Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
After 24 hours analyzing my media consumption, let me tell you: we all have some work to do.
Ferreting out misinformation is tedious work. We all know it’s out there, lurking on the dark web, in extremist Facebook groups, and of course on a certain “news” channel whose name I am omitting in an effort to keep this blog Fair & Balanced.™
I spent 24 hours recording my media diet—much as one might track calories on an actual diet—to see how healthy my consumption of information is. You’ll note it is not midnight-to-midnight, but rather 7:30pm-to-7:30pm. I suppose that’s incredibly me. Anyway, here are the results:
My 24-Hour Media Diet
7:30pm: (at work) We’re short-staffed and we close in a couple hours, but I managed to squeak in a quick look at the New York Times app. scrolled a bit and ended up with a piece about how black vultures now inhabit New York City thanks to Climate change. Real uplifting stuff. It’s from the New York Times, whom I generally trust to get facts right, and vultures in NYC seem pretty verifiably there or not there, so I move along.
8:00pm: I have a conversation with a coworker about Donald Trump’s impending arrest this week. It really is popping up everywhere, but I first saw it on Twitter as Ron Filipkowski (independent right-wing watchdog- definitely biased, but based) posted a screenshot of the former president’s all-caps declaration form Truth Social earlier. I’m not on Truth Social, but I’ve seen the same screenshot making the rounds all day. I find it and show him.
10:00pm: After work, I head to a friend’s house and have a couple beers and some faux-chicken dip. No media (other than a great new wave playlist) is consumed. I head home and go to bed.
10:00am: It’s not the character trait I’m proudest of, but the first thing I do when I wake up is get back on Twitter. I see Kat Abughazaleh (video producer for Media Matters for America and Tucker Carlson expert) is asking for bad memes with liberal bias, specifically about Fox News’ alleged categorization by the FCC as “entertainment” for a new video she’s working on. I’m sort of familiar Fox having used that defense in court, specifically for Tucker Carlson. The story goes that “no reasonable person could consider his show news” or something to that effect. I look it up and sure enough, there is no such thing as an FCC classification. Now I’m really looking forward to her video.
11:30am: After making the kids breakfast, we hang out and play some games. Not a lot of facts to check other than my son claiming he’s “goated.”
12:00pm: At the kids’ request (I’m so very proud), we watch The Empire Strikes Back.
4:00pm: While running errands, I listen to NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. It’s a fun episode with some great jokes about the impending seaweed blob attack headed to the east coast this summer. I verified with a few sources that this was, in fact, not a bluff the listener challenge. Of note, was an ad for tonight’s episode of On The Media, which is about— drum roll… talk radio’s media bias! I’m absolutely listening.
6:30pm: I watch a bit of the Pistons/Magic Game.
The Nuclear Option
7:00pm: I’ve gone almost 24 hours and haven’t come across anything that really strikes me as misinformation. I’ve seen misinformation-adjacent things (Kat’s tweet, the ad for On The Media), but haven’t really gotten anything meaty. So I do what I must…
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not explicitly trying to drag Fox News, but I have a half hour left to try and spot some misinformation, so I’m looking for some low-hanging fruit. I’ve never seen Sunday Night in America, but I’m hoping this Gowdy fellow will give me at least a morsel I can work with. Reader, I am swimming in morsels.
The top story for tonight’s show is how unfair it is that Trump is set to be arrested on Tuesday. More specifically, it is a hit piece on New York Attorney General Alvin Bragg. I’ve seen a lot of commentary on Twitter that Trump attacking Bragg’s character is really a tasteless thing to do, but here’s a “news” organization doing the same thin. I hear language like “God forbid you pay someone hush money,” and “…will lead to the demise of our country” all while Gowdy answers his own questions more than he lets his guests respond. He does so in a very raised voice as well. I am really seeing the “no reasonable person could believe this is news” defense playing out before me.
One point that they keep hammering on is the fact that Bragg has pledged to reduce sentences for a lot of people and won’t be pursuing arrests for a lot of crimes that New York traditionally might have. They draw a false equivalence to Trump’s situation asking “Why are they going after him?” as if his situation is the same as a teenager from a marginalized community carrying marijuana.
A quick bit of fact-checking shows that his intentions for not prosecuting as many people is that he believes these prosecutions are hurting the black community. CNN reports that in a memo released to the NYPD, Bragg claims states that he had guns pointed at him multiple times growing up Black in Harlem. This was incredibly easy information for me to find, yet Fox News chose to leave all of the important context out of the story in an attempt to discredit Bragg as a partisan hack. This is manipulative and there is clear intent to sway viewers to a political position.
It’s been a long time since I’ve actually watched Fox News, but it is just the same as I remember.
Even the ads were dubious. There were promos for supplements from Balance of Nature and Super Beets, who claim they are—and I am not making this up—the #1 Pharmacist Recommended Beet Brand. Both products have websites full of rave reviews, but amazon reviews like this one:
My Takeaway
Overall, I feel like my media diet is healthier than my actual diet. I subjected myself to Fox News today and that was a whole thing, but I also ate some Taco Bell, so it really wasn’t my finest day. I really do try to consider sources and only put trust in organizations and individuals who earn it. Honestly, I don’t know exactly how we’re going to get through the normalization of all this misinformation, but I’m certainly willing to work on that.