How To Read A News Story

If you’re reading a news story and you need to examine your feelings, then they’ve got you right where they want you and you should be angry enough to change how you read news stories.

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Harvard Square Out of Town News. Painting by Sean Moore.

Doveryai, no proveryai - Trust but verify.

Suzanne Massie taught President Ronald Reagan this Russian proverb; origin unknown.

There’s a saying that I apply to any story I hear or read:

There’s his story and…

There’s her story and…

The truth usually lies somewhere in between.

Once upon a time you could trust what was printed in a newspaper. A lot of effort went into a printed newspaper. A story had to be factual and truthful, if it wasn’t, the journalist, their editor and the masthead (name of the newspaper) were not only embarrassed, but also apologized for inaccuracy.

These days with news appearing on the Internet, none of that seems to matter. An inaccurate story can be changed or deleted in an instant. Media trolls (a mythical cave dwelling being depicted as a dwarf and typically having a very ugly appearance) can change what’s contained in a story simply by pressuring the author.

It seems these days, news organizations are pandering (the act of expressing one's views in accordance with the likes of a group to which one is attempting to appeal) to their paid subscribers and not reporting.

While we may be told there are fact checkers on staff, anymore, I find that very hard to believe.

Mindfully - to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.

Just for giggles I searched the Internet (using google that day) with this phrase: “how to read a news story”.

In the top ten search results was this from “Wiki-How”:

How to Read News Stories Mindfully

Method 1: Focusing on an Article

1. Take a few breaths (Slow breaths to relax your body before reading the news).

2. Set a goal for your reading (set a time limit or a personal goal).

3. Notice any emotions that come up as you read (don’t let these distract from your goal).

4. Pay attention to your breathing (try your best to relax).

5. Take a breath if you feel overwhelmed.

(There were two more “methods” listed after the first one, similarly ridiculous.)

I would imagine if you’re a Boomer, you’re more than likely laughing at the silliness here.

If you’re younger than a Boomer and especially if you are a Millennial, you might not see anything wrong with those lists, but you should.

This is what is known as “coddling” (treat in an indulgent or overprotective way).

This is why some require “safe spaces”.

Adults aren’t “coddled”, they just deal with things age appropriately.

Because if you’re anyone who can find his or her way out of a paper box, you should be insulted at the idea that anyone would take these lists seriously.

Let me tell you about these “methods”.

They assume that whoever is reading them, is adequately dumbed down enough to do exactly what they say to do.

Let me give you another perspective.

News should not involve feelings.

I read once, where a small news outlet editor was describing their new policies on how they are going to use race and other characteristics to describe criminal suspects.

Here are some sentences from that piece:

We often don't include the race of the suspect, and there are a variety of reasons why.

“Simply saying the suspect is a white man isn’t going to help anyone identify who that suspect is.”

“There is no positive benefit to a description that vague.”

“When it comes to African Americans, there can be a negative impact of a vague description. Simply saying the suspect is a black man offers little hope of identifying the person but potentially reinforces stereotypes. As journalists, we believe it is our responsibility to fairly and accurately reflect our community. That’s why we think carefully about how our work could impact the people who live in it”

Most newsrooms have a policy to only use race as a description if there is enough detail in the overall description that someone could use that information to identify the suspect. We wanted a clearer policy.

In order to use a suspect description, we need to have at least five pieces of information from this list:

• Tattoos

• Piercings

• Eye color

• Height

• Weight

• Specific physical characteristics (ex: limp, prosthetic, missing teeth, scar, etc.)

• Clothing description

• Hair description

• Race and gender

I can’t even imagine the flowchart (a diagram of the sequence of movements or actions of people or things) there, especially if you include all of the races that could be part of a community.

Or is this news outlet only recognizing black and white people?

Or is this news outlet implying that only black and white people commit crimes?

How often do detectives even have any of the other identifying features?

If it’s snowing and a skinny suspect is wearing a puffer coat (a coat that puffs out, particularly in sections of the coat) and hat, would that weight and hair color description be accurate?

If it’s snowing and a skinny suspect is wearing a puffer coat and hat, would one be able to see piercings and tattoos?

Would this small news outlet be able to report on the crime?

How would their inability to report this crime because of the “criteria” listed, affect the community looking for the “news”?

How long will it be before “journalists” decide that a crime is too violent for readers to deal with?

It’s news.

If they are concerned about how people are going to feel about their writing maybe they shouldn’t be writing news stories.

If you’re reading a news story and you need to examine your feelings, then they’ve got you right where they want you and you should be angry enough to change how you read news stories.

There used to be a character on 1950-1960’s TV, Sergeant Joe Friday, who used to say “Just the facts ma’am”.

