The Information I Consume

I honestly don't spend much time looking into news stories. Sometimes I will turn the local news on for background noise while making myself breakfast or doing chores around the house, other times I'll hear people debating a new political policy and I'll look into it to find out the facts and form my own opinion on the matter, but I don't go onto news sites to read about what is going on. I tell myself constantly that I need to do this, that I need to be informed, especially with the current tension in our government, but I never can bring myself to do it. Mostly I think this is due to not knowing where to start. You hear about how news sites and television stations will have a bias, but how do I know which to watch or what articles I should read? My main sources of information would be from social media outlets, such as Instagram, Facebook, while my third main source is word of mouth. All of these have varying degrees of reliability, Instagram having to lowest. With Facebook, people share news articles or videos and post their opinions, the shared links can often times be reliable sources, but intermingled within those can be posts full of opinions and bias statements. Word of mouth is yet another that can be sometimes more reliable than others, you would have to think of who it is that is speaking and why they are discussing the topic. Someone with a job in education would probably know more about the changing school policies in grade school than somewhere with a career working with food.

Fake news is always concerning when learning something new. With so much going on in the world and so many resources to obtain information it can be easily mixed up. This can be harmful because, much like the story told by Stephanie Busari, very real problems can be brushed aside because it isn't believed to be true. I've become increasingly more concerned with the idea of fake news as so many changes are being made within our government. Many changes are occurring and if someone were to make up one to say is true, they could easily convince others it is. Today I tend to take information about news stories with a grain of salt, regardless of their source and if I tell someone about what I have read or heard on the news I tell them where I heard it from and that I have not verified it being true unless I have.