Seeing a lot of discussion from progressive friends about “expanding their news universe” to understand conservative perspectives.
I talk about my political history sometimes (grew up conservative, volunteered in GOP campaigns, published a christian-right zine for years)
What I don’t talk about as much: though my beliefs + views changed a lot over time, I’ve worked to stay in the loop re: conservative media.
Worth remembering: liberals have not “walled themselves off” from conservative news. Conservatives left, and built their own networks.
Conservative media is an explicit reaction to the distrust and rejection of the ill-defined “Mainstream Media.”
That inherent distrust of the mainstream does not inherently invalidate conservative media’s own trustworthiness, mind you.
But it’s critical to keep in remember that community trust is earned by “countering the mainstream perspective.”
Like all movements and subcultures defined in-opposition-to, it lends itself to wave after wave of more-hardcore-than-thou positioning.
In addition, it means large swaths of right-wing media are commentary/critique of the mainstream, rather than original reporting/thought.
Even when the “mainstream” media cover a story, and take great pains to “represent both sides,” the RW narrative must be in-opposition.
The hueristics used by progressive friends to evaluate news trustworthiness are generally unrelated to those used by RW friends.
In many cases, the signals-of-trustworthiness are literally inverted. Imagine a world where an FDA label on food is taken as a bad sign.
This is not to say that there aren’t REALLY good, really solid sources of conservative news, commentary, and analysis.
But the people who are passing around “hillary sold guns to ISIS: SHOCKING PROOF” stories on Facebook are not getting them from NRO/AmCon.
I totally encourage friends to find and read and follow sources of news and opinion they don’t see eye to eye with.
But remember that, as with media false-equivalence, what you will get is not a “truth in the middle” understanding of the news.
Rather, you will gain insight into what other people understand to be true. Sometimes right, sometimes wrong, sometimes just “WTF?”
And — just like you (hopefully) do with mainstream and progressive news & commentary, seek different viewpoints inside the right.
Sometimes it’ll be WTF: heated debates over whether Obama is a SECRET muslim, or whether the media is just ignoring his OVERT Muslim beliefs
But just as often it will reveal rivalries, unspoken presuppositions, alternative conservative views with which you share common ground, etc.