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Why is the free press valuable in a democracy?
Does the press give us what we need as citizens?
What can we do to be good news consumers?
Does the press give us what we need as citizens?
What can we do to be good news consumers?
An informed citizenry is important to democracy. We need to know what our elected officials are up to so we can hold them accountable./2
We need press to tell us about the world around us. What is going well? What are the problems that need solving?/3
It should go without saying that we want all this information to be unassailably accurate. We need to know what is ACTUALLY going on./4
It is also important that the press is skeptical of official govt sources (that have a strong incentive to tell us everything is A-OK.)/5
What we need from the press, then are:
1. Accurate accounts of how things are going in our communities, nationally, and around the world.
/6
1. Accurate accounts of how things are going in our communities, nationally, and around the world.
/6
2. Accurate descriptions of what our elected officials are doing (or not doing) to make our communities, nation, and world a better place/7
There are some great sources out there doing both of these things on a regular basis. /8
BUT a lot of the news media is motivated by profit--which means they give us what we WANT as consumers, not what we NEED as citizens./9
The profit-motivated news media gives us conflict, drama, spectacle, personalities, flash, opinion. Because that's what we want to see./10
UNnortunately, what we want is not what we need. We need serious, in-depth, investigative, policy-relevant reporting. /11
Which is boring. Sorry, it is./12
Good news! If we build up demand for the right kind of news, (& turn off the wrong kind) the for-profit media will give us what we need./13
How can we be good news consumers and help create news products that are good for a healthy democracy?/14
Be a good news consumer--be an omnivore--read widely from reputable sources /15
Read and learn about your hometown and the rest of the globe, not just the news from Washington DC/16
Being a good news consumer also means *paying* for the news you value/17
Raise your voice to protect the rights of journalists and whistleblowers who take risks to inform us about wrongdoing by powerful people/18
Also, think twice about clicking on clickbaity headlines. Please! /end
