“As America faces the most severe border crisis in decades, TN is showing the rest of the country what it means to lead. Today, I joined TN National Guard members who will soon deploy on a voluntary mission to secure the Southern border as the federal government fails to act.”
The quote is from an X post by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee last Friday. He was pictured standing in front of 20 or so camo-clad warriors who were apparently going to Texas to … stand along the border somewhere? No word on who would be giving them orders. The Texas governor? The Texas National Guard commander? President Biden? Doesn’t matter. It wasn’t about governing or policy or real life. It was political theater. A photo op.
Judging from the responses to the post, lots of other people besides me saw it as empty grandstanding. Many pointed out that Tennessee had plenty of problems of its own — gun violence, education, healthcare — that ol’ Bill could be paying attention to instead of doing Kabuki theater in a local gymnasium.
Others responded on X, correctly, that House Republicans had declined to support a border bill that could have done much to improve the situation just a week before. Here’s LGilmore: “Good grief. What a freaking waste of time and taxpayer money for political gain. We see your two-faced perpetuation of a problem you refuse to help solve.”
But there were also positive responses to Lee’s post. Here’s one from LITizen JEFF: “Thank you, Sir, and especially, thank you to the patriots in the TN National Guard.” He probably had tears in his eyes while he typed that.
What forms the differing attitudes of LGilmore and LITizen JEFF? Well, assuming they’re not ’bots, it would be a fair guess to say it’s the sources of news they consume. According to a Pew Research study, conservatives like JEFF head to the right-wing buffet table, where they can get a steady diet of Fox News, Newsmax, OAN, Joe Rogan, Epoch Times, etc. Progressive/liberal thinkers like LG are more likely to be consumers of CNN, MSNBC, NPR, PBS NewsHour, and The New York Times.
When it comes to news, what we consume quite naturally shapes what we believe. A great example of this is the current exchange of video-fire over which old guy running for president is in worse shape. Call it “Dueling Dodderers.” My social media feeds are now filled with clips of Donald Trump’s verbal miscues. He is slurring a lot of words in his stump speeches these days and frequently losing his train of thought. And every time it happens, a clip of it gets posted and amplified in all the liberal media. I consume it gleefully because I think Trump is an evil clown and it gives me hope that he may yet disintegrate into a gooey orange puddle of bile.
Likewise, there are lots of clips of President Biden misspeaking or turning the wrong way or stumbling on a stairway that make the rounds in right-wing media. I don’t see as many of these because I don’t visit those sites much. That’s mainly because the algorithm gods have learned I prefer not to consume right-wing stuff.
That’s how it works: You pick your news, then your news picks you. So, here’s some good advice: Learn how to pick news sources that are trustworthy. Don’t amplify news stories, quotes, memes, or even videos unless you are certain they are legitimate. That juicy clip of Trump being unable to pronounce “Venezuela” may tickle your schadenfreude, but don’t forward it unless it’s from a legitimate source. AI video is real — and, increasingly, a source of disinformation.
Media literacy is a course that should be taught in every school in America from the seventh grade on. Knowing how to discern reliable sources in the flood of information that deluges us — and our children — needs to be a top educational priority.
For starters, here’s a list of the 10 least-biased news sources, according to Pew Research: AP News, Reuters News Service, BBC News, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg.com, New York Times, C-Span, NPR/PBS, Forbes.com, NBC News. We need to be vigilant. If we consume disinformation and spread it, we’re nothing more than vacuous propagandists. Like Bill Lee.