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If there’s one thing both sides can agree on, is cable news punditry jeopardized our democracy. We don’t have journalists on cable news anymore, we have reality tv hosts and contestants.

90% of our news, whether read, watched or listened to, is dominated by six media giants:

Comcast

News Corporation

The Walt Disney Company

Viacom

Time Warner

CBS Corporation

All of these companies are in some ways controlling the information you get, but far more importantly and in many more ways, how you get it. The Clinton email scandal wasn’t bad because it persisted. It was bad because of HOW it persisted, continuously raising doubts about whether or not Clinton had done something illegal. Continuously putting into question her trustworthiness. They didn’t have to cover the emails that way. They chose to. 

If you are looking for better news sources, here are five independently run outlets that I trust for most of my political news. They are not perfect, they still deal with bias, but journalism is supposed to serve as a check and balance for the people. That’s why we protect the freedom of the press. These outlets serve as stronger checks and balances than most of their competitors. 

Reuters (reuters.com)

The Nation (thenation.com)

ProPublica (propublica.org)

Al Jazeera English (aljazeera.com)

This was the subject of a This American Life episode a few weeks ago and in the introduction, Ira Glass says one of the things that’s haunted me more than anything these past few weeks. After explaining the actual alternate reality millions of Americans were living in, after he played a clip of Rush Limbaugh saying “this fact-checking technique” is a cover-up for “opinion-based journalism.” “I think this is it,” Ira says. “This is the rest of our lives now.”

The only role left for the real press, the titles named above, the magazines I write and work for, is to serve as a check on the government, just like the previous poster said. The executive branch, both halves of Congress, and soon the Supreme Court: we go on about checks and balances, but anyone who lived through the Bush administration knows what happens when everyone’s on the same side. We need to support these publications as watchdogs. 

“Nothing’s going to change, Jo.”

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