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You Have to Read Your News. Here’s How

Reading Time: 15 minutes.

An RSS logo above a red and blue swirl and staticThere are some shows that I know I should stop watching halfway through an episode. That’s because some shows always end on a cliffhanger, convincing you to play the next one right away. These were shows made for the streaming era, and they’re made to be your new addiction. That sort of binge mentality keeps you stuck on a piece of content, jumping to the next after it, and staying in an app’s ecosystem. It’s like popcorn, potato chips, or TikTok videos. You just can’t pull yourself away.

It might be fun for less important media, but content you’re looking to learn something from, it’s no way to actually learn anything. Imagine watching documentaries that were full of “cliffhangers,” and you jumped between them faster than you could memorize what you learned. They’d be pointless. Background noise to put static in your mind and pass the time while you laze on your couch. A weird cliffhanger before every commercial. Actually, now that I think of it, that reminds me of the conspiracy videos that plague The History Chanel.

Yet our news so often comes from 24/7 programs that aim to keep you glued to them perpetually or addictive tidbits to scroll through in apps. Why are we content consuming our news like conspiracy theory videos and made-for-streaming TV shows?

News shouldn’t be something that needs to pull you in with hooks, emotional manipulation, or scare tactics. We consume it because we should be an informed populace. We live in a… somewhat democratic country. You might live in a more democratic one than mine, especially now. If you’re going to vote, you have a responsibility to be informed. With great power comes great… requirements to be informed. To be best informed, you’re going to have to ditch the media that’s “entertainment acting like news,” and actually read your news.

Yes, read. Because if you’re going to remember it and learn something, cut out the bias, and get on with your day, you’ll have to read it. Don’t worry, I have some tips for that too. Not all online news is the same, but here’s how you can find good sources and follow breaking stories as they come in.

Read Your News

You don’t have to become a complete news reading convert overnight. Plenty of people get their news from multiple sources, and it’s fine. However, you should focus on getting the majority of your news in written form. Here, it’s easy to split out tone and bias, it’s faster than getting your news from sensationalized news programs, and you’ll remember it better. It’ll give you a better chance to think about each news story, absorb it, form your own opinions, and think about how the stories of the day will affect your community.

There are multiple reasons for reading your news over listening to it via podcasts or watching it via 24/7 TV news programs or social media videos. The biggest is just how we can process information better when we read it. Yes, you can pause and rewind a video or podcast, but engagement for written material is higher and easier. Studies have shown that people remember details of written news better than televised or audio-only formats. Video and audio tends to push listeners to remember only the most sensationalized and emphasized details of what they’ve learned. Meanwhile, social media can trick you into feeling engaged when you share or like content, leading social media users to be less engaged and less informed than those who get their news elsewhere. Those getting their news from social media also get more fake news.

Reading gives you time to think about stories, not just hear the parts you want to hear, the ones that confirm your bias, or the sensationalized details made to keep you hooked. Reading helps pull bias out of media, and all media carries bias. As a result, reading is the best way to ensure you’re not being manipulated, even if that manipulation could come from your own biases.

Finding Sources

The tough part today is just finding good sources. Traditional media is owned by billionaires who seek to limit the editorial slant of the organization to pull it to the right and their favor. Previous recommendations like The Washington Post are harder to make when hearing how many journalists have left the paper over its billionaire owner’s mandates. Meanwhile the New York Times has published opt-eds encouraging violence, spreading misinformation and hate speech against minorities, and tries to pretend to be “both sides” while providing no context to misinformation.

So where do you go? The answer is to look for truth, and keep your eye on bias. All sources of news will carry some bias, your goal isn’t to find bias-free sources, only be aware of the biases they carry. More science-based journals will contain a pro-science bias, which is sharply left-leaning today. Any source of truth will likely have some bias. Find sources that are factual, with minimal bias and sensationalized buzz words, and read multiple sources. My personal favorites are NPR, AP News, Reuters, Politico, and Axios. However, those are far from the complete picture. I have sources for special interests and locations as well. You’ll have to hunt down local sources or sources related to your interests or demographics on your own.

