> most of the news is about topics that we have no control over

> news is highly repetitive

> what is presented as news is actually opinion

Agreed on all points.

A few years ago I went through a period of wanting to get down to the truth on major stories in the news. Almost on a daily basis I would watch/read the same story form sources with different political biases. After that, I would look for actual source documents to verify claims. If it was a crime story, there would be police reports. If it was about a law or treaty, there would be a document trail. Etc. I kept notes.

I would then report my findings, in detail, to friends, mostly on FB.

What I discovered was that nearly 100% of the news stories out there fell in a range between absolutely fake and seriously distorted. It was very rare to find objectively accurate reporting on anything. I would venture a guess that the only thing that is reported with some accuracy in news broadcasts are road conditions and traffic. It's that bad.

The amount of work it took to do this was surprising. One thing became certain, this was not sustainable. I took it on as a hobby/learning-experience. I think I was done in about a year. Even that was too long.

The other surprising finding was how otherwise-intelligent people received the reality that what they believed to be true was, in fact, either distorted or a complete fabrication. This is the part that hurt me the most. I lost friends over this. Seriously.

What is it that makes people, even those holding advanced degrees in the sciences, simply refuse to accept reality when presented to them in very clear detail? I don't know. It is incredibly frustrating to run into an "emperor has no clothes" situation with people you have thought to be capable, intelligent, analytical and objective for decades.

I try to hold no political bias and do not label myself with a political party at all. I think that's truly dumb, no political party can be right 100% of the time or about anything, I don't care who they might be. And yet, some of what I saw was the kind of deep attachment to ideology that you can only label as being a result of indoctrination.

This is what I think the algorithms that present information to people surfing the web, FB, whatever, have caused a lot of damage to society. On FB, I watched, as two family members went at each other from different sides of the political spectrum. One became extreme left and the other extreme right. Prior to spending a lot of time on FB they were the best of friends (siblings). After about a year of being very active on FB, each having made a descent into ideologically opposite resonant chambers, their relationship suffered serious damage, perhaps even permanently.

News of this kind does not deserve that label. And, in my opinion, does not deserve the protections afforded in the US constitution through freedom of the press. I don't believe the intent was to protect liars and manipulators. I think this has to change, I just don't know how. If someone like me can spend a few hours on a story and get down to the truth, news organizations, with their staff and resources can do the same or better.

From my perspective, after having determined that nearly 100% of what we are told is twisted garbage, this kind of thing needs to be criminalized. The reason I say this is that today's technology has enabled powerful lies to reach hundreds of millions of people, billions of people, around the world in an instant. This is the major change that has, again, in my opinion, tilted the scale from being lax about misinformation to having to be very strict.

From my perspective, lies and manipulation should not enjoy legal protection at all and they should come with severe civil and potentially criminal consequences based on scale. A television network has the kind of scale that would require them to be factual in their reporting. A local neighborhood newspaper or an individual without much reach is a different matter. What I say to my circle of friends is very different from the constitutionally protected category represented by major global and international media networks.

How about opinion? Sure, no problem. However, when purported news outlets engage in delivering manipulated opinion pieces nearly 100% of the time they should no longer be able to hide behind constitutional protection. If they cause someone, anyone, damage, they ought to be legally liable for it. In other words, you can't say someone is a murderer and spread that into the minds of tens or hundreds of millions of people and then claim it was just opinion. You've done damage. The laws should not protect you from the consequences of your actions.

Anyhow, a bit of a rant, I know. It pains me because the internet was supposed to launch an era of enlightenment. Yes, of course, it has done great good for humanity, and yet in this one domain I think I can say it has been a massive failure. There's probably more misinformation out there (in terms of news) than factual reporting. The problem is that it takes hours per story to get to the truth and almost nobody has the time or desire to engage in that kind of research. Repeat a lie enough times and it becomes the truth, at least in the minds of those without the time, skills or inclination to try and challenge what they are being told.