People who use AI chatbots for news know the outputs are unreliable. They prefer them anyway. New CNTI study: users call them "unbiased" and ""good enough"" while acknowledging frequent errors. No byline reads as no agenda." niemanlab.org/2026/01/people…

50 million Americans have limited or no access to local news. Most don't know it. Medill: 90% in news deserts say news is "easy to access." 51% rely on non-journalistic sources. Trust runs 13 pts lower. "People don't know what they are missing." localnewsinitiative.northwestern.edu/posts/2026/02/…

"We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us." (John M. Culkin) Adam, Mosseri, the head of Instagram, recently said "we're genetically predisposed to believing our eyes". What replaces visual trust when the tools distributing images are also generating them?

The SAVE Act: election security or voter suppression, depending entirely on which information environment you inhabit. Both sides cite evidence. Almost no one sees both. Ellul's uncomfortable claim from 1962: people don't fall for propaganda. They opt into it.

The rooms we're rebuilding for Media Diet are full of screens making invisible editorial decisions. What gets monetized, what gets removed, what gets amplified - these are curatorial choices. They're just never labeled as such.

Three media diets. Three different starting points for reality. Fox: Iran launches indiscriminate strikes on Gulf tankers. NPR: Trump offers new reasoning for the Iran strikes. Five days in. Democracy Now: U.S. and Israel launch unprovoked attack on Iran.