Opinion Columnists | Janice and Bruce Long: Alternative news outlets and voices help us get to the truth
It's always amusing when someone calls or writes in to the Reporter-Herald and states with disdain that someone is "parroting Fox News." Do those who consume CNN, NBC, MSNBC, ABC, PBS or CBS never pass on or "parrot" what they've heard on those networks? Whatever media diet you consume, there's implied trust -- you assume they're telling at least some version of the truth. You naturally share what you hear or read.
But with trust comes risk. Especially in newsrooms that are beholden to external financial or other interests -- on both the right and left -- there's bias. Sometimes gross bias. To believe otherwise is dishonest. A good question to ask is: Are the outlets themselves parroting what owners, advertisers and donors tell them to?
The partial solution is to find voices and outlets that have the fewest conflicts of interest and offer viewpoints that differ from the major news networks. This may mean finding alternative media outlets. Rumble is the free-speech version of YouTube. Substack.com is a place where people publish their own content and have complete editorial control -- no ads, no middlemen. There are other independent, subscriber-supported and not-for-profit news sources online.
On these platforms, you'll find information that is being suppressed or absent from the national conversation. You will find people that value freedom of speech -- on the right and the left. Here you'll find highly credentialed and respected doctors sharing a different way to treat viruses and cancer. Their reasoned voices, backed by decades of clinical experience and solid scholarship, were shut down during COVID. Here you'll find Glenn Greenwald, who broke the Snowden story (in fact, Snowden sought him out, because he saw he dealt a fairer hand). Greenwald started his own media company with two others in 2013 (The Intercept) because of the bias he saw in mainstream media. But he left The Intercept in 2020 because in Greenwald's own words, "The same trends of repression, censorship and ideological homogeneity plaguing the national press generally have engulfed the media outlet I co-founded, culminating in censorship of my own articles." Kim Iversen, another journalist, has a similar story.
These are the dissenting voices that got voted off of the island. The fact that dissenting and different voices are silenced and vilified on mainstream outlets should raise eyebrows and induce skepticism. After all, America was founded by dissenters. Having different viewpoints laid out side-by-side helps us to reason and to make up our mind -- and to get at what's true. In fact, to not allow dissenting or differing opinions smells like, well, propaganda.
In our opinion, the people worth listening to are the ones who have nothing to gain and everything to lose by their reporting and research -- the ones who at great risk to themselves and their livelihood bucked the prevailing narrative; people who have dug in, investigated and highlighted inconsistency, hypocrisy and conflict of interest; those who remind you of any history and patterns pertinent to an issue. These are the voices that ring true.
Truth is a thing. It still exists. It just takes a little work to find. The real question is: Do you care enough to seek it out? If you're up for the challenge, start small by listening to someone outside of your normal circle of favorites but still on "your side of the aisle" (establishment or populist). Giving breadth to an issue can only help and alternative outlets give more time to a topic/guest therefore ensuring more nuance with complex issues. If you can stomach that, try to listen to a voice farther outside your orbit. Our national conversation will be better for it.