"Don't trust mainstream media" doesn't mean you have to turn to even more untrustworthy sources, nor does it mean you can't ever go to mainstream outlets for in

"Don't trust mainstream media" doesn't mean you have to turn to even more untrustworthy sources, nor does it mean you can't ever go to mainstream outlets for information. It just means you have to examine what you're told critically and compare it across sources. I had an epiphany in mid-November 2018. I realized that, despite watching and reading the news on a pretty much daily basis, none of my voting decisions were changing as a result. I examined voting decisions I'd made going back to 2016 and realized none of them were materially changed by watching the news with such regularity and granularity. This isn't to say that I'm set in my ways and never change my viewpoint. Rather, I think it's more a reflection on the fact that political candidates don't tend to change much over short periods of time, so after a certain point watching or reading the news will simply reaffirm what you already know about them rather than introduce fundamentally new information. A politician who had viewpoint X or trait Y yesterday probably still has viewpoint X today or trait Y today; that may not be true in 5 years, but I don't need to be plugged in every single day. I realized I only really need to "check in" periodically and see if the voting landscape has truly changed. When "checking in," I've found I have far less allegiance to a particular source and am more open to checking several and comparing. When you don't follow a particular source almost religiously and only peek in once a week or once every two weeks, the "circus" nature of the media starts becoming alarmingly apparent. The disparity between the calm of real life and the 24/7 chaos and tragedy of the news becomes impossible to ignore. My voting patterns have not changed as a result of my disengagement, but my anxiety/outrage/uneasiness have all went down significantly. I now view my previous habit of watching the media every day as a downright unhealthy addiction.