News

Now that the dust has settled on the election the furor will subside and people will begin to evaluate what happened. Many observers say the partisanship has never been this bad and the scars will last for years but that is only because people do not remember the past. In the 50's I would go to the library and read the day old issues of the St Louis Post Dispatch and the Chicago Tribune. The same event would seem like two completely separate happenings. The bias was overwhelming. In those times we had kooks who presented all types of what is called today mis or disinformation but not many people knew of these weirdos because the news for most people came from the local newspaper which didn't spend a lot of time on national news or from the 15 minute nightly TV news. The nightly TV news was from three networks and they got their news from the NY Times so everyone basically got the same news. Today things are much different. Those kooks that no one ever heard from are on social media and they have audiences of millions. The bias of people has not changed but the methods of spreading that bias have changed in a big way. This has resulted in many people becoming skeptical of any news and most people are relying on their own common sense to determine what is going on. Polls show a steady decline in trust in the media that was 75% in 1950 and down to 15% today. During this same time period the trust in government has dropped from 80% to 20%. The result is that people figure out what they believe and then search out news outlets that enforce their views. When factual results, such as election, prove the source to be wrong that source is dropped like a hot potato.