News in the age of social media
Illustration by Amber Hashmi.
Evan Voldal, Contributing Writer
Subscriptions to the nation’s five largest newspapers will cost you about $71 a month. What if you don’t want to break the bank? Or get all your news from legacy media organizations?
This is around the time when you tell me none of this matters because you get your news from TikTok. To that, I would say you are not alone — 39% of adults under 30 and another 19% aged 30 to 49 years old regularly got their news from TikTok in 2024. The study made no mention of the amount of people who received their news from TikTok and went on to conduct research elsewhere, according to Pew Research Center.
I find those numbers staggering and quite frankly, frightening. Every second of every day, something newsworthy happens in a hundred or more different places around the world. Each of those events can have an impact on others, creating the tangled web of causes and effects that we call current events. We live in a complex world. Some issues are not as black and white as others.
Yet, social media has a tendency to simplify things. Information gets omitted, whether malice is intended or not — or is framed a certain way to further a specific point. It gets messy quickly.
That is why journalism is a discipline. It is a full-time job to sift through everything the world throws at us and curate it into a digestible and factual piece of writing. It takes integrity and trust, which, in turn, takes time to cultivate. I am of the mind that most people who hop on social media to rant about the state of the world have not earned my trust and you should be skeptical of them too.
Due to journalism’s innate complexity, it is important to be able to recognize when someone is a professional reporter. It is absolutely fine and good to go on social media and express your personal opinion on what is happening in the world. All I am advocating for is to think critically, analyze what you hear and read and to seek out trustworthy sources.
Right off the bat, I want to recommend Ken Klippenstein, an independent journalist who works primarily through the app Substack. Some of Klippenstein’s recent actions that made waves include the publishing of the Vice President JD Vance dossier and alleged murderer Luigi Mangione’s manifesto.
Next is Drop Site. Launched by Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim in 2024, both veteran investigative journalists, Drop Site has published some of the most hard-hitting reporting on the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Palestine, including interviews with officials from Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Grim also co-hosts the show “Counter Points” with fellow journalist Emily Jashinsky, which airs on the Breaking Points YouTube channel. The two have great chemistry, which is essential as the premise of the show sees the ideologically opposed Grim and Jashinsky discuss the most important news of the day.
My last recommendation is a podcast, KCWR’s “Left, Right & Center.” Part of the NPR podcast network, it is hosted by David Greene, an experienced radio broadcast journalist. Greene moderates discussion between two guests on opposite sides of the political spectrum about the news of the week. After, each guest is given a short amount of time to monologue about a topic of their choosing.
It is important to note that you will not agree with everything these people have to say. That is the point.
Living in a democracy necessitates compromise. Compromise is predicated on being well-informed, listening to differing opinions and opening dialogues in good-faith. I would like to emphasize that last point. It is imperative to enter discussions in good-faith. Otherwise, you run the risk of entrenching others in their beliefs, which only serves to produce the opposite of the intended result.
None of us live in a vacuum. If we are to see this country finally live up to the principles it was founded on, which I desperately wish we do, then we must talk with each other. Not as enemies defined only by party affiliation or political leanings, but as fellow human beings who wish to see the world become a better place.
Editor’s note: The news recommendations given are representative of the columnist and are not endorsements from The Commonwealth Times.
