Back in the good old days — the weeks preceding Hillary Clinton’s election victory — I pondered the problem of our media — fake news, rightwing news (Fox) and hate radio, and corporate media -- in its decades-long and successful quest to dumb down the American public. Critical thinking is scarcer than ever, and most people seem unable to distinguish fact from fiction on the Internet.
As in all other things, education is key to ameliorating systemic problems — in this case, American voters and would-be voters who cannot tell false from true when they hear or read stories percolating throughout the blogosphere. Perhaps because I was trained in journalism in the good old days when I believed America’s media would continue to secure our republic — before the whole dam’ thing was bought up by a handful of corporations — I have been ever more appalled over the years to watch the crumbling of objective, facts-based reporting.
And here we sit, less than two weeks from the electoral Armageddon that swept our country and imperils our democracy. The disaster that is Trump was aided and abetted by spurious media, irresponsible media, corporate media. I’m furious at Comey and more than a little gobsmacked at the failure of poll aggregates. I am grudgingly suspicious of the outcomes in Florida, and Pennsylvania, and Michigan, and Wisconsin — and I have NEVER endorsed conspiracy theory. (Of course, to my knowledge, we’ve never before had evidence of Russia hacking our systems, so I’ll forgive myself for the war in my head between cool rationality and “FREAKIN’ PUTIN and TRUMP gamed the election!”)
So. What I think is needed — what I thought pre-election as a way to improve the USA — is another attempt to launch an objective media outlet. One called Informed Citizen, as that is its aim. Perhaps it could be funded by a merry band of scared-shitless billionaire progressives. My dream is that Informed Citizen would gradually become the go-to place for actual news reporting, actual facts, THE station for information — with a dollop of civics and Constitutional instruction thrown in. I think many of the other frightened and angry Americans who are now donating and organizing in their attempt to save us from Trump could be persuaded to support Informed Citizen financially.
I know the human lean toward epistemic closure means it won’t be easy to lure people from their favorite crap-dishing “media” outlets. It will take years. And years. But surely it’s worth the effort.
I’m not bright enough or energetic enough to launch this movement, but I know that dailykos hosts numerous ultra-smart bloggers and commenters. I’m fervently hoping someone here will know how to take this idea and nurture it into fruition. It seems to me to be one of the most necessary steps to undumbing our electorate — and in the process saving us from the un-American bullshit that is permeating Trump’s administration and supporters.
