You are what you eat.

We require a balanced (news) diet.

March 8, 2025

The dictionary defines an algorithm as a set of instructions designed to solve a problem or perform a task. Social media companies like Facebook and Twitter utilize algorithms to do exactly that and to promote their business model, which is to keep our eyeballs glued to their screens and to attempt to keep us engaged with their product, and their advertising, for as long as possible. Online news media platforms are no different. The longer we remain on the platform, the more likely we are to engage with advertisers on that platform. Algorithms are extremely successful at accomplishing this task, which is why online destinations like Facebook Marketplace have grown to dominate their space, while the classified section of your newspaper no longer exists. Unfortunately, your favorite local newspaper might not exist either, because their business model depended on classified advertising revenues.

The way that the algorithm succeeds at its task is by continuously refreshing our screens with content that it believes we want to see. They do this in a number of ways. The most reliable indicator of our preferences is the content that we have selected to read in the past. In the case of search engines like Google, they look for what topics we have searched in the recent past. If you have searched for information on river cruising in Europe, you can rest assured that you will start seeing content from cruise companies offering cruising vacations, along with luggage and airline packages to get you there. There comes a time when you have more information than you need, and the algorithm starts to become an annoying presence. Who among us has not been followed around the internet by a pair of shoes, or a watch that you looked at online?

Sometimes social media platforms intuit our preferences by our past behavior. We give them enough information to guess at those preferences. We often give them this information unwittingly when we play “games” on Facebook asking things like, “how many places have you visited”, or “how many of these activities have you done in your life”? These are all algorithmic tools strategically designed to learn more about your preferences and your age and your lifestyle. (Now don’t you feel silly, Facebook friends?)

Sometimes the social media algorithms trick us into disclosing personal information. Sometimes we go out of our way to do it to ourselves. All online media companies attempt to keep us engaged with their product – to keep us on their platform and not “click away” to another feed. They will show you what they assume you want to know, based upon your past behavior— your preferences in products, or in restaurants, in news, and—importantly— in political commentary. When you search for news about a specific current news topic, your search engine, probably Google, will return a menu of choices from different sources. You might see stories about your requested topic from the Wall Street Journal and the NY Times, from the Washington Post and the Washington Examiner, from Fox News and from MSNBC. People are predisposed to read content that will affirm their own, already fully formed opinion and worldview. If you regularly click on MSNBC, the algorithm will assume that you have a liberal bias, and on future searches they will show you more results from MSNBC, and fewer if any results from Fox News. If you regularly select results from Fox News, the algorithm will assume that you have a conservative bias and will display results that you will probably want to read. People who read the conservative leaning Washington Examiner will be steered toward conservative Fox News content. Washington Post readers will be steered towards the kindred spirit, New York Times. Eventually, liberal readers will see no suggestions from Fox News and conservative searchers will see no results from MSNBC. At the end of that process, the result is two feedback bubbles of singularly partisan content, each completely “voluntary” and “self-selected”. We do it to ourselves.

When we all live on a diet of exclusively partisan content, there is little hope of ever reaching a consensus on anything. We have no idea why the other person feels the way they do. You may totally disagree with the content or the political persuasion on MSNBC or Fox News, but if we never see what they are talking about, there is little hope of ever having a thoughtful, informed conversation with anyone who disagrees with your worldview. Conversely, they probably have no idea why you feel the way you do. There is no way to find common ground if you do not know where the other person’s ground begins and ends.

These partisan bubbles have an insidious outcome for all of the obvious reasons, but some are not so obvious. I saw a poll this morning on CNN in which participants were asked how they felt about the current DOGE cuts to government programs and spending. Over 80% of Republicans approved of Elon Musk’s cost cutting initiatives and 80% of Democrats disapproved. That divergence of opinion is not just based on Republican “small government” preferences and a Democratic belief in the societal benefits of a government sponsored safety net, but rather, or at least in addition to, the information that each group digests daily on the topic. Fox News viewers are led to believe that US foreign aid is a waste of their tax dollars, spent to support corrupt foreign dictatorships instead of on needed causes closer to home. MSNBC viewers are being reminded daily of the medical research centers that just lost their funding because of DOGE. It should surprise absolutely no one that the two groups feel the way that they do, given their intake of news.

