The Knight Foundation just came out with an historical brief on the decline in the U.S. of our trust in media as well as in government. No surprise, since the two institutions are so closely entwined that, like Siamese twins, they needs to be severed at birth in order to thrive and survive.
I grew up partly in Germany and spent some time living in France, so I have always felt as if I had one foot on a different continent than the one I’m living on now: Silicon Valley, which based on its values – progress uber alles – seems as if it were a continent unto itself.
So I read a medley of publications, including the Guardian, BBC News, der Spiegel, RT (the independent Russian media site), and even Le Monde occasionally. Not that I trust any of these publications more than the NY Times or Axios (although the latter with its Why It Matters coda for each story is gaining more of my respect), but by reading news from other countries I can find out more about what’s going on in parts of the world our national media seem to ignore unless there’s a natural disaster or government overthrow.
I can also discover what the rest of the world thinks about our disintegrating government, our shooting-in-schools gun culture, and the #MeToo movement.
As for truth, I try to look beyond individual events, such as crazy people planting explosives at FedEx offices and who is the latest person to lose his or her job at the oh-so-White House. Instead, I read trusted thinkers, people like Robert Reich, George Lakoff, Noam Chomsky, and yes, Michelle Goldberg, Maureen Dowd, and the Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald, who get the larger picture and can delineate the mindset and motives of the players making the world go under.
So that’s my response to your brief, dear Knight Foundation. Keep funding a free press even if it belongs to the corporations that fund them, as it always has. Maybe some day the promise of the Internet will make us all reporters and create a truly free press. The answer lies in technology that now supports the likes of Facebook but could easily be transferred to an open platform that would allow free access of knowledge and information to all.