Isn’t race a fact?

Sergeant Joe Friday.

Once upon a time, a well-written piece of journalism (news story) would answer these “basic” questions:

• Who (Who or what is the story about?).

• What (What did they do? What happened?).

• Where (Where did it happen?).

• When (When did it happen?).

• How (How did it happen? How did they do what they did?).

• Why (What was the reason? Is there an ending or result or outcome?).

Getting those questions answered is the one service the writer can do in a news article. As a reader, you shouldn’t be left with any questions about the news topic.

Often, I have more questions after reading some news stories because the basic questions weren’t answered.

Another quality touch a writer can do is to delete all Tweets from articles and eliminate Twitter as a “source”, especially if he is going to include the actual tweet and then print it again as the body of the article.

That’s dumb.

This kind of manure takes up most of the lines in the article, and who cares what a tweeter has to say?

Regurgitate it into meaningful words if that is at all possible.

Neanderthals.

Twitter

What is Twitter?

Founded in 2006, it is an online micro-blogging and social network service where users interact with each other using online messages that can be up to 280 characters (I heard a rumor that Elon wants to change this to 4,000 characters).

280 characters do not leave much room for intelligent thought, even if they are all strung together.

Grunts, groans and petroglyphs (a prehistoric rock carving) is what a tweet is.

Remember the Neanderthals?

They are an extinct human species widely dispersed in ice age Europe about 100 million years ago who used abbreviated grunts, groans and pictures to tell stories and communicate.

Petroglyph.

One would think that as often as Twitter gets used in online news articles every person in the United States was using Twitter.

When I last checked the numbers of users in the United States, there were 76.9 million twitter users as of January 2022.

Here’s are some data points to frame this idea:

• There are 332,673,557 million people (January 2022) in the United States.

• 23% of adults in the United States use Twitter.

• Among U.S. adults who use Twitter, the top 25% of users by tweet volume produce 97% of all tweets.

• Seven in ten adult Twitter users in the U.S. (69%) get news on the site.

• A 57% majority of those who get news on Twitter say using the platform has increased their understanding of current events.

• 69% of these highly prolific users identify as Democrats.

My analysis: new outlets these days are pulling their information mainly from a small group of loudmouth Democrats. A very small percent of the American population is seriously misinformed? Maybe this will change with Elon Musk at the helm?

Every time I read a “Twitter thread” (a string of “tweets” where they are all talking about the same thing by replying to the original poster) I am reminded of those spoiled children throwing sand at each other in the sandbox way back when I was in Kindergarten.

Especially now that Elon Musk has purchased the company.

Twitter is a sewer, a cesspool (open sewage), it is certainly not a news source and any article that contains tweets should be ignored in my opinion.

And yes, that eliminates a lot of “news”.

Most of it is clickbait (content whose main purpose is to attract attention and encourage visitors to click on a link to a particular news story) anyway.

News journalists who use nothing but twitter as a source, are lazy.

Most online news sites also know what you read, and how long you stayed on the article, but if you jump away from the Twitter infested writing, they might take that as a demand for higher integrity in journalism and in reporting.

Maybe.

Bias: There’s Always Bias

“Current events”, in addition to American History and civics, was always a study subject in my homeschool.

Learning how to separate fact from fiction is a valuable skill my Millennial carried into adult life.

A discussion always started with “did what you read answer the five questions?”.

The most dreaded question with regards to current events was “Why do you think that?” because it generally went five or six levels deep with the same question until we got to the real heart of the issue.

It’s an exercise (why do I think that?) I suggest you try with yourself some time.

Might be a real eye-opener.

In examining news stories these days, generally you are not going to find our “basic questions” answered. Test it with a random news article.

If you do find a writer who manages to answer all five, and who excludes tweets, make a note of that author and return to their writing because it’s a start towards recognizing effective news reporting. But even though you will not find our “basic questions” answered, you will find bias (prejudice in favor of or against one thing).

Bias can be can be subtle or it can be very obvious.

All news stories have some sort of political slant to it.

It didn’t used to be that way, but it is now.

The writing will be Conservative (holding traditional values) or Liberal (supporting social and political change).

It can be neutral, but more often than not, it will be Conservative or Liberal, especially with political news.

How publications are classified is your first clue with bias. If you search online simply with “Conservative publications” you get lists of results with titles like “Alternative Media” and “U.S. Political right”.

If you search with “Liberal publications” you don’t get anything like that. You get results like “Best Political sites”, “Leanings of Magazines, Newspapers – Detecting Bias”.

