How To Find Objective Information In The Media Today

In the last 20 years, there has been a clear degradation of the objective reality of the United States and its citizens. Basically, objective reality means the ability to tell what is bullshit and what isn't outside of any political agenda or partisanship.

For example, if someone tries to tell you that World War II never happened, you are using your sense of objective reality when you know they are wrong–and there's nothing other than fact driving it.

It wasn't always this way and it's hard to pinpoint exactly the attack on objective reality began; but what is known for sure is that it took a big hit at the birth of the 24hr news cycle in the 1980s. Why? Before this point, news and journalism wasn't conducted solely for profit as it's is today. Information became commodified, and thus had to be appealing and digestible.

But catering to the public at large is too wide a net to cast when it comes to trying to successfully make a profit. Appealing to a smaller, niche audience is far more lucrative.

At the political level, this kind of commodification served to obscure the objective truth of the issues, because journalists and politicians alike tailored their positions based on appealing to sometimes extreme values. Over time, this has dragged the political center of the United States to whatever side of the aisle could be more bombastic: In our case, it was the republican party, especially when Barack Obama came into office.

Just because you don't agree with something doesn't make it any less factual, and vice versa. Accepting that is paramount to having at least one foot grounded in objective reality. In fact, if you DO agree with something you read in an article, we are psychologically wired to be less skeptical of it.

For this reason, in order to stay objective it's even more important to fact-check and source-check what you do agree with, rather than just accept it because it "sounds" right or wrong to you.