Media bias and propaganda

A major contributor to the extreme partisan/ideological divide in this country is a media that caters to the divide and institutionalize the divide.  It is an echo chamber with few outlets attempting to be neutral, report both sides of an issue, and are centrist..maybe a bit left or right of center.  Where you get your news and punditry reveals where you are with what you accept as the gospel truth, whether it is propaganda, biased viewpoints, and reporting slants, or objective and balanced.   Some media outlets are clearly advocates for a particular point of view and feature and report news stories to support their bias.  Not only could the news report cherry pick which stories they cover that support their bias, they also slant the stories to fit their bias.  Sometimes if you switch between MSNBC and Fox,  you might even get the impression we are living in two separate worlds, the content and spin have little in common.
If you get your news and views solely from one outlet, it is no wonder you might think what the "other side" is reporting is fake news because you never heard of such a thing.

This variety of media is the trademark of freedom of the press. It is a large market place of ideas and it is only human to favor those who reinforce our preexisting biases and ideas. It takes an effort to get out of our comfort zones and see what "the other side" is reporting. One way to break out of this is to make that effort to see what others may be reporting and how they do it.  The other way is to use those considered more neutral or centrist as your main source of news and views.

I write opinions and I am not a reporter.  I footnote my postings with links to sources of what influenced my opinion based writing.  You will notice that I tend to cite sources listed in the following study and chart from media near the center.  To see which media you feel comfortable with, depend on to get your world view, go to this site:

https://www.adfontesmedia.com/the-chart-version-3-0-what-exactly-are-we-reading

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/true-5-factchecking-websites/

https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/fake-news-guide-facebook_n_5831c6aae4b058ce7aaba169?ri18n=true&fbclid=IwAR3vXzY9Od-BJNIwI8wfHwNWamGai9JWC8rFdHsfjOV07hx8Rydi4MPkuvk