Daily Resource Highlight - 12/13/2021

Posted by on December 13, 2021 at 1:50 PM

Below are the highlights and featured resources of this past week’s Daily* Resource.

December 7, 2021 - End-of-Year Recaps Worth Your Time

We are coming up on the New Year once again (already!!???), and that means recaps and annual reports. We plan to release our own annual report at the very beginning of 2022, which will summarize the work of the Alliance and its member organizations. But 2022 is still almost a month away and I can tell you with confidence that it will not do justice for every member of the Alliance. Our members are always working! 

With 98 member organizations, covering every project, program, and/or initiative would require a full length novel. Since that’s not happening, I think it’s best to let these members (also) speak for themselves:

This is just a tiny glimpse of how Bridge Alliance members have promoted healthy self-governance in 2021. Keep reading this newsletter to see more and more of the big picture as we approach the end of 2021.

December 9, 2021 - Just The Facts, Ma’am; News Sources that Won’t Make You Sigh

I have never seen Dragnet, but this (mis)quote often pops into my head when I hear people talk about “objective facts.” Facts are facts, but they are also very tricky. Without even realizing it, people will use facts to create a misleading picture by cherry picking them; leaving out context; mixing in opinions; etc., etc. Everybody has biases, whether they acknowledge them or not.

That’s what makes the newsy members of the Bridge Alliance different. Rather than pretending that bias doesn’t exist or that they are somehow impartial arbiters of the truth, they lean into the bias and acknowledge it for what it is.

In The Flip Side’s latest Q&A newsletter, they state “We do our best to present a range of views from each side. We don’t exclude sources for being ‘too’ conservative or liberal.” Similarly, AllSides provides left, right, and center takes on the day’s headlines. And when they write articles, they explicitly state the author’s bias. You can read more about AllSides’ history in this Independent Voter Network article.

Meanwhile, The Factual takes a slightly different approach. In addition to noting biases, they also work to hold media outlets accountable for the degree of bias in their reporting by assigning “Factual Grades” for individual articles.

Again, none of these organizations are “unbiased,” because that’s impossible. Instead, they are transparent about their biases, thereby empowering their readers to come to their own conclusions. We encourage you to experience that empowerment for yourself.

(The actual quote is “All we want are the facts, ma’am”)

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