[jfengel]

Oh, I'm certainly not defending corporate media brands. I have stopped reading the news entirely. In large part I've found that even proper news really isn't as important as it's presented[1]. Even before news media became a nightmare, most national and international news simply isn't relevant to me.

You can still get something a lot like the old, boring news from wire services. When I need it, that's where I go. But it's boring, so I don't keep up with it. Real news at that scale would be expected to be boring.

I should pay more attention to the local news, which has long had the same problem -- the motto was "if it bleeds, it leads". Local violent crime is at least a little relevant. But the important stuff is often even more boring: plans for a new park, a forthcoming road closure, a report from the school principal. Relevant and dull, just what I want.

There's still plenty of room for tribal garbage, but at least it's easier to put into perspective.

[1] I feel weird writing that in a rare period where the news actually contains actionable information -- though that's partly because it happened at a time when the government should have been giving me the information and I should have been able to trust it. But I'm setting aside pandemic as a rare case, hopefully to not be repeated soon.