Five Steps To Stay Informed And Stay Sane

Where and how I get my news as a veteran journalist and mental health advocate

Hello friends.

So.

via Giphy

The President started a new war this week to distract from the ongoing kidnapping, warehousing, and murder of civilians by his paramilitary forces, as well as fresh revelations that his Justice Department tried to cover up accusations that he sexually and physically assaulted a 13 year old child, as part of the investigation into the sex trafficking ring run by his dear friend, and, perhaps, also the plundering of oil by firms associated with bribery schemes in the country we decapitated in January; but maybe what we should really be paying attention to is Trump’s push to subvert the midterms, or China’s new five-year plan and its impact on global decarbonization trends.

Ughhhh. It’s a reasonable question why you or I should try to follow all of this.

One answer is that it’s personal. People I care about are hiding in bomb shelters in Israel, worrying about their relatives in Iran, stranded without flights in and out of Dubai, advocating for US servicemembers across the Middle East, carrying their passport around Minneapolis, dealing with rising home insurance rates in New Orleans, afraid to use a public bathroom in Texas.

Unfortunately, one characteristic of living in a polycrisis is that the news is more personal than we would like it to be. Politics are everywhere, weather can be hazardous to your health, more and more people have basic safety and rights at risk, and we have to stand up for our neighbors or we will be next.

I could say access to factual news is a fundamental building block of a free society, and one that is under threat here in the United States. But it only works if people actually consume the news, and ideally pay for it.

A related answer is that I want to be a “high information” voter.

In the 2024 election, support for Kamala Harris was correlated with attention to the news. Those who paid “a great deal” of attention voted Harris by 6 points; those who paid “none at all” went Trump by 19 points. There was also a definite pattern by quality of news source; “Trump won his biggest margins among those who reported watching Fox News, listening to podcasts, using Facebook, and using Twitter/X.”

See! The world makes sense! With more information, and better information, people make better decisions. They pick the qualified, highly educated and experienced lady who is not racist, a rapist, a fascist, or a compulsive liar.

But if I’m being honest? The real reason I track the news, read articles and listen to podcasts for an hour or two every day is that I’ve been doing it for my whole adult life. Feeling informed calms me down. It helps me order the chaos in my brain and get a handle on what might—emphasis on might—happen next.

About a year ago I wrote about some big-picture tips for reading the news.

I wanted to add some smaller, more detailed rules of thumb that might not be obvious to everyone, that I use when I’m following a breaking news story.

0. Got only 5 minutes? Look up Wikipedia.

Wikipedia remains an invaluable resource for constantly updated—and footnoted—overviews of a developing story.

1. 10 minutes? Get context from the actual experts.

Seek out people who have spent their careers working on the topic at hand to help you frame and understand everything else you read: like academics, or people who have worked in government. Hours before the war, Foreign Affairs sent out a super helpful package of articles from Iran experts. Of interest: a podcast about potential political futures for the country & a piece that explains the various factions of the opposition movement.

Watch out that you’re not “appealing to false authority” by over-weighting commentary from people who might be really smart and expert in certain areas, like Paul Krugman or Heather Cox Richardson, but who are not necessarily experts in the current topic.

2. 20 minutes? Avoid the parachutes and the bigfoots.

Pay attention to longtime local sources with boots on the ground. Journalists use the term “parachuting in” when a reporter shows up on a scene from far away. It’s called “bigfooting” when it’s a big-name, national reporter coming in to steal the thunder and the headlines from the local outlets.

When Minneapolis was all over the news, I read the Star-Tribune (I paid for a subscription and then canceled after a month).

Iran has no free press, and is blocking the Internet, making it hard for citizens to get any word out. But Al Jazeera has well-sourced people all over the region. And Nilo Tabrizy, recently laid off from the Washington Post, is still reporting:

“It seems he died. Died. The murderer of our dreams died. The murderer of our youth died,” said one source from Tehran in a voice note. Their voice trembled and broke, using just seconds of connectivity to deliver the news.

3. 1 hour? Compare sources with different worldviews.

For this war I’m not sticking with the New York Times or the Washington Post, which just fired its foreign correspondents. I’m looking in on Al Jazeera, as I mentioned, as well as BBC (Love the Newshour daily podcast), The Guardian, Drop Site News, Ha’aretz and Democracy Now! I follow a lot of journalists on Bluesky, which isn’t as useful as Twitter was at its height but is better than nothing.

I know a lot of smart newsheads who tune into right-wing sources on the regular, but I can’t stomach it.

Here’s an example of what you can gain by listening to different sides. On Tuesday, the New York Times and Fox were reporting as their top news headline that Trump said the airstrike that killed Khamenei also took out most of his top potential successors.

On Al Jazeera’s The Take, Ali Hashem, a Lebanese reporter with decades of experience covering Iran, literally laughed at how dumb that sounded.

“I’m sorry. Is this real?…I don’t know anyone who was killed with him who was a real candidate to be his successor.” From his perspective, “Khamenei’s death won’t change anything. Maybe it will just remove the restraints he used to impose.”

4. 2 hours? Keep watching other stories besides the Big One.

Stay vigilant, as my friend, independent podcaster Paul Rieckhoff, likes to say (He’s a great resource if you’re curious about the US military perspective).

Don’t let the urgency of the moment steal your focus on what really matters to you.

The area where I keep my eye on the ball tends to be state and local climate policy. But yours could be financial news, or culture or anything else, really.

For a truly fresh perspective, check out Global Voices and Rest of World, to be reminded of what’s going on in the other 190-odd countries that aren’t the US, Iran, Israel, or the region.

5. Always: Actively weed out speculation and commentary in favor of facts.

You need some discipline to do this, but it’s most efficient in a fast-moving situation to focus on the facts.

News, analysis and editorials appear side by side. And the more uncertainty there is, the more people with an axe to grind will declare certainty. The New York Times said in an analysis Tuesday that Iran’s strategy will be to drag things out, and expand the theater of war across the region. Will that happen? We don’t know, but the facts are that they have closed the Strait of Hormuz and hit the US Embassy in Riyadh.

Ask yourself; is this a story about something that did happen or might happen? And is the thing that happened a “pseudo-event” (eg Pete Hegseth, or another public figure, says something dumb that will be replaced tomorrow by another dumb remark) or a real event (gas prices are up). Focus on what we know. You just have to get comfortable with not knowing the things that aren’t knowable.

Now, commentary by true experts, as described in item #1, can provide good context, but you need a bit of bandwidth to digest it and triangulate between different points of view. It’s better when it’s giving history and other data, not just opinion. And again, most pundits are not true experts. There’s a wishcasting, broken-record aspect to a lot of the commentary these days. “X Will Be The Nail In The Coffin For Trump” vs, “X Will Be The Final Straw For Democracy”, and so on, back and forth, forever. You don’t really have to waste your time on that stuff.

So there you have it. A quick guide to following the news and keeping your peace. I also hope you close your tabs today and remember to go outside.