[josephg]

Sure; but its a mistake to throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Its true that I don't want any of my news to come from flat earthers. But if all of my news (or all of my friends) share the same set of political biases, I'll end up wrong about important things and unable to connect with people around me.

Its a balancing act. Like every balancing act, you can fail on both sides - by being too open minded (and believing Alex Jones or whatever), or by being too closed minded.

I think if you live in a country where half of the population has some particular view of the world, you're being a bad democratic citizen if you don't take the time to understand that point of view.

[drewrv]

I agree, but the solution is to consume a variety of news sources rather than expecting some perfect formula from one.

[josephg]

Hoping that people consume a variety of news sources sounds naively optimistic to me. And when a single news station 100% caters to their audience's biases, you end up in situations like Fox News knowingly lying to their audience over the idea that the election was stolen. (If they told the truth as they saw it, they would have lost viewers. So they chose to back Trump's lie.)

I think its much healthier when news sources actively struggle against the pressure to be an echo chamber. And be self aware enough to know their own biases & make them clear to their readers. I also like hearing the reasonable arguments against their position: "We endorse candidate A, but here are some reasonable criticisms of A that their opponents bring up."

The Economist does this. Other commenters in this thread mention the New York Times does this. Generally, I want to follow journalists who know more about the topic than I do, and can help me see a bigger picture.