Commentary
What is the biggest threat to democracy? Is it technology? No, it’s not. How about the lack of youth in politics or even gender imbalances? No, and no. Maybe the climate crisis? Again, no. Okay, so it has to be voting machines, right? Wrong again.
According to a recent poll commissioned by The New York Times, 59 percent of registered voters believe that the mainstream media is the biggest threat to American democracy. To be clear, not social media, the mainstream media.
Part of the distrust involves fake news. It has become tough to separate the factual from the fabricated fluff. Thank goodness, then, that there’s no shortage of fact-checkers. However, the fact-checking movement is one riddled with flaws. Even some of the more reputable fact-checking sites appear to be submerged in a sea of faulty thinking and misleading reports. Instead of stubbornly pursuing the truth, they appear to be falling prey to dangerous cognitive biases that see them regularly distort the truth….