I firmly believe that one of three main things killing politics in this country is mainstream media’s profit from election coverage.

This goes hand in hand with why I hate the dual party system, but that’s a conversation for another time. During the weeks leading up to Election Day, it became apparent to me that an impressive number of people, both newly registered millennial voters and elderly alike, have a severe misunderstanding of the media’s role in reporting on an election. Understanding bias, the importance of lack of trust, and the necessary intrinsic need for the truth are qualities that someone who desires to become knowledgeable in today’s politics needs. In the Technology Age’s cluttered media environment, here are a few tips to help you navigate political reporting in order to effectively craft yourself an opinion based on FACT.

The first thing one needs to realize when beginning to learn about politics is that TV will always be biased. It is a good place to start when looking for a quick overview of what’s happening in Washington, but every network has a certain audience they’re pandering to, and thus will tailor news stories in whatever way necessary to get target viewers to tune in. Whether leaning left or right, take political news from a sampling of TV stations and get a feel for which stations lean which way (Fox, for example, always has and always will lean right, or more conservative on most issues). TV news is a solid place to start to hear about an event quickly, but relying on just television, especially just one station, only gives you enough information to craft a quick, basic opinion on something with very little background knowledge based off of somewhat biased information.

Much like learning about sports, gaining a good amount of background knowledge on the state of modern politics will be time consuming; unlike learning about sports, learning about politics helps to make the general public more educated, contributing to the number of active members of society. Now that we know proper ways to gain basic insight into current events, let’s talk about truly learning what these current mean. Making a conscious effort to learn more about politics is going to require the use other media. In today’s world, the place to learn the most is the Internet. Be warned- there is a lot more fiction than fact on the Internet and it is important to know farce from satire, and satire from the truth. One of the most common mistakes I’ve seen people make is using articles from The Onion as an actual source. The Onion is a website based entirely off of comedic satire, and thus none of its articles are actually true. Often times websites of popular print publications are reliable sources for relatively unbiased and in-depth coverage of events. News articles also have more room to discuss widespread effects of current events, allowing readers to gain more insightful knowledge then they would a TV news story. Be wary of other Internet sources, such as blogs and magazine articles, particularly blogs. When reading a blog story, a short biography of the author can usually be found in the sidebar of the page or at the bottom, following the article. The bio can give a reader an insight on the author and their potential biases.

Consistently watching for bias and making sure that you’re getting your information from a number of sources are the most important things a person can do to ensure that they are crafting opinions based on unbiased facts. Obviously a person’s own opinion will be biased, but these personal biases are based off of opinions of what will make America a better country, from foreign policy to solving domestic crises, and are the very foundation of Democracy. Doing political research and crafting a genuine opinion and learning what you can do for your country is, to me, the sincerest form of Patriotism, and I implore every single living, breathing, red-blooded American man, woman, child, and everything in between to understand politics on every level. Actively working together will well-crafted ideas and open minds are the most important way to help America. In the immortal words of John F. Kennedy, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”