Media Bias Fact Check

But once you find a potential source, how do you check that it’s reliable? You could spend hours pouring over its stories, writing down instances where they exaggerated a story, or omitted facts from a story for impact’s sake. You could compare dozens of sources against each other. Or you could just go to mediabiasfactcheck.com. You should still read through your sources and look for items that stand out, but Media Bias Fact Check is a great shortcut.

This website (and browser add-on) is made by and for the news-obsessed. They cover various websites and help users find out if something has left or right bias, as well as how factual their reporting is. I highly recommend checking any source you come across against it, and consider installing the add-on to make sure you have a reminder about political bias on every news website you access.

Other Tools

MBFC isn’t the only game in town though. If you’re looking to get an idea of how news stories are reported from far-right sources that you normally wouldn’t see, you may want to try out a service like AllSides or Ground News. Both can help share stories from both sides of the spectrum, showing how a single story is reported differently depending on who is doing the reporting. These services may disagree on what is left or right when they’re close to the center, but the important aspect is ensuring you’re understanding what the other side is saying. You’ll gain a greater understanding of media sensationalism and propaganda if you read from the extremes on occasion, as long as you’re ensuring you have context. Some of the sources they provide that are only slightly away from “center” are actually far more biased, as you can confirm via MBFC or your own research.

Whatever you do, remember that no one source is without flaws. You are not gathering the perfect news sources. You are gathering predominantly factual sources that may have some small bias to the left or right to gain an understanding of your own blindspots and how media uses word choices, fact omissions, or other tools to bend your perception of the truth.

Avoid Traps!

Try to avoid sources known for sensationalism, like Fox, Brietbart, the Daily Wire, CNN, or MSNBC. Especially those that rely on 24/7 reporting to keep people sucked in to the news (and their advertising) at all times. These can serve as sources occasionally, but only if you’ve checked their claims against more reputable sources who aren’t craving the attention of your eyeballs.

Another thing to remember is that your local media programs may also have bias. Wither it’s video or local newspapers, they will likely carry their own biases. In fact, shortly after Sinclair Media, a notable right-wing news organization, purchased a majority of local news outlets, stories flooded the internet of their right-wing bias and even their identical scripts filling local news with more right-leaning propaganda. So, even for local news, make sure you have multiple sources of information, and focus on reading your news regardless, to help minimize this bias. Anything that’s trying hard to scare you should be in a horror movie, not your news.

It’ll Hurt

One thing people don’t expect but quickly discover: sometimes it hurts to read something from a wildly different point of view. The hateful opinions, the misinformation, the lack of facts. They’re not saying what you expect them to say! Manage your own mental health. Yes, you should know what the other side is saying, even if it isn’t factual (although, you should always double check that). However, don’t torture yourself. Reading hate speech or praise for a politician you see as a despicable person may be difficult, so don’t over-do it. Just dip your toes in the water on occasion to make sure the water isn’t completely boiling over.

However, one thing is certain. Avoid relying on Meta’s feeds. They’re interaction-driven, which can mean they’ll suggest stories to you that will make you angry specifically to keep you engaged. TikTok will be the equivalent of Soma, leaving you in a comfortable dopamine-induced lukewarm bath. Even if you see videos that make you mad, you’ll just swipe to the next one. YouTube will drive you down a deep right rabbit hole if you’re not careful. Just because it riles you up, good or bad, does not make it good research.

Improve Your Media Literacy

One thing I’ve always asked myself is, “Do I agree with this 100%?” Am I enthusiastically agreeing with this? If I do, and it sounds too good to be true, it often is. When you just feel like a story is begging you to share it with all your friends, it might be worth checking. These can include stories that “debunk” proven phenomena, from climate change to gender, as well as stories that appeal to the more vicious side of liberals now, who want to see MAGAs suffer.

A friend sent me a photo recently of a “Trump supporter being taken by ICE.” Right away, this felt like the kind of ragebait that spreads on social media. On top of that, the image’s text seemed a little off. Just too perfect for the fabric it was on. Turns out, it was a stock image that had been manipulated, a fake headline added to the “screenshot.”

