Liberal and Conservative Compare: Fox News vs MSNOW - We've Got To Talk | Lyssna här

A year and a half ago, when we started our podcast, Jolene and I had an uncomfortable realization. We weren’t just “watching the news”; we were watching news that already agreed with us. Jolene had her conservative media, I had my liberal media, and even when we landed on the same basic facts, the emotional tone was completely different depending on what we’d been consuming. Same country, same week, two totally different versions of reality shaped by cable news and political commentary.

So we cleaned up our media diet and started looking for sources that show more than one angle, like Ground News, Tangle, Mo News, 1440, and Straight Arrow News. We wanted to be less easily manipulated by algorithms and outrage, and better able to have civil conversations across political differences. If you’ve been searching for “balanced news sources,” “media bias chart,” or “how to avoid political echo chambers,” this is exactly the road we started walking.

Then my husband Josh, suggested a new experiment: a full week of Fox News and MSNOW (full immersion, no cherry-picked clips). I know it’s a shock to hear this, but it did not make us smarter. It made us anxious. Both networks seemed to run the same play, just with different villains: keep you slightly scared, slightly angry, and just certain enough that you don’t go looking elsewhere. It wasn’t “here’s what happened,” it was “here’s what happened, here’s who to blame, and here’s why you should be worried.”

What really stung is how normal it feels when you’re in it daily. It feels like being responsible, like staying informed, like doing your civic duty. But after a week, we could see the pattern clearly: less clarity, more defensiveness, more judgement, and more confidence about things we hadn’t actually researched. We talk about how 24-hour news cycles turn commentary into the product, why outrage is profitable, and what to do instead, including tools like Ad Fontes Media, reading across sources, and the simplest antidote of all: get back into real life, talk to actual humans, and take action in your community instead of marinating in rage.

CHAPTER MARKERS:

00:00 Introduction

01:36 One Week Fox vs MSNBC

02:09 Three Takeaways From Jolene

04:05 Nicole’s Takeaways

06:33 Bias Charts And Better Sources

07:39 Big Stories Compared

09:58 Spin On Trump And Iran

14:07 Quit Doomscrolling All Day

19:59 How To Research Without Bias

25:00 Do Something With The News

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