Bill Poulos, published author and financial educator, offers life advice on selecting information sources that your trust:
Regarding where you should be getting your information and news from, I think the number one criterion should be from a place that is fact based and a place that provides factual news—news that’s actually based on facts, not news based on innuendo, and not editorialized news.
That’s not news.
These days, that’s a pretty tall order because it’s difficult to find such outlets.
The traditional news media in this country is not fact based. They have an agenda. They’ve become editorial outlets, and so that would be the last place to look for real, fact based news.
Instead, you gotta look at alternatives.
One of them would be a little college in Michigan called Hillsdale, which regularly publishes news related articles and periodicals.
And yes, it’s a conservative college.
For the liberals out there, before you throw up, one of the things around accessing useful news is to read different points of view, and then use your critical thinking skills to decide what it is you accept, as opposed to blindly following somebody’s mantra.
So you wanna look at conservative publications. You got The Weekly Standard. There are many others.
And look at liberal publications. Look at Huffington Post—it is, I think, largely liberal. The Washington Post is liberal. You got The New York Times, which is liberal.
Now, you don’t have time to read all that stuff, but on occasion you should look at both liberal and conservative news sources and ask yourself, “Is what I’m reading fact based?”
For example, the Russia collusion hysteria that’s enveloped the media for the last year or year and a half. That’s not fact based. There is no collusion. At least, there is none that has been uncovered after a year and a half of intensive investigation, and yet they still report it as if it’s news. It’s not news.
Another alternative source would be the Lyndon LaRouche set of news publications where they send out a daily news related email that gives you a perspective on what’s going on in the world that you will find nowhere else. And Lyndon LaRouche, I think he’s some-90 years old now, he has quite a capable organization to carry on in his footsteps who are not liberal and are not conservative, so to speak. They’re looking at the world the way it really is. They try very hard to be fact based, and because of that, they’re roundly ridiculed. If you mention Lyndon LaRouche to someone that knows about him, they’ll say, “Oh, that kook?” And of course, they’ve probably never read anything from their organization. But the reason they’re branded as kooks, I can’t think of a better word, is because they’re not saluting to the leftist agenda or the rightist agenda, and so they try … certainly the mainstream media would try to minimize them greatly.
So you wanna look for places like that, sources like that, that are giving you not only fact based news, but important news.
For example, who cares if … I don’t know, pick a … Kim Kardashian did A, B, or C? You know, is that important to your life’s journey? Probably not. As opposed to, well, what’s China’s geopolitical strategy and how does that impact Americans? I think you can see the difference there.
The other thing I would say is don’t use news as entertainment, so called news as entertainment. If that’s why you watch it, then you’re not getting news. All you’re doing is feeding your ideology or whatever it is, and that’s a waste of time. I’d say The Wall Street Journal is fairly fact based. It’s not as good as it used to be, but it’s pretty good. I think the Investor’s Business Daily is fairly well fact based.
Those are some that come to mind, but always ask, “Is this fact based?” If it isn’t, is it editorial? If it’s editorial, then all I’m doing is reading somebody’s opinion, and just because they put it in print doesn’t make it true.
You’ve got to properly educate yourself. You should read news on all subjects—world news, finance, business, economic, tech—and from all credible sources to give yourself a well rounded perspective.