to grow (we’re following @Alt_FAA, @Alt_DeptofEd, @ALT_USCIS [immigration], and @AltStateDpt), so does the battle against misinformation, or what the administration has referred to as #AlternativeFacts. Other people call them lies, which is more accurate but carries an inflammatory inference that seems to upset those who are part of the current regime. Real facts do exist and in the presence of a concerted effort to mute those facts, someone has to stand up and make sure they are sufficiently unmuzzled, even if doing so draws no small amount of criticism.
There is no question that the new White House wants to control all the information it has so that they are presenting a unified voice. They want to make sure that no matter which agency one contacts, no matter who one talks to on the phone or through email, the information all spews the same lies, recites the same canon, pours the same kool-aid. If they’re going to take over the nation, that has to happen. Official sources of information must all be consistent in the lies they are telling.
What the dear folks inhabiting the White House seem to have forgotten is that the press, and subsequently the free flow of factual information, is protected under the first amendment of the constitution. The administration can only control information up to a point. Our founding fathers were very suspicious of each other and especially of other governments. They had seen what corruption had done across Europe. Hell, they were rebelling against King George III, who is largely considered to have been completely insane (new details about him have just been released, by the way) and was known to have “secret” agents. They wanted to make sure that there was always someone, namely the press, watching every move the government made so that there could be no secret acts of treason undermining the country.
While the White House can try to manipulate the mainstream press and even intersperse false reporters from fake news sites among those sitting in the White House briefing room, it has absolute zero control over what is put on social media. In fact, as we’ve seen to sometimes disgusting proportions, no one really has much control over what is put on social media. For better or worse, it is an absolute bastion of free speech. While the president has used it to circumvent the press, the same tools can also be used to circumvent and repudiate the president and his staff.
We see in all these new rogue accounts exactly what should happen in a free and open society. Where one person tries to hide and quiet information they don’t like, someone else stands up and shouts it. The more the administration tries to put a stranglehold on science and studies that are in opposition to their agenda, the more those involved with those studies are likely to find ways to make sure that information finds its way to the public. We need these new social media accounts to maintain a balance in the flow of information.
There is a dark side
If there is a negative aspect to all these new #Alt accounts, it is the fact that they are, perhaps necessarily, anonymous. We can certainly understand why. While most claim to not be associated with the actual federal agencies, there’s every possibility that those claims are a smoke screen. At the most, we would be surprised if the sources are more than one step removed from someone who is employed by the federal government. Revealing the persons behind these accounts could subject them to danger and possibly even prosecution. The need to be anonymous is real.
However, with anonymity comes certain risks, especially considering the fact that social media is full of security holes. It is difficult to verify an anonymous account without giving away personal information that might be used against the originator of the account. We don’t really know who these people are, what their connection to the various agencies might be, or their ultimate intentions. For the moment, they all look good and are saying things that are verifiable, but what happens if that changes?
Forbes magazine has an article on this same topic that made for some very uncomfortable reading. They bring up things like how easy it might be for someone to attach a virus or piece of malware to an otherwise legitimate PDF document. The social media account links to the document and everyone who opens it is unknowingly infected. One of the fears we’ve seen this week is the possibility that client scientists might be forced to delete large amounts of information. Imagine the security risks if hackers were to get ahold of that information, which is certainly not out of the bounds of possibility, and presented it through an #Alt account. Very little effort would be required to turn those legitimate documents into a stream of digital infection.
The system is far from fool-proof.
Resistance is not futile
Still, these new accounts are present for good reason and are doing a good thing. Our government, every government, needs to be held accountable. Through all his business dealings, our president has never had anyone standing above him telling him “no, you can’t do that.” He is now in a system where checks and balances are written into the constitution. Those checks and balances are required of a democracy and without them, we slip all too easily into fascism or communism.
The threat to our country, our way of life, and even our very existence is real. Climate change is real. Science is real. Diseases that defy immunization are real. We have an urgent need to not only know about the world’s problems but what we can do to mitigate them. We need to understand that our carbon footprint is a very serious matter and that there are simple and practical things we can do to reduce our carbon emissions. We need to know how to eat more safely as some foods to which we’ve grown accustomed may no longer be safely edible. There are mountain ranges full of information we need and if we cannot rely on official government agencies to provide that information then we desperately need sources that fill that gap.
We must, on every level possible, #Resist. We must resist the misinformation and lies. We must resist the attempts at censorship. We must resist the attempts to hide, delete, and obfuscate information. Not only is this our country, this is our planet. We live here. We have an inalienable right to keep it inhabitable and no government has a right to stand in our way, no matter how they think they were elected.
#Resist
#Dissent
#BeActive
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