Data, statistics, and study “results” can be another trap. It’s all too easy to see someone’s reporting confirm your biases backed up with data as an absolute truth. But when methodology, trends, and other data points are hidden from you, with only tidbits of results drizzled out to back up claims, you should question that data. A perfect example came across my feed recently. A friend shared a Politico story on how the economy is worse than the government statistics state. And perhaps that’s true. After all, I’ve struggled to keep a job amid constant layoffs in the past few years more than I ever have at any point in my life, and I’m far from alone. I found myself quickly nodding along.

However, the author’s own data (via lisep.org/tru) show that the high unemployment figures he reports on are a small part of the story. Because, by his own measure, the unemployment is significantly lower than it’s been in decades, and trended down during the Biden administration. He used a single piece of data, without context, to sell a story. The data in full didn’t fit his narrative, so he omitted the full story to use a single data point to tell a story.

Ask what the point is for a piece of media, always. Every creation has a purpose. “What are they trying to sell me?” It could be an idea, or perhaps marketing for a think tank. You can’t be sure until you ask yourself what their motive is for creating a piece of media and then use that angle to analyze what they’re presenting.

We’re Flawed Too

Questioning your own biases is a great way to get started on your journey towards better media literacy. If it fires you up, but comes from a questionable source, perhaps question it.

Another way to improve your media literacy is simply thinking about media literacy! Find sources that discuss how to improve media literacy. Journalists love ensuring people understand the work they do, and some have even written on it or produced helpful videos. Simply searching for “improving media literacy” can give you plenty of helpful links on how to identify issues like author’s bias, providing simple solutions, appealing to emotions, sensationalism, and more. Ask yourself, who was this media created for, what was the message they wanted me to interpret, who was involved in the creation of this media, were there diverse viewpoints involved, and can it be confirmed factually by other sources? With those in hand, you can figure out if something you’re reading is worth trusting.

Join a Book Club!

You might be wondering what a book club could have to do with reading the news. However, stories are full of subtext. A green light on the other side of a body of water could just be a green light, or it could represent hope and envy, something forever out of reach, old sport.

When you read stories that hold deeper meanings, and discuss these with others, you can find themes and ideas you may have missed. You’ll even find the exploration of subtext and metaphors, which can help you see the context in any news story you read. You will also, especially in a book club setting, hear the opinions of others. Someone may disagree with you, or perhaps they noticed something you didn’t.

Don’t have a group of friends who want to consistently read books and talk about them? That’s… fair. Yeah, it’s hard to come by. However, you have the internet! Read a book and talk about it on Bluesky or Reddit. You can have a little bookclub wherever you go. Want to reflect on the themes yourself more? Check out a summary of the story on Wikipedia or Sparknotes. Here you can find other themes and examples of those themes in the story so you can examine how you thought about it yourself, and how others have interpreted it.

The important part here is to practice reading and comprehending more than the words on the page. To see the meaning between the lines. Many great authors are masters of this. Reading some classics may help you learn to do the same. Try not to read the words in the book in front of you, but the words left off the page as well. Some authors (Hemingway comes to mind) leave moreĀ off the page than on it! Most importantly, just read. Make a habit of it. Read things you don’t agree with. Read things you love. Just read. It’ll make you better at reading everything else.

RSS: Keep it Really Simple, Stupid!

How should you actually go about reading your news? You found sources you liked and now you just have a list of websites you have to frequent? That’s not convenient! Being an informed voter is an important responsibility, and if there’s one thing I know about responsibilities, they’re best when they’re convenient!

News services like Apple News, Microsoft News, Google News, Flipboard, etc, all have similar problems. They put the curation of your news in the hands of someone else. That could introduce bias. You could miss stories, especially those affecting marginalized communities that often don’t get mainstream attention.

What you need is a feed without algorithms. Just the stories as they come in. What you need is RSS.

RSS has no bias. No algorithms. It’s a feed of stories in the order that they appeared online. All the stories are in order, given the same importance in your feed. Follow the sources you like, get the news they report on. Every story, delivered to an easy-to-use app. It could not be more simple than that.

Where to Find Feeds

To use RSS, you’ll need the link to the RSS feed. Many, but not all websites, have them. You can find it on some websites as a small icon, which looks like a wifi symbol turned on its side. Leaf and Core’s is here: https://leafandcore.com/rss. Simple! Some sites that I like for news, frustratingly, lack an RSS feed. Still, at least one of these, Reuters, also has a website you can access. But it’s not the only way to access their content.

