I suppose a concrete example of what I'm talking about was my late teens/early 20s when I was a full blown libertarian conservative talk radio boor who liked Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, etc. Even then when I was a rabid liberal hater who hung onto their every word I could recognize that these people were exaggerating claims, faking emotional investment, and banging the drum for ratings. It was simply obvious because of how they failed to carry on as actual human beings. I just made excuses why it was okay and correct because it was in service to what I already agreed with. But it still wasn't hard to see the grift.

I know they’re evil but like if Fox News reports there was a shooting at Walmart I take it at face value.

ok

I think of a grifter as someone who wants to **** me out of my money which is basically everyone you’ll ever meet minus about five people

Pardon, but I mostly tune in to this network to see what the popular reactionary spin about the headlines are. Fox News is admittedly an entertainment/opinion channel that ‘adjusts’ facts to suit its message. Good for weather. Otherwise, useless.

:) Knew there was something wrong with the spelling when I typed it (writing is 50% good editing). Thanks. Can you imagine being a copy editor for Fox News? It'd be creative (in theory)! :p:

I take AP and Reuters with a smaller grain of salt than most outlets. Above outlets, I view videos that don't have clear edits as trustworthy but not definitive. There's a bit of a catch-22 where full context is necessary to better understand these videos, but people don't start recording until the situation is halfway played out and if they do it's fishy. Any "true" context that we get is based on testimony that's retroactively influenced by how things panned out.

The best thing the layperson can do is to trace stories to their origin point to see what the real substance is before becoming too dogmatic about what the reporting on the event says. Doing that with every story takes an unrealistic amount of time and when we do research news, it's often painted by the confirmation bias of skepticism or need for validation that made us research the news in the first place.

Idk, it seems impossible to navigate.

I agree with OH that Fox's straight reporting is just as reliable/unreliable as standard reporting btw.

I mean yeah but there's pretty obvious personality traits to recognize even if you can't point to any actual money transactions.

I know what you mean bat

It tickled me to read you went through a right wing stage.

It was short and embryonic and I didn't have a single idea of what I was on about and going through military school and living through physical autocracy really put all my ideas on a short trip to realizing that I just despised hierarchy. I think hating hierarchy is the center of everything I feel about politics. Like "**** you why on earth should I have to listen to you?" should be the litmus test all hierarchy should have to pass .

Church

I think Orwell Ministry of truth is more relevant than ever.