What do you think about how can we best be alert and media literate?

Question

confronted by a barrage of different media messages and options?

Answer 1

The best way is to avoid any TV news broadcast by commercial operations. Their entire goal is to grab an audience and hold it in place to watch the next series of advertisments designed to sell them something. In many cases "breaking news" is really "faking news". The follow-up retractions and corrections pile up like the bodies in the war between Napoleon and Russia. I rely on English langauge shortwave radio. None of them are commercial operations. I supplement that with the web editions of English language dailies, here and abroad.
To be blunt, most TV news is presented by total morons. That includes local news operations. The anchors belong to the same trade union as Jay Leno, David Letterman and Kimmy Kimmel (the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists). The reporters are mainly graduates of university-based schools of journalism which don't require core-curriculum studies in history, geography, science or foreign cultures. They have come away from the university with the sole talent of being able to read and write a press release.