The problem of “fake news” promoted by Donald Trump raises the question: How do you find the “real news? Whom can you trust? There are a variety of reports on the media we read, watch, and listen to.

I have already argued that even Donald Trump relies on some media for his information, but he never admits that he might be using biased sources [https://wtucker.edublogs.org/2023/09/04/the-fourth-estate/].

The League of Women  Voters  [https://my.lwv.org/california/torrance-area/article/how-reliable-your-news-source-understanding-media-bias-2022] publishes a list of media bias charts. The Adfontes Media Bias Chart and The Allsides Media Bias Chart are the foremost.

Because the Adfontes Media Bias Chart doesn’t easily convert to this format, I have chosen to use “Allsides” to consider media bias [https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart]. Sorry about the poor resolution.

Below is a politically organized bias chart to show one  group of evaluators’ informed perspective. You can study their methods of evaluation on their website, but they are more reliable than partisan analysis. According to this analysis, former President Trump clearly favors one political wing when he evaluates media.

If you look to the far right of the chart, you will recognize some of the former President’s sources: Newsmax, the New York Post, and Fox News. On the left we can see some of the media he attacks: far left, the New York Times Opinion and moderately left, the New York Times News, CNN and the Washington Post. They print or broadcast what he calls “fake news.”

I love the columnists at the Washington Post, even George Will, but I understand that is a liberal diet (excluding Will). Because the St. Louis Post Dispatch runs some conservative columns, I find I can read conservatives David Drucker and Jonathan Goldberg of The Dispatch with no rise in the blood pressure.

I have little experience with the media at the center. Why is that? Do they lack the edge I prefer in Opinion broadcasting? The only large-market news media I see there are the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek. Perhaps a little vanilla for some tastes, athough the Journal moves back and forth along the center line. I see it reprinted in the Post-Dispatch, a pretty left-leaning daily newspaper with a marginal circulation, yet fair-minded about opinions.

I’ll plead guilty to reading the New York Times (News and Opinion) and watching NBC, CNN and CBS. Often I watch MSNBC and read The Atlantic and The New Yorker (especially in the Post Dispatch), so my plate is full of liberal main courses and desserts.  I know these latter  outlets are rich in liberal perspectives, so Mr. Trump would disapprove. I try to remember the perspective I’m reading and look for corroboration in another source. Based on his out-loud comments, I doubt the former President grazes outside the Far Right on this chart. Corroboration is not a practice to which he has ever pled guilty.

When I look at the media on the far right, I think of eating kale.  I will if I have to, but since I am an adult, I don’t have to. Except, once in a while I wonder, and will sample how the other half lives,

So whom do you trust? Any outlet around the center line is probably safe, and the outer columns have stories you better investigate more thoroughly, if you care about bias. What I do not appreciate is

1. People who quote the outer two categories without any qualifications
2. People who will not concede any opinions based on middle left or middle right (“CBS news is part of a left wing conspiracy.”)
3. People who insist that the middle must not be at all biased. They all are. About that Trump was right.
4.  People who don’t try to listen with an open mind.

My personal opinion (no source) is that many adults have given up finding the neighborhood of truth, so they either

1. choose one source and swear it is the only truth possible
2. avoid reading anything except the sports page and the comics. (Hmm, better watch out for “Doonesberry”)
3. get all their information from some guy at the bar, at the gym, or at church

I can’t tell you which of these three is the worst, but none of  them involve serious thinking.  If you went to college, you were not taught to think this way. Maybe even if you went to high school.

Trust is something people earn, and so with the media. You keep your crap detector going until you get comfortable with a source. Then you welcome it into the family. Still, you don’t get cozy with it when the stakes are high.

Like when you vote.