Friday the 23rd, the world woke up to the news of David Koch’s death and the flurry of news surrounding his departure. The Twitterverse exploded with the news, with his name trending consistently throughout the day. Both Fox News Business and CBS offered official reports and sent out push notifications. This news, along with the usual entertainment stories I skip on my Instagram feed and Snap Chat story, lead into the morning run of the Daily Show. While political satire is still looked down upon, the show displayed an array of primary sources, most notably C-SPAN, and less trustworthy but more accessible sources like MSNBC. After my courses for the day, I work as a debate coach for a local high school, in which one of my responsibilities is to research the topic of debate. This resolution focused on China’s One Road Initiative. Which lead me to more academic, less popularized and less traditional sources like Vox News and Wendover Productions, and foreign sources including China’s Shanghai Media Group. This bit of research concluded the news for me that day.
The main enhancement the media gives me is the ability to break away from my life perspective and rebuild it, more secure than ever. One way I change my perspective this is by watching the Vice Snap Chat story. Vice’s snap is not held to a high journalistic standard; mainly running highly specific, niche audience stories that appeal to youths. I, usually, find it shallow and unfulfilling. But viewing these stories teaches me patience and acceptance. Others help creatively. Others just make me laugh. To rebuild my perspective, I read more academic news. These range from more mainstream, classic journalism like the British Broadcasting Company, to niche, cause based advocacy articles, like the World Health Organization. These hard-hitting pieces arm me with the necessary logical, ethical and factual aspects of a situation to accrue a half decent opinion on an issue.
The range of sites I trust within my day of observation vary wildly. First, I feel it necessary to define trust as not how much of the article is composed with factual or truthful aspects, but as how much faith I have in their integrity in their reporting, researching and dissemination of the information. With that, I wouldn’t place non-journalistic entertainment properties on social media, (E.I. Barstool Sport, Vice News, etc.) as journalistic pieces with trust as a foundational component of their mission. Expanding beyond that, My most trusted sources would begin with the more academic sources. Wendover Productions would score a nine on the trust scale with Vox closely trailing with an eight. Both organizations internalize the journalistic process and issue the necessary redactions on pieces on their work isn’t accurate, but Vox has an observable bias towards a liberal ideology. Media outlets such as CBS, MSNBC and Fox News score at a 5 for me. These organizations produce great works of journalism, but is buried under punditry, commercials and political divide. However, shows like The Daily Show also score highly with a six. As media progresses, I believe these political satire shows will increasingly become viewers first encounters with news topics, and the segments produced are largely researched in a similar manner as well as providing more primary sourcing in a more accessible manner than traditional news media. Yet, it is still an entertainment piece, and is burdened by the need for profits. Yet, is that so much different than other news shows without a live audience?
