I think it’s important to not have firm opinions on every issue, and be extremely wary of anyone who does. I have noticed many traditional media outlets have been leaning ever more heavily on opinion pieces in the post-print media age. They cost nothing to produce while drawing undue amounts of attention when the presenter is someone charismatic.

But at least they are marked as opinion pieces, which suggests there is at least some modicum of effort to maintain journalistic integrity by labelling them as such. If you get all your news listening to some guy ranting away in a podcast or whatever, that is all too likely nothing but opinion with zero fact-checking to back it up. Sometimes it’s not even logically self-consistent.

One thing I do sometimes is approach news following a cybersecurity-style challenge/response paradigm. You think to yourself “I want to know why X seems to be the case, and am going to research it.” This contrasts to simply doomscrolling and having an algorithm decide what to push at you.

But circling back to my initial point, it’s ok to not have everything sorted out in your head. For example, here in Canada, much of the news at the moment is focused on tense trade negotiations with the US. News outlets go around asking what the guy on the street thinks. Should we play hardball and not make any concessions amid the threat of tariffs? Or should give up some ground to give businesses a little more breathing room? If someone were to ask me my opinion, I would respectfully say that I do not have one. How should I know how the backroom negotiations are going? I can only hope that something positive will emerge from them, but I don’t have the knowledge to weigh in on such things.

Anyway, this is all just my opinion… ;)