S2E15 - Quieting the Noise of this Political Season

Whether we like it, love it, or hate it, we are now in the midst of a full-blown Presidential campaign. The news just keeps happening. After the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden decided to end his run for a second term. He endorsed his Vice President, Kamala Harris, and all political parties are now in full campaign mode. As a result, conversations about politics will be unavoidable for most of us. Though we try to avoid politics in our podcast, we are going to try something a bit different. We are going to talk about the issues in the campaign (not the personalities) and offer some suggestions for how you can have similar conversations on political topics. This week we are going to focus on how you can silence the noise being produced by the campaigns and become more clear about how you feel about the issues. The links below will take you to some websites where you can learn more about media bias and where you can do your own fact checking…without the noise, without the pundits.

Learn more: 

The following links are to articles, podcasts, and videos related to today’s topic.

• Defining Pundit - Oxford Reference: https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100354759#:~:text=An%20expert%20in%20a%20particular,Dictionary%20of%20Phrase%20and%20Fable%20%C2%BB

• Perplexity and “What is a pundit?”: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/what-is-a-pundit-znyNkPwtQlWW82FValHRMw#0 

To check the bias of news outlets: 

• Allsides.com: https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news

• ad fontes media: https://adfontesmedia.com/ 

• Media Bias Fact Check: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/

To fact check news yourself:

• Fact Check: https://www.factcheck.org/

• Politifact: https://www.politifact.com/

• Snopes: https://www.snopes.com/

• The Washington Post Fact Checker: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/fact-checker/ 

For conversation opportunities:

• 3rd Space Table Talks: Sponsored by Getting to 3rd Space with Lamar & Tom. Learn more here: https://forms.gle/ZtXEPty7g6bCyEXz8 

• Braver Angels: https://braverangels.org/

• Meet Up: https://www.meetup.com/ 

• Conversation Cafe: https://www.liberatingstructures.com/17-conversation-cafe/ 

• Socrates Cafe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates_Cafe 

Party Platforms: 

• Democratic Party Platform: A draft of the 2024 platform was release on July 13, 2024 but will not be finalized until the DNC Convention in Chicago, August 19-24m 2024. You can read the current platform and follow updates to it here: https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-platform/ 

• Republican Party Platform