Perhaps the biggest factor that determines your political affiliation and sympathies after family and community influence is your news source. Yes, you may add in college environment and economic status but these are segmented to include limited cohorts and exclude somewhat larger groups, but news sources are open and available to all, just like everyone has a family and a community. My focus in pointing this out is not to explain the news habits of – for example – a progressive individual living in a deep blue city; rather, I admit to being shocked at some in the middle and especially with what I’ll call soft conservatives. A soft conservative is someone that has a vaguely conservative background, and or, someone that never paid serious attention to any political persuasion, but due to common sense, they tended to veer conservative in their views; or perhaps, someone that associated with traditionally conservative institutions but now is mindlessly drifting away with the whole group that is also now drifting, like a whole house lifted by the flood waters and carried away down river. These are soft conservatives. Why are they soft, or why do they drift with the social and political tides? Who informed them that all sides are really the same or that votes and elected leadership beget no consequences? To this, I credit news sources.
When I hear a soft conservative suggest that defunding rogue federal agencies will hurt innocent people, I know that they learned that opinion from their news source. When I hear someone talk about Donald Trump as if it were still 2016 when he was an unknown and untested, newly minted President and that they seem uninformed that he has built a movement that currently enjoys historically high approval ratings based on actual decisions and actions that he campaigned on, and delivered on those promises, and I know they listen to the news; we’ll that wishy washiness didn’t come out of a vacuum, it came out of programming.
I’ve done a rundown of my news sources in the past, but it’s been a long time. I wish my soft conservative friends and family were exposed to better news and commentary because they’re still holding onto sources, influences, and information that is being proved wrong and subtly destructive. They’re being left behind. Here are my do’s and do nots, my best and most consistent sources:
Do Not:
- All big network, legacy newspapers and news outlets.
- All known progressive channels, news sites; you will find nothing there to ‘balance’ your more conservative sources. You will only get propaganda. This includes NPR and august broadcasts like ‘All Things Considered’.
- Fox News; some may be ok, but it’s leadership and next generation ownership is now corrupted by anti-conservatism and Never-Trumpism.
- Google News; AI bots promoting only progressive propaganda sources.
- Most social media; if you see a lunch thrown on the ground, would you pick it up and eat it? It may have come from the best deli in town and only laid there for a minute, or it could be rotten or tainted. You don’t know. Most of it is created by or curated for you by bots.
- AI; AI learns from and regurgitates biases but renders source checking functionally impossible. GIGO, garbage in garbage out. It is also proven to occasionally outright lie for reasons that no one really knows. You certainly won’t know.
I’ll repeat for emphasis here, you will not get balance for exposing yourself to corrupted news sources. Indoctrination is not balance. If you’re amused or entertained by a particular broadcast source, have fun, but don’t think you’re becoming a broader minded individual. I used to include more other news sources in my reading but have cut this back to only incidental exposures. Why? When a news outlet knowingly participates in a major deception sponsored by subjects that the press has been chartered to cross-examine. They have lost not just all credibility, but all legitimacy as well. I don’t care about your damn Pulitzer which isn’t worth the toilet paper it’s printed on. I’m not talking about mistakes or getting one day’s facts wrong, I’m talking about a full story played out over years and journalist that to this day, still adhere to fully documented lies that they forcefully promoted. Maybe it was Russia-gate, Covid origins, that Biden is still awake and competent. Lie to me about these things and you will not be bringing any balance to my table.
Do/ I read:
- New York Post; While it looks like a ‘rag’, especially it’s print edition, its web edition is solid reporting, mostly benign cultural news, New York local news, and mainstream conservative editorials.
- Bongino Report; an aggregation site of solid conservative news sources and editorials.
- Newsmax: Conservative based news, very little editorial content, tailored for a mass market.
- Revolver News; an aggregation site with some unique content, some gold nuggets, some questionable sources. Use with discretion.
As much as these conservative websites, I’m interested in the firsthand reporting and observations of specific of officials and opinionators that may show up on those sites or sites like X/Twitter. There are dozens that are trusted and keenly insightful and I cannot mention them all because it’s a dynamic list that’s growing over time, but I will highlight a few that often show up on the sites I list above, enough that I go out of my way to read their columns often now.
- Micheal Goodwin; a staid longtime contributor to the New York Post, his observations are sometimes a bit reserved, but when decides to speak, it carries weight.
- Miranda Divine; a rising star at the New York Post. Solid and eloquent.
- Victor Davis Hanson; possibly my current favorite commentator, a historian and currently with the Hoover Institute. When he speaks, listen.
- Kurt Schlichter; Kurt has a different style that is snide, consequently either obnoxious or very entertaining. Hidden under that wrapper is a sense of keen analysis.
I’ll add a separate class of observers here. These guys specifically comment about legal cases, including the Supreme court. They rarely venture elsewhere. They do not all come from conservative roots but are honest brokers of legal process information relevant to conservatives.
- Julie Kelly
- Jonathan Turley
- Alan Dershowitz
Why would I include so many opinion makers under the guise of news recommendations? It is generally held in journalism theory that commentary or editorializing is a less objective, even tainted source of information compared to ‘just the facts’. While that may be the case in lala-land theory, news, particularly in the political and cultural worlds, is by design, at its source, an abstract house of mirrors. Facts are the last thing to become known and it often takes years if ever to see the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So don’t kid yourself. Opinion makers hold the license to essentially pull back the broader curtain, sooner, to provide context and thus credibility to a story. The ones I cite will be honest enough to couch doubt where it is due, which is also an essential aspect of storytelling.
If you’d like to comment on this post, feel free to do so on Twitter/X. Follow me: @leestanNEreader