The news that's fit
Some advice on becoming a discerning consumer of news and being a light in the darkness
The Atlantic recently published an article chastising news outlets for putting their reporting behind paywalls during the 2024 presidential campaign in the U.S. The writer acknowledged the irony that his article was probably behind a paywall, and, as a subscriber to The Atlantic, I can attest to that. His point is that people will seek out free and less reliable sources of information if they cannot access credible news reports without paying for them.
Paywalls create a two-tiered system: credible, fact-based information for people who are willing to pay for it, and murkier, less-reliable information for everyone else. Simply put, paywalls get in the way of informing the public, which is the mission of journalism. And they get in the way of the public being informed, which is the foundation of democracy. It is a terrible time for the press to be failing at reaching people, during an election in which democracy is on the line. There’s a simple, temporary solution: Publications should suspend their paywalls for all 2024 election coverage and all information that is beneficial to voters. Democracy does not die in darkness—it dies behind paywalls.
That last statement refers to the Washington Post’s official slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” adopted by the newspaper in 2017. It is a favorite saying of longtime Post investigative reporter Bob Woodward, who said he derived it from a past ruling by the late Judge Damon J. Keith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in which he wrote, "Democracy dies in the dark."
The slogan was ridiculed in some circles for being overly dramatic and heavy-handed - think of the iconic line uttered by Padmé Amidala in the Star Wars film Revenge of the Sith, “So this is how liberty dies…with thunderous applause.” Nevertheless, the most prominent newspaper in the nation’s capital now had a slogan like its counterpart in New York City, the New York Times, which has declared itself to be the source of “All the News That’s Fit to Print” since October 25, 1896.
Richard Stengel, the author of The Atlantic article, brings some gravitas to the topic of news and information. He is a former managing editor of TIME magazine, former U.S. undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, and author of Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It. His credentials give him unique insight into the negative impact of misinformation and disinformation on public opinion and, subsequently, the public’s participation in the democratic process. While recognizing that news organizations need to turn a profit to remain viable, he opines that they have a higher calling at this particular moment in history.
I believe it was a mistake to give away journalism for free in the 1990s. Information is not and never has been free. I devoutly believe that news organizations need to survive and figure out a revenue model that allows them to do so. But the most important mission of a news organization is to provide the public with information that allows citizens to make the best decisions in a constitutional democracy. Our government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed, and that consent is arrived at through the free flow of information—reliable, fact-based information. To that end, news organizations should put their election content in front of their paywall. The Constitution protects the press so that the press can protect constitutional democracy. Now the press must fulfill its end of the bargain.
As a seasoned consumer of news and information, I've been critically evaluating the content I consume ever since my teenage realization that supermarket tabloids, despite being printed on newsprint, do not equate to genuine news! Remember the New York Times slogan, “All the News That’s Fit to Print”? That came about because of the competition between two New York newspapers, the World and the Journal, and both resorted to yellow journalism, “the use of lurid features and sensationalized news in newspaper publishing to attract readers and increase circulation” (Encyclopedia Britannica). When the Times came onto the publishing scene, its owner adopted the slogan to distinguish it from the more provocative publications in the city. Yellow journalism exists today in tabloid newspapers and television programs, and the Internet is a breeding ground for “lurid features and sensationalized news.”
To illustrate the extent to which I analyze and research what I read, if I see a popular quote attributed to someone famous, I will research it to determine if the person who said it was misattributed, quoted precisely, or paraphrased in some form. I’ve learned that many pithy or convenient quotes from famous people are either misattributed, incorrectly transcribed, or wholly fabricated. Having some revered historical figure say something that aligns perfectly with a modern point of view on a contentious topic is far too convenient, so I demand proof before I believe it.
This is wisdom gained from experience. When I wrote my book, I used one of my favorite quotes about government, attributed to George Washington:
“Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master.”
Other versions of the quote conclude with the statement, “Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.” This is a perfect quote for a conservative advocate of limited government, uttered by America’s first president, a man whom King George III reportedly admired for relinquishing power when he could have made himself a king.
