My News Diet

When I was a kid, my Dad read the newspaper every morning and watched the local news at seven o’clock every night. My mom, on the other hand, is addicted to celebrity gossip and reads People magazine regularly. I was always up to date on current news. Now, after leaving home three years ago, my news diet has slimmed down greatly. Although I try to keep up on the news as much as possible, I would rather be watching Glee.

Today, I get most of my news off the news sources I follow on Twitter. Anymore, I think this is a very common way people get their news. With the advancement of technology and the popularity of social media, I don’t think there is a more efficient way to get news.

The main news sources I follow on Twitter are: the Casper Star Tribune, USA Today and E! News.

I use the Casper Star Tribune because I like to keep up on local, Wyoming news. I read the USA Today because I like the way the writers at the USA Today write. They keep things short and to the point. I read E! News because I like to keep up on celebrity gossip and I think it’s the least crude.

I have a hard time beleiving that any news source is completely unbiased. Although some sources are definitely worse than other (Fox News) I think it is impossible for any writer to write totally unbiased. I have never thought that the Casper Star was biased in any extreme way, but I have heard complaints from a few people about their “liberal” views. I don’t read enough and keep up with politics well enough to form strong opinions on whether or not USA Today is biased or slanted. I trust these two sources greatly because they have never written or done anything to make me feel differently about the sources.

As I mentioned above, I find E! News to be very informative. But, this is the only entertainment site I would ever trust reading. Although the news source is usually used for entertainment purposes only, a lot of the time I find out important information from this source before any other. It is informative because it doesn’t focus solely on entertainment and includes important world events that every news source reports on.

I don’t talk about the news to other people very often. If I do talk about the news, I usually talk to my fiancé or my family. I talk to my fiancé about interesting and unusual news. Just this morning we were talking about an article I read in the Casper Star about a meeting between the Ku Klux Klan and the NAACP. When I talk to my family about news, it is usually about politics or world events. We often times disagree on these issues, because I have a slightly more liberal opinion than the majority of my family.

Meeting between members of the NAACP and a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Photo: Casper Star Tribune

I could improve my diet by expanding my news sources and reading more about politics and international news. I try to read the New York Times, mainly because we get it free on campus, and I have a hard time reading the entire articles. I would like to start reading more of the New York Times because I think it is very trustworthy and can be very informative.