One of the advantages of living and visiting different parts of the world is that you start to develop a world view rather than national or local view. An advantage of living a while is that you watch things change over time, and perhaps, become a little bit wiser.
One major observation I have come to realize is that the gate keepers of information have changed dramatically.
It used to be that newspapers were the major source of information and people read them to find out what was going on in the world. It used to be just reporting the facts and personal opinions were reserved to the editorial page. In this day and age, newspapers are dwindling and the facts are often shaded with the newspapers political bias. I am thinking the New York times and the Washington Post for example. Nowadays I read very few newspapers and mostly just articles published online.
Countries often ensure they are the gatekeepers of information by owning and publishing news content themselves. I am thinking China and Russia. Their citizens only see and read what their governments want them to see. China also goes so far as to restrict what information sources their citizens have access to throughout the world.
It used to be that reporters prided themselves about being impartial on reporting the news. I am thinking about Walter Cronkite. Nowadays, reporters have become a brand. Anderson Cooper for example. You know where he is coming from before he opens his mouth. Ditto for his CNN sidekick Don Lemon. Of course Fox news is just as guilty!
I have also noticed that many people get their news from Facebook which I find particularly scary. The trend these days is to fact check news and I have found that fact checking is very biased as well as stats can be viewed and interpreted through exclusion and inclusion to demonstrate what message a person wants to convey.
I have also found Google news shows me what it thinks I am interested rather than what, perhaps I should be reading. This perpetuates a person's world view and biases.
My hometown newspapers online version shows every article with the picture of the reporter who wrote the article. What is important, the article or the person who wrote it? At least the leftist CBC online website does not do that!
The question that needs to be asked is how can a person get information in this day and age to stay informed and make rational fact based decisions about what to believe.
My daily activity starts with reading online on many websites. I start with USA Today, move to BBC, and then CBC and then the Financial Post. I then read Google News and the Ottawa Citizen. Next up is ESPN for basketball news. I then follow us with CNN and Fox news for bias checks. Lastly I read the Bangkok Post for Thai news written by expats in English. This amounts to almost 2 hours of news consumption that I only able to do because I am retired.
I don't know how normal working people would find the time to do what I do.
An interesting trend I see developing is the US election will probably become the 'boomers' vs the 'snowflakes'. I don't mean that in a derogatory manner, just in what I see developing. Millennials or snowflakes, or whatever you want to call them think very differently than boomers.
What I find disconcerting is that both groups reject what the the other group has to offer, whereas, as often in life, a middle ground may be where you want to be.
The world is becoming polarized. Rich vs poor, developed vs undeveloped, educated vs uneducated, hiso vs loso, capitalist vs socialist, young vs old, elite vs rednecks, etc. We used to say, 'we can learn from one another', not so sure that happens much anymore.
TTYL
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