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Let's chat about Media Literacy [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-04-03

The more information we have at our disposal the less we seem inclined to practice media literacy, which is the ability to parse the truth from the lies and to read between the lines (in essence).

All information travels through the media, whether it be entertainment, media, gossip, music, news etc.... and the medium can be TV, Radio, Printed press or now social media. Your job as a consumer is not only to find out which ones you like but also which are more rooted in truths than lies.

It’s a daunting task, there’s so much out there, how does one proceed? Since news & politics is what we need most to be reliable and true, let’s concentrate on those, for it won’t really hurt you to listen to a bad song because you didn’t research an artist, but falling for propaganda news can lead you down a dark path.

Let’s start with something easy, see those screen grabs of headlines with no links that people are fond of sharing? Either ignore them or search for the story and read it, 8 times out of 10 the headline is purposefully in contradiction with the contents, or misleading. Try it.

Whomever or whichever your favorite news channels are right now, check their stories, find the original (search with name, date, theme, location) and see if they skewed the story a little or a lot, all media slant their stories, all so do your commentators. If they slant a little, you’re good, if a story piques your interest, find out more, but if they slant a lot, you’d better find a new channel or commentator. Whittle down your sources to a few of the most reliable ones but keep doing spot checks to see if they don’t stray.

Let’s talk about bills (the ones that turn into law) always try to read the original bills, an easy way to get around reading the long bills is to ask AI to give you the pros and cons of each bill as a neutral party without bias. That last part is important for even AI knows your bias and will play to it if you don’t cut it out.

Pay attention to words used, if the language isn’t straightforward, chances are they are trying to mask the truth. Think of how they describe Black folks vs white people. There’s a reason for that, it’s to subconsciously make you bias in your judgement. What’s missing is also a clue, when they don’t mention race it’s almost always a white person, even when they say American.

The stakes are too high for you to rely on other people’s writings and opinions (yes I know I write but you should also fact check me), doing your own research is only valid if you actually do research.

If you make it a habit to check, double check and triple check the stories fed to you, you’ll find that you’ll reduce the number of media and commentators that you follow because really you only need a couple of them if you check the stories.

#ThePoet

Muriel Vieux – April 3rd, 2025, ©All rights reserved

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