As it turns out, it was too good to be true. The curators of the George Washington Presidential Library declared, “The library has yet to find an explanation for this misquote, locate another individual who said this statement, or uncover a similar quote of Washington's that was similar to this statement.” The Quote Investigator reached the same conclusion and offered some context for the statement, which first appeared and was attributed to Washington in 1902:
In conclusion, the connection of the saying to George Washington is currently unsupported. Yet, servant-master metaphors for fire and water have a long history that extends back before the birth of Washington. Also, the simile built on the metaphor was applied to “fancy” and “zeal” in the 1600s. Thus, QI would be unsurprised if future researchers locate examples before 1902 of the simile applied to “government”.
Duly chastened, I am now an avowed skeptic regarding famous quotes that conveniently support some contemporary hot-button political or cultural position. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
This tactic is a well-known propaganda technique called testimonial, “when some respected celebrity (or alternatively someone generally hated) claims that an idea or product is good (or bad). This technique is used to convince us without examining the facts more carefully” (University of Vermont).
It could also be a case of transfer, “when a symbol that carries respect, authority, sanction, and prestige is used along with an idea or argument to make it look more acceptable” (Ibid).
In either case, it’s the association of a famous and popular figure with an idea to give it credibility, or you can associate it with a notorious figure if you want to have the opposite effect. I learned about propaganda techniques as an all-source intelligence analyst in the U.S. Air Force. In that role, I also became aware of the then-Soviet Union’s mastery and use of disinformation. It was and is so integral to their statecraft that the English word “disinformation” is a literal translation of the Russian word dezinformatsiya, “reputedly coined by no less than Josef Stalin in the 1920s as the name of the section of the KGB tasked with deceiving enemies and influencing public opinion” (University of California - Berkeley).
Most of what I learned about being a discerning consumer of news and information came from my training and experience as an intelligence analyst. In a previous article on my pursuit of historical truth regarding the Black experience in America, I wrote about how my profession influenced my commitment to “knowing how to research, verify, analyze, synthesize, and present information with clarity and integrity.”
I spent nearly the first decade of my professional life providing analyzed and finished intelligence to decision-makers who were responsible for defending the nation, and it was impressed upon me from the first day of training that the accuracy of the information I provided could mean the difference between life and death for our troops or the people we were defending. An intelligence failure could cost lives, liberty, or property, and I didn’t want that on my conscience, so I worked diligently to ensure that my analyses and presentations of information to my commanding officers were as accurate as possible.
Most of my professional endeavors have required rigorous research and analysis to arrive at the truth regardless of feelings or beliefs, whether in information technology, disaster management, homeland security, or higher education. The only time I ever worked in an area where I willingly operated in an information silo was when I was active in politics. Reflecting on my political past, my actions mirrored those of that adolescent encountering tabloids for the first time, believing erroneously that the content contained vital information deliberately withheld by some ambiguous "authority" from the broader populace. It was as close as I’d come to conspiratorial thinking. However, a series of experiences with factual errors and outright fabrications compelled me to consider the motives of the political partisans generating the information in the silo, and I came to my senses.
Over time, I’ve developed certain practices that I’ve shared with my students in the classroom to help them become discerning consumers of news and information. I encouraged them to adopt these practices because they were valuable in analyzing the news and determining the integrity of any claim to the best of their abilities.
Before I share these practices with you, let's define the type of news consumer I am by using Mr. Stengel's categories as a reference point:
Digital-news consumers can be divided into three categories: a small, elite group that pays hundreds to thousands of dollars a year for high-end subscriptions; a slightly larger group of people with one to three news subscriptions; and the roughly 80 percent of Americans who will not or cannot pay for information. Some significant percentage of this latter category are what scholars call “passive” news consumers—people who do not seek out information, but wait for it to come to them, whether from their social feeds, from friends, or from a TV in an airport. Putting reliable information behind paywalls increases the likelihood that passive news consumers will receive bad information.