You can follow any Bluesky user or even YouTube account via RSS as well. For Bluesky, just add “/rss” to the end of any profile, like so: https://bsky.app/profile/leafandcore.bsky.social/rss and you’ll get an RSS feed of their posts. So, for Reuters, who doesn’t have an RSS feed of their own, you can still follow their Bluesky account here. It’s not quite as good as a direct link, but it’s something! Unfortunately, this means you may not get every Reuters story, only the ones they choose to share. Following an RSS feed directly from the source is always your best choice, but you have options. RSS is versatile, and it’s everywhere. Once you start looking for it, you’ll find most of the sites you trust for news also have an RSS feed so you can stay up to date at all times.

How to Read the Feed

Screenshot of the NetNewsWire RSS reader app, described more belowYou’ve got a list of feeds. Now what? Now it’s time to add those feeds to an RSS reader. My favorite for the past few years has been NetNewsWire. It syncs your read stories across iOS, iPadOS, and macOS over iCloud. It can even try to hunt down feeds for website URLs. However, it’s only available in the Apple ecosystem. Some options for other operating systems includes Feedly, Fluent, Yarr, and Mozilla’s Thunderbird. Yes, it’s an email client, but Thunderbird can also make it easy to add feeds to track news stories almost like you’re subscribing to newsletters… without the ads, tracking, or waiting for updates.

I like to sort my feeds so I have ones for tech news, local news, international news, politics, and more of my niche interests as well. Some blogs I follow post once a month, or less, but I get an indicator by their name as soon as they share something, so even those more thoughtful, less frequent updates still end up on my radar. That alone encourages quality content over quantity. Real reviews and real opinions instead of listicles and other clickbait methods that some websites use to stay afloat. RSS gives you just the stories you want, and it’s a wonderful tool once you start using it.

When to Use News Apps

News apps are another option, but you’ll end up with dozens of apps on your home screen. Outside of the volume of apps you’ll have, using the apps will reveal the editorial priorities of each news organization. I’m sometimes frustrated on these apps, trying to find a story I know had been recently published, but cannot find because it wasn’t deemed “front page news.” Still these news apps serve a purpose, and an annoying one at that: notifications.

Breaking news stories may be important to you. You may want to know exactly when some large “big deal” story breaks. For this, I recommend AP News and Reuters, as well as perhaps NPR, which may also do live radio coverage. You might also think of certain 24/7 media empires and other “always on” news networks, but these tend to send you far more notifications than you’d like. Interaction is their profit-maker, so they’ll send “breaking news” alerts for the silliest of reasons. Anything to get you back into the app. My personal experience with CNN, for example, was bad enough that I deleted the app by the end of the week. I’d do well to remember why, as I sometimes reinstall it, just to be disappointed in what it considers “breaking news.”

It should come as no surprise that the networks made to keep you glued to your TV also want to glue you to your phone. That’s why publicly funded apps or apps with a greater dedication to journalistic integrity should be your primary apps for news outside of RSS.

Read Later Apps?

As news stories pile up, you may start to wonder when you’re going to get the time to read them all. You can leave them in your news reader, marked as unread, but it’s so much easier to mark stories you want to read later, then mark the rest as read. Some have an ability to star or mark them for later reading in the app.

I used to use Pocket for this, but the app has become incredibly anti-user. First, Mozilla discontinued the Mac app. This made saving items on the go for reading later on my computer or using Pocket to organize sources for articles all but useless for me. They force users to use the website or iOS/iPadOS app instead. These have gotten worse though. Loading up the “Home” screen on the Pocket app will instead set you on a page where half is dedicated to a sponsored “Pocket-Worthy Read” and a small section is dedicated to your “Recent Saves.” You have to go to the “Saves” page every time you open the app, like dismissing a pop-up ad. Instead, I’d say use the bookmark feature of your browser.

Some browsers already have “read later” sections. If not, you can just start a bookmark folder for the stories you want to read later. Many browsers sync their bookmarks now. I recommend either Safari or Firefox for this. Yes, Firefox. Though Mozilla killed Pocket, at least Firefox hasn’t become complete trash… yet.