Even if you look at what claims to be an unbiased result, look at what they declare to be either Conservative, or Liberal leaning news publications within the results, you may be led in an inaccurate direction, most likely on purpose.

Why would a search return results like “Alternative Media” and “U.S. Political right”? Maybe to get you to think those places are not where “normal” people belong?

If there are results entitled: “Alternative Media” and “U.S. Political right” versus “Best Political sites”, “Leanings of Magazines, Newspapers – Detecting Bias” aren’t you already seeing a bias?

If you’re using a search engine on the Internet to test this idea, you also have to consider if the search engine has bias too.

It does.

Google is the best one to try this with.

It’s generally going to lead you towards Liberal ideas before it takes you to Conservative ideas. You have to force the issue to get Conservative results to come up first. You have to play around with searches to see this.

Try this search “controversy surrounding the 1619 Project” at Google and notice which publications are listed first in your search results. Now try “controversy surrounding the 1619 Project Liberal” did you get the same sort of results?

Try this search “controversy surrounding the 1619 Project Conservative”. Did you get a list trying to “save” you from the actual Conservative viewpoint?

Now try “controversy surrounding the 1619 project actual Conservative viewpoint”. I got an actual Conservative viewpoint on the second page of results. What did you get?

Use the search string “Google bias” if you don’t want to fool with the “1619 Project” search. The bias will be there.

What’s even more interesting is if you search to try to find the definition of “Conservative” and “Liberal” you’ll find some real vitriol (cruel and bitter criticism) in the writings of those who attempt to describe each.

Why does bias in search engines, social and news media matter?

What if for example, you have a voter in an election that knows absolutely nothing about a candidate and searches on that candidate’s name and all they get to see is information leaning predominately in one direction.

Does that make them an accurately informed voter?

No. It makes them the voter the search engine wants them to be.

“Software is only as good as the people who wrote the code”, is a saying from the early days of computing, which is where I was in the 80’s.

Any search engine you use is nothing more than software.

Just as software can be made to return random results, which once upon a time it did, it can also be made to return results of a certain bias.

Reverberation Chamber

Did you know that spending all of your time with people who think just like you do is called being in an echo chamber?

An echo chamber is a hollow enclosure used to produce reverberation. Traditionally called a “chamber reverb” it was a physical enclosure where in the music industry you could achieve a specific sort of sound, think singing in the shower.

When all you do is specifically look at one kind of news and maintain one kind of viewpoint you place yourself in an echo chamber where everyone has the same thoughts and ideas.

Echo chambers are filled with people who think only one way.

Echo chambers are where indoctrination takes place.

If you consume nothing but Liberal writing on social media and in new stories, you’re going to see the world one way.

If you consume nothing but Conservative writing on social media and in news stories, you’re going to see the world very differently than how a Liberal-only news consumer sees the world.

Don’t you think that biased search engine is going to notice what you read and place in front of you what it wants you to see?

Of course, it is.

It is one way potential Conservatives get steered away from Conservative viewpoints and that’s the goal.

Based on years and years of reading/viewing both styles of news here’s my breakdown:

• New York Times – Liberal.

• Washington Post – Liberal.

• USA Today – Liberal.

• Daily Beast – Liberal.

• Vox – Liberal.

• Rolling Stone – Liberal.

• Slate – Liberal.

• MSNBC – Liberal.

• CNN – Liberal.

• NPR – Liberal.

• Washington Times – Conservative.

• Daily Mail – Conservative.

• Washington Examiner – Conservative.

• Wall Street Journal – Conservative/neutral.

• New York Post – Conservative.

• Daily Caller – Conservative.

• Red State – Conservative.

• National Review – Conservative.

• The Epoch Times – Conservative.

• American Spectator – Conservative.

• Townhall – Conservative.

• Fox News – Conservative.

• Christian Science Monitor - Neutral.

• Reuters - Neutral.

• The Hill - Neutral.

• Forbes - Neutral.

• Barrons - Neutral.

• CNET - Neutral.

How’d that test go?

Where do you get your news from?

Are you in an echo chamber?

Are you OK with that?

So what do you do if you want a balanced view of the world?

You engage in both styles of news.

You can mix up which search engines you use. There are more than google.

I use a mix of them, depending on what I am looking for. The ads that come after searching for fun on the phrase “axe murderer”, are always interesting.

You can also try a news outlet I recently found as a result of a conversation about media bias. Allsides.com:

Don’t be fooled by media bias and fake news. We display the day’s top news stories from the Left, Center and Right of the political spectrum — side-by-side so you can see the full picture. Read our editorial philosophy.

It displays the biases beautifully by placing the same stories side by side from a left, neutral and right point of view.