While I may question the phrase “small, elite group,” I am definitely in the first category. At last count, I spend over $2,180 yearly on news and information subscriptions. $775 of that expense goes to many of my fellow writers on Substack - you are welcome! Among the news and information sources I subscribe to are:
The New York Times
The Washington Post
The Los Angeles Times
The Wall Street Journal
The Guardian
The Economist
The Atlantic
Christianity Today
Newsweek
The New Yorker
New York Magazine
National Geographic
The Daily Beast
The Dispatch
Medium
Consumer Reports
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Business Insider
Current Magazine
I also read articles from national public opinion and research firms like Gallup, the Pew Research Center, the Public Religion Research Institute, and the Barna Group. I regularly consult several free news sites, including USA Today, the Associated Press, Reuters, Inside Higher Education, National Public Radio (recent controversy notwithstanding), POLITICO, The Hill, Vox, and TIME, the venerable news magazine. TIME used to require a paid subscription, but CEO Jessica Sibley decided in 2023 to remove the paywall from TIME’s digital site and archives:
“At TIME, our mission is to provide trusted, quality storytelling about the people and ideas shaping our world, and to ensure that information is accessible to as many people as possible, regardless of geographic location or socioeconomic status,” said Sibley. “We fundamentally believe that access to trusted information is a global imperative and should be available to all of humanity.”
While I clearly have the desire and the means to pay for news and information, I respect and appreciate Ms. Sibley’s stance. This reflects Mr. Stengel’s belief that journalism is a public good before it is a business, and their operational decisions should acknowledge that.
One possible answer is the gift article links that digital sites like the Washington Post, New York Times, The Atlantic, and the Wall Street Journal provide their subscribers so they can share the news they read with family, friends, and followers on social media and other digital means of communication. The Post limits gift articles to 10 a month, but the Times recently implemented unlimited sharing of articles. Thus far, all gift articles have an expiration date, usually 14 to 30 days after sharing. While this approach is better than nothing, it still relies on the limited number of subscribers to actively share news articles and doesn’t have nearly the reach of a free news site.
Incidentally, I didn’t list the numerous technology or sports news and information sites I visit regularly, like ESPN, The Athletic, PC World, The Verge, Droid Life, and others. These topics interest me, and while they may not address the pressing issues of the day, I gain a lot of personal satisfaction from the reporting these sites offer. I anticipate you also have hobbies or interests covered by specialty news and information sites.
You probably noticed that the major cable and broadcast news outlets weren’t listed among my subscriptions, nor did I mention them as free news sites I consult regularly. In fact, I do read articles from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, but I don’t watch television news at all. That is one of the practices I shared with my students.
Don’t watch television news - it’s sensational, profit-driven, or openly partisan
I think television news programs are probably the least substantive of all news outlets. That’s not necessarily a criticism; broadcasting something compelling enough to attract millions of viewers lends itself to a different dynamic than a newspaper or magazine. You don’t have much time to impart information; you need to beat your competitors to the market with breaking news, and your continued viability depends on gaining and keeping an audience. This contributes to sensationalism, noise over news, and partisan appeals to audiences looking for validation of their particular point of view. If you want to make the best of your time consuming the news, turn off the television. As I indicated, you can read the articles the major news channels publish daily.
Consult multiple sources on a particular news item
This practice dates back to my first profession as an intelligence officer. I was an “all-source” intelligence analyst, meaning that I didn’t rely on a single source or method of intelligence to reach conclusions about a particular topic. I was responsible for drawing from all available sources and techniques to determine the integrity of the intelligence I’d received. If my analysis and reporting relied too heavily on a single source or method, the chances of the intelligence being incomplete were high, and the mission would be at risk. For example, one of the reasons for the intelligence failure related to the purported presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the pretext for a costly and deadly war, was the intelligence community’s overreliance on a single human source who turned out to be less than credible.
I conduct my research on news stories the same way. Reading different reports on a particular news story is informative and enlightening. Comparing headlines or content can detect bias, even in ostensibly “impartial” news reporting. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Fox News and MSNBC could report on the same story but emphasize or derive completely different elements or draw different conclusions. Overlay those reports with those from The Associated Press, British Broadcasting Corporation, or Reuters, and the story begins to take shape, and the wheat can be separated from the chaff.
