Timothy Snyder: Most Americans Live in a ‘News Desert’

‘We know from history of Russia, this is one step towards authoritarianism’

EXCERPT:

SNYDER: “If it comes to our own mental hygiene, one of the things that we need to do less of is look at screens and do more of is read newspapers and read books, just so that we're not constantly all caught in the same social media algorithmically driven frenzy all of the time and so that we can reflect and reach each other. As a government, this goes back to the previous question, one of the things that we’re missing is a moonshot for local media. We are living in a news desert. Most Americans don’t have access to reported news. Most Americans, therefore, don’t have access to basic — the basic facts of their own lives. We know from the history of Russia, which you mentioned, that this is one of the steps towards authoritarianism. People lose local factuality, then you only have big centralized media, some do it better, some do it worse, but without local factuality people are drawn into national polarizing conversations, they're drawn into fiction and into conspiracy theories. This is something we need to head off. Whatever people’s political views are, we need to give them the basic reality of their own lives so that they can make decisions starting about the things that matter most with themselves and their friends and their families.”

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