Where Do You Get Your News?

Our condominium complex recently had a “meet your neighbors” pool party. One woman “Barb” realized I was on the Board of the homeowner’s association (HOA) and she expressed concern that the HOA fees were rising too much.

I explained that our HOA insurance rate had doubled in the past few years due to the Climate Crisis. That this is becoming the largest part of our fees. And that we were lucky to get insurance at all now. She told me that “many scientists” disagree that there is a Climate Crisis. I said you don’t need to listen to the scientists. The insurance companies base their prices on real risk.

She persisted. I noted that the tariffs will start causing inflation in the coming months. The effect is delayed but real. She said that Trump knows what he is doing. “He isn’t stupid.” I chose not to point out that most of the people who have worked closest to Trump have said, in colorful language, that in fact Trump is very stupid. 

But I did point out that deporting groundskeepers, pool cleaners, and handymen will also drive up our expenses. She disputed every point claiming that she had better sources than I had. I finally asked her: “Where do you get your news?”

“Various places” was all she could offer. She could not name a single source. She then said that I obviously had a very narrow view.

I have a Facebook friend, “Don,” who I knew as an activist in the 1980s. He is now a full blown Trumper. He sent me a link to a “report” that Zelenskyy had kidnapped 2,451 Russian children “for sex trafficking and adrenochrome harvesting.” I thanked him for showing me a Facebook page I never would have seen. By “Cheryl Manning Hudson” with “Save Our Children” on its banner.

This exactly inverts the reality that Russia has kidnapped thousands of Ukrainian children. Where do I get my news? In this case the Yale School of Medicine.

This Save Our Children page looks laughably absurd to anyone with credible news sources. But for people like Barb and Don, it is a portal to a world of hidden information that “They” don’t want you to see.

For much of my life I was one who was trying to disseminate truly hidden news. Actual atrocities being committed by the CIA around the world. Real journalists risked their lives to get these stories. Actual members of the CIA quit in disgust and went public with the information. Congress was forced to conduct investigations.

Two years ago, I wrote “Conspiracy Theories Not What They Used to Be?” These new “theories” aren’t even theories. Just made-up nonsense. Real conspiracy theories once revealed manipulation by powerful bad actors. But now powerful bad actors are putting out disinformation. Many have been identified as Russian bots. Then ordinary people repeat the nonsense virally. That is the real conspiracy.

I posted the Save Our Children link on my own Facebook page, explaining that this explains how millions of fellow Americans can support Trump. This is where they get their “news.” Amazingly, Don “Liked” my post! For him, it didn’t matter that I was using it as an example of disinformation. I was helping to spread it.

Walter Cronkite was “the news” when I was growing up. He was literally the most trusted man in America. Now “news” usually means a “news feed” on social media. No journalist curates or fact checks a news feed. It is just a torrent of posts. If you Like a post, you get more like it.

Reagan pioneered the practice of lying every time he spoke. Trump goes one further: He calls fact checked news “Fake News.” This could easily be stopped. I had to bike four miles round trip to the library as a kid if I wanted to fact check something. Now, a simple Google search is sufficient.

At the end of my conversation with Barb, I let her know that she better budget for rising HOA fees. No matter where you get your news, reality has the last word.