What About Aggregation Apps/Services?

Apps and services, as we’ve discussed already, put the control of curation of your news stories in the hands of someone else. It could be an algorithm made to keep you addicted, scrolling while you chase the dragon, each post giving you just enough dopamine to convince you to keep scrolling, not enough to convince you to put the phone down, like TikTok’s. It could be rage-bait, made to keep you engaged with outrage, like Meta’s. Or, it could be the bias of a think tank, super pac, single billionaire, or anyone else. If you put the job of curation in someone else’s hands, you had better trust them. Frankly? No one in tech has earned that trust.

Other services such as Ground News or Allsides try to bring news together from various sources, and this can be extremely helpful for seeing the news others may be reading. But they fall into a trap. If you’re in a room that’s on fire, and one person says the fire is actually an illusion created by space aliens to convince you to run outside so they can abduct you, and the other person says fire can kill you, we should run or put it out, you probably don’t have to sit down and listen to both arguments for 30 minutes. If you’re not sure what the truth is, you probably want an unbiased fact check. Sadly, you won’t get this in “both sides” journalism. In an effort to appear non-partisan, some of these aggregators, and in fact some long-established news agencies, pull from sources with conspiracies and hate speech. Ground News, for example, shows stories from Breitbart, an extremely biased far-right site with little factual information. Appealing to “both sides” when one side is backed by truth and the other by insanity does not create an “unbiased” view, it elevates the insanity of extremists to the level of legitimacy held by professionals. No service that attempts to put insane conspiracy theories, debunked science, or outright hate speech at the same level of opinions held by professionals deserves your time.

They also add their own bias to what stories they curate and show, and can you really trust any source that sees extremist groups as viable options for news?

Is Social Media That Bad?

There is nuance in all things. I suggested following Reuters via Bluesky in this very article. Of course social media isn’t a universal evil. However, understand the social network you are on can carry bias. Often they hide legitimate news sources due to local laws that may require paying them a fee for using their photos and blurbs to drive interactions on the site. Other times they will promote stories that are going to upset you to drive interaction, or some may simply keep any real discussions of the news, protests, implications of laws, or other content that could lead you to engage in political discourse outside of the app away from your page. Just remember that social media is ruled by algorithms, and they have bias too.

Social media is relatively new, and is something many older pundits didn’t grow up with and understand. They might shoo you away from it universally. This isn’t necessary. Just be considerate about the sources of information you read or view online, and avoid getting trapped in a bubble or a cycle of upsetting news. Understand that most modern social media is made to keep you addicted. Once you see it as a drug, you’ll understand why it’s something you should only use in moderation.

Just Read It!

This might seem like a lot. That’s because it is. This is so much, and I’ve barely even scratched the surface! I often fall into the very same traps I’ve warned about here! So is it hopeless? Yes. It is. You will never become a perfect news reader. You just won’t. Much like the constant pull to the dark side every Jedi must resist, you, too, will have to begin a lifelong journey of resisting sensationalist media. It’s nefarious, it hides in plain sight, it promises you exactly what you want, and it’s not to be trusted. Honestly, the comparison to the Dark Side is almost too easy here.

The important thing is that you need to just read. That’s it. Read. Read a ton. Books, magazines, long-form journalism, short blurbs, Substacks, Medium, and even random technology-focused blogs (ahem). Just read. Because once you know that your media carries bias, you’re going to think about that more as you read. You’re going to get better at this process. Will you ever be perfect? Of course not! Creators will find new ways to deceive you and you’ll find new techniques for detecting those deceptions. But the practice of reading, questioning what media you’re being handed, and seeking out better media will be an improvement on your life and the lives of those around you. You’ll be more informed, more able to discuss issues with people you disagree with without feeling stressed, and even more able to help others see through bias. You can pop bubbles and help people escape cult mentality. It’s basically a superpower. You know, like The Force.

Just use it for good, okay? Because every single person trying to misinform you knows these techniques and tries to obscure them to trick you. The best liars use truth to sell their lies, so approach all media with a mindset of caution. Keep that in mind, and keep reading, and you’ll be fine.

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