By Mary Fahnestock-Thomas, Hamilton
We Montanans tend to pride ourselves on our independence, right? Including our independent thinking? Then how is it possible that so many people here (and elsewhere) seem to watch only Fox News? Isn’t that like watching only CNN? Wouldn’t you expect to miss some things that might prove to be important to you and yours?
Any internet search for “US media leanings” will turn up plenty of opinions and charts and graphs, so there are lots of media outlets to choose from, whatever your own leanings, and most or all of them are at least partially available on the net. I prefer newspapers over television, because it’s too easy to get sucked into the sensational video clips that our 24-hour news channels rely on. So I like to browse at https://www.refdesk.com/paper.html, which is free and covers individual states, countries, and the world, and which means I am free to look at what I want and it doesn’t always have to be the same.
If you go to the doctor and the diagnosis sounds serious, don’t you really want to get a second opinion before committing yourself to surgery or whatever? Isn’t the running of the country pretty serious? Sometimes even a matter of life and death? So let’s demonstrate our real attachment to independent thought by actively seeking out different opinions and, well, thinking.