Politicians not only use these media resources to their benefit, but they also provide the content, along with some gasoline for the fire. Look no further than this week’s Presidential address to Congress, and the way that President Trump’s speech and the surrounding side show was subsequently reported.

Included in the gallery as President Trump’s guests at Tuesday night’s speech were the grieving mothers of Laken Riley and Jocelyn Nungaray, two young women who were murdered by three members of a Venezuelan street gang, Tren De Aragua, migrants who were here in the US illegally. Trump has used stories of migrant crimes for years to substantiate his false narrative that the migrants seeking refuge here are probably all criminals - rapists and murderers and drug dealers, when, in fact, as a group, migrants are much less likely to be criminals than your average US citizen. Trump has never been one to let facts get in the way of a good story line, so he repeats this fabrication over and over, starting with his infamous Trump Tower golden escalator speech in 2015, criticizing Mexico: “They are sending criminals, they are sending rapists, and some, I assume, are good people”. He continues fanning the flames, singling out a Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio, this time for “eating our pets”. On Tuesday night he once again tried to make it look like migrants are the reason for our burgeoning violent crime rate, which is fallacious for two reasons: violent crime has dropped precipitously since the 1990’s and more importantly, according to the American Immigration Council, “…immigrants—including undocumented immigrants—are less likely to commit crimes than the U.S.-born. This is true at the national, state, county, and neighborhood levels, and for both violent and non-violent crime.” That reality does not fit the Trump or Fox News narrative, so on Wednesday morning, the Fox News large type banners at the top of their home page read:

Dem and GOP voters have starkly different reactions to Trump honoring young girl brutally killed by illegals

Democrats unimpressed by Trump’s gesture to family of young girl killed by illegal migrants

I do not mean to trivialize the horror or grief that these families are dealing with. Sadly, they are also being used as pawns to illustrate a patently false narrative, that migrants are raising the statistical probability of being the victim of a violent crime. That is provably false.

This is a conspiracy theory, which like all good conspiracy theories is based upon a kernel of truth. Someone was indeed murdered, and it was a migrant who did it. That is where the truth in this story ends. The reality is that you are much more likely to be violated by an ex-boyfriend than a migrant, illegal or otherwise.

The morning after Trump’s Tuesday night’s speech, over at MSNBC.com there was absolutely no mention of migrant murderers. This was their lede story:

“At congressional address, Trump told Chief Justice Roberts he ‘won’t forget.’”

What do you think that was all about?

Other media conspiracy theories are born of the same bad seed. A current news item is the measles outbreak in Texas. Under-vaccinated communities are the epicenter of the outbreak. Vaccine skepticism is the byproduct of a conspiracy theory born and bred in right wing media. Like all good conspiracy theories, it is fabricated—but based upon that one small kernel of truth, which is then misrepresented as statistically significant. People fall under the spell of vaccine skepticism because they have heard of an example – in most cases an accurate example – of an individual who had a negative reaction to a vaccine. The story of that negative reaction, perhaps even a death, will take root and spread in the media, usually right-wing media, and it will be replayed on a loop over and over, eventually convincing people that they should not get vaccinated. This one negative outcome might, in fact, be a true story, but the untold and most important part of the story, left untold, are the thousands of people who will die if they remain unvaccinated, and the thousands of people who will not die if they do get vaccinated. The kernel of truth is usually true—a few people will have a bad reaction to a vaccine—but it is misleading, and in too many cases, deadly. This is what is happening right now in Texas, and children are dying because of it.

As hard as it will be, we need to steel ourselves with a stiff drink and endure a session of “opposition programming”, whatever that means to you. You may still not understand what your crazy uncle was talking about last Thanksgiving, but you might hear the kernel of truth that is at the center of the current conspiracy theory. Use it wisely.

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