I came across an ad on Facebook the other day pitching yet another news aggregation newsletter. The last thing my inbox needs is another daily dispatch clamoring for attention, so I didn’t click. But their pitch—a tidy list of modern media grievances meant to lure in the exhausted reader—stuck with me.
Looking past the sales pitch, I found myself arguing with their bullet points:
“I don’t fully agree with either party anymore.”
My first thought: did you ever? I certainly haven’t at any point in my life. While I lean decidedly to the progressive side and have found myself in near-total opposition to the Republican platform for decades, I disagree with Democratic leadership almost as often. Total alignment with any political party has always struck me as an illusion.
“Every outlet I read has an angle baked in.”
That is simply the reality of our media landscape. In a capitalist framework, news organizations exist to turn a profit, and feeding existing biases generates far more revenue than neutral reporting. Fox News is the obvious case study: how many enterprises could swallow massive multi-million-dollar defamation settlements and keep humming along without a business model sustained entirely by sensational grievance?
“I compare both sides just to find the truth.”
I often read across the spectrum to see how a story is framed, but reading two partisan distortions doesn’t magically balance out to objective truth. You simply end up with two curated angles, not a clear picture of reality.
“I stopped watching the news altogether for a while.”
And what was the result? Did unplugging offer clarity, or did it just provide a temporary reprieve before slipping right back into the same habits and the same echo chambers without shifting perspective?
“I just want to know what happened, not what to think about it.”
A noble sentiment, but an oversimplified one. The world is complicated. None of us can be an expert on everything from international monetary policy to epidemiological science. We inevitably rely on informed voices to provide context and explain what events actually mean for our daily lives. That trust has to be earned over time—not handed over simply because an outlet claims to be neutral.
And trusting a paid Facebook ad promising a shortcut to absolute truth? Experience suggests taking that with an entire block of salt.
So there you have my morning muse brought to you from a quick look at a Facebook Ad. Enjoy the rest of your day…