Get a good news aggregator app
I have an Android smartphone with a feature called the Discover feed, which I scroll through multiple times throughout the day to see what news and information it believes I need to know. While it supposedly “learns” my interests and attempts to provide relevant reports, I don’t rely on it alone. Google News, Flipboard, Microsoft Start, and other news aggregators collect news stories from multiple sources for me to review. They are especially effective tools for accomplishing the practice I shared previously of consulting various sources for a particular news story. You can tell these aggregator apps what your topical preferences are, and they will also monitor your reading habits to learn your interests. I would imagine that the prevalence of artificial intelligence on every electronic device will refine the ability of these apps to determine your news preferences.
Get a good archiving app
Chances are you won’t have time to read everything you’d like in a single sitting. That’s where an archiving app comes in handy. You can save articles of interest for later reading and research. Pocket, Evernote, Microsoft OneNote, Google Keep, and Instapaper are just a few apps that allow you to save news and information for subsequent reviewing. Facebook and Google have built-in archiving features that enable you to save a news article by clicking an icon. Just remember where you put the articles you wanted to read later!
Always click through
Most news articles include links to other relevant information that amplifies the story, and I encourage you to click through and read the articles behind the links. The additional information may expand the story's scope or provide further context; if nothing else, the writers believe the links are relevant to the story, and investigating them out of curiosity regarding the writers’ intentions is worth the time to understand the report more thoroughly.
I intend to see the movie Civil War in a week or so because the premise intrigues and disturbs me. From what I’ve read of the film, its director, Alex Garland, took great pains not to portray the polarized American political factions currently at each other’s throats. Instead, he leaves the fighting factions and their motivations to the viewer's imagination and focuses more on the role of the journalists who serve as the film's protagonists. He sees the press as the answer to polarization and conflict, but only if they are allowed to do their jobs:
Overall I’d say this film is about checks and balances: polarization, division, the way populist politics leads toward extremism, where extremism itself will end up and where the press is in all of that. One of the things that really preoccupied me four years ago was it was perfectly obvious there were really good journalists doing good work. But the thing that interested me, and this has been happening for a while, is how little traction they had. If it’s a film about checks and balances, one of the biggest checks and balances you have on government is the press. But the press needs to be trusted for that to work. They’ve been undermined and demonized partly by external forces and internal forces.
There is a lot of truth to Garland’s statement. While freedom of the press is enshrined in the Bill of Rights, modern political leaders and factions have declared the press “the true enemy of the people” because they don’t want to be held accountable by them. The media is consistently under rhetorical attack and sometimes the target of intended violence, with pipe bombs being mailed to major news outlets. Moreover, not all media are the same; misinformation is rampant and confuses and frustrates people trying to get to the truth. Finally, make no mistake that our adversaries are hard at work spreading disinformation and keeping us in darkness.
However, I still believe there are legions of dedicated, professional journalists doing their best to keep us informed and alert, and they need our help. A discerning consumer of news and information can glean the truth from those reports, and I’ve offered just a few thoughts on how we can ingest the news more responsibly.
Let me finish by saying that this isn’t just a matter of good citizenship for me. Indeed, that is very important and biblical since we Christians are called to live good lives in the time and place the Lord has put us and retain a good reputation with outsiders. However, we are also called to pursue the truth; as I stated in another article, “The truth matters to the Lord, and the Lord is truth, so the truth matters deeply to me.” I also quoted author and Bible teacher Chuck Missler, who said, “The only barrier to truth is the presumption that you already have it.” The truth demands humility and not the arrogance that we know more than the professionals who’ve answered the calling on their lives to research and report the news. They are not infallible; some may have agendas with which we disagree, and some will make mistakes, but discernment will guide you to the truth. Conspiratorial thinking and reliance on dubious information sources will not.
Luke 12:2-3 says, “There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs.” He was speaking to the religious leaders of his day, and I can’t help but think about how modern journalists have led the way in exposing corruption, racism, misogyny, sexual abuse, and other ungodly behavior in our churches. They are hated for it by those who mistakenly believe the institution's image is more important than the integrity of those granted the privilege of leadership in the body of Christ or the damage they’ve done to the Great Commission or the people under their stewardship. However, I am grateful to these reporters for bringing what others sought to keep in the dark into the light. Slogans aside, we know that darkness cannot withstand the light, and we must not only be light but nurture the light, whatever its source.