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Finding Independent News Sources

News consumers need to find and use sources that are not easily intimidated.

                                       Ann Telnaes

Recent decisions by the Washington Post, CNN, New York Times, ABC/Disney and CBS raise concerns about whether the legacy press will become supplicants to Donald Trump.  Reports indicate that CBS is considering a court settlement with Trump in order “to reduce friction with the incoming administration.” And in some cases key corporate leaders have shown excessive deference to this new President who governs by intimidation. A case in point is, veteran and award-winning political cartoonist Anne Telnes, who recently quit The Washington Post after an editor axed this political cartoon.  Post owner Jeff Bezos, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman are pictured: the same group who showered Trump with cash and  given special seating with other moguls at the Inaugural. Add in Google’s rapid capitulation on Trump’s whim to rename the Gulf of Mexico, and it is clear MAGA thinking is going mainstream even in among media organizations once known for their robust defenses of the First Amendment. The thin edge of the wedge here is the realization that some organizations have lost their useful skepticism, verging toward coverage of politics  that seems to emphasize compliance rather than independence.

Many news organizations are still staffed by able journalists who should be allowed to do their work uninhibited. Even so, with a leader who has painted targets on their backs, it seems wise for news consumers to include organizations that are less easily intimidated.

If you are a cable subscriber, you have access to a variety of news sources. Many carry documentaries and news in English on Youtube and extended cable with refreshingly different perspectives. France 24, and DW (Germany) stand out.

A source is judged “reliable” and “independent” because it is committed to reporting facts and using authentic experts who understand the rules of argument or evidence.  When in doubt, try “triangulating” from three different sources and note where their reporting overlaps.

The list below includes usually credible news gathering from reporters based inside and outside the United States. Others would probably have a somewhat different list, but all still show journalistic independence:

  • DW
  • France 24
  • Associated Press
  • The Guardian
  • Politico
  • BBC
  • CBC
  • Wall Street Journal
  • CNN
  • Reuters

These sources that function more or less as dailies. More specialized groups who do investigative journalism include The Atlantic, ProPublica and Vox. Those looking for the many critical assessments to offset Trump’s alternate realities might try the Washington Monthly, the New Yorker, MSNBC or Harpers.

Beware of aggregators like Youtube, X, Reddit, Facebook, or Instagram. They may sometimes feature reliable sources. But they are generally not in the business of expecting high journalistic standards from their contributors.

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The New Polio Challenge

In the mid-1950s, Americans anxiously waited for the first vaccine to stop a highly infectious disease that left thousands of children paralyzed.

There is irony in living in an information-rich age that still allows bubbles of completely looney falsehoods. By nature, humans are fantasists and often uncritical thinkers. If vaccine resistance has taken many of us by surprise, it is perhaps because we thought we understood the power of widely available and credible medical advice. But ask members of our species about material causes for a particular result, and some will manage to weave together alternate narratives that convert a rare exception into the rule. Add in some conspiracy thinking and suddenly routine protocols for dealing with fast-spreading diseases can be reimagined as partisan ploys designed to destroy personal freedom.

In 1900 one of ten American children died before their first birthday.

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Too many Americans have forgotten hard truths that recent generations understood. In the span of our grandparent’s lives one of ten American children never made it to their first birthday. The causes have faded from our discourse because of vastly improved treatments, especially vaccines. In the not-so-distant past children died from measles, tuberculosis, diphtheria, scarlet fever, and whooping cough.

The eradication of polio is an especially telling case. Many were permanently disabled by polio. The stories of Americans as diverse as Franklin Roosevelt and  Senator Mitch McConnell include accounts of hardship created by this cruel form of viral sabotage.  Polio was so common in after World War II it was not unusual to keep children from any swimming pool.

In the mid-1950s, Americans anxiously lined up their children for the first vaccine against the highly infectious disease that left thousands of children paralyzed. As medical historian David Oshinsky noted,

If you had to pick a moment as the high point of respect for scientific discovery, it would have been then, After World War II, you had antibiotics rolling off the production line for the first time. People believed infectious disease was [being] conquered. And then this amazing vaccine is announced. People couldn’t get it fast enough.

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By early 1960, polio in the U.S. had been all but eliminated.  The CDC reports that three doses are up to 99% effective. In 1954 I was one of the eight-year-old “polio pioneers” that got the vaccine, but also had some side effects. I was still far better off with the new treatment than the prospect of paralysis.

But this is not 1954. The COVID pandemic of 2000 soon turned into an unforeseen experiment in how to manage the rapid transmission of a another virus, while fighting off scores of misleading social media messages. As it has turned out, and in spite of advances in immunology, helpful medical advice would have to compete with the lightning-dissemination of misinformation, frequently springing from fantasies that a Hollywood screenwriter would have thought too outrageous. Perhaps eight to ten percent of the population want unrealistic guarantees of perfect safety, with anything less understood as a dire sign of malfeasance. Their skepticism has been fed by individuals like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is likely to become the secretary of health and human services in spite of having no medical background. Against all evidence, he believes that it is “a mythology” that the vaccines mostly eradicated polio. He would make the drugs optional: the reverse of a perfect response, since a weakened strain in vaccinated individuals can more easily take hold in the unimmunized population.

Overlay this resistance to newer fantasies that political treatments are surreptitious tools of dominance, and suddenly medical staffs have been forced to also deal with the disabling ignorance of parents. Again, COVID is a cautionary story. Thousands went from hospital ICUs to their graves with the belief that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was a governmental plot. As this new administration will find out, willful Ignorance can be life-threatening. It is appropriate to worry about kids today who may face the same fate of children a generation ago.