Just kidding - no one who has been paying attention and is reasonably objective should be surprised by this. It's been clear to me for well over a year, using my simple 3 step plan for filtering the news to find the truth - a rare and precious distillate indeed:
- Listen to lots of news sources, including broadcast, podcast, news website, etc., both left and right leaninig
- identify the reliable, i.e. truthful, ones. Here's how:
- The honest ones are those that routinely give facts - names, dates, references to legal codes, etc. - just as if it were part of their job. Check those facts. If there's no objective way to verify them, they're not facts at all. People presenting what they claim or imply are facts without any substantiation are not news people at all, they're purely opinion. There's nothing wrong with listening to other people's opinions - just don't mistake it for news.
- The dishonest ones are those that make categorical and defamatory statements about situations and people without ever bothering to back them up. E.g., when a source consistently pronounces as a given that President Trump is a racist, but never explains why, that's a bad sign. If they claim that he called Mexicans "animals", go listen to the quote in context; upon finding out that's a lie (yes, intentional misrepresentation is a lie, always, regardless of the semantics), mark that source in the B.S. category.
- Listen to reliable sources 80% of the time. Listen to the lies 20% of the time. Knowing with > 90% certainty that they're lying makes it easy to deduce truth not only from what they say, but perhaps even more importantly, from what they refuse to say.
Unfortunately, honest outlets that are still doing legitimate reporting are far fewer than the ones doing sensationalism and opinion. And many of the good outlets are not available through the traditional mediums of TV and radio. Some great ones:
- Andrew Klavan's podcast (hilarious as well as informative and insightful on a wide range of topics) or his YouTube channel (mostly just hilarious),
- Ben Shapiro's podcast (often spouts lots of facts & statistics; talks so fast I have to slow my player down to 1.25x),
- Dan Bongino's website and podcast (former Secret Service and NY City cop, with obviously excellent sources; often annoying, pedantic and repetitive, but always well informed and near 100% track record on news interpretation and predictions) .
- Fox News (Right leaning, but gives clear delineation between news and opinion programming; often provides left perspective via guests. Brett Baier hosts the best hard news show left on the air.)