Newspaper billionaire deciders are demolishing their news media hobbies like bored kids disassembling the electric trains they’ve outgrown.

And TV news-CEOs have already scrapped most of their professionally reported, scripted, edited, soundbite-packed news packages not because they got bored, but because of quality costs. So they’ve mostly replaced these video news packages, 24/7, with much-cheaper talking-heads.

We see them sitting in little squares strewn across our news screens, as they tell us what they think and how they feel about news that is being made somewhere they haven’t been, but know about because they used to be there, once upon a time.

So news consumers now end up having to do what reporters in the field always did. We journalists spent hours interviewing officials and informed sources. Then we’d pick out several key quotes (and often helpful insights) and pass them along to our readers and viewers.

But now you have ended up also having to listen for hours to the ramble of talking heads – hoping to discover the few key things you really need to know so you can end up informed – and not conned – when you vote for our democracy’s new leaders.

Which brings us to the problem about those cutbacks in the news business and your ever-increasing need to figure out when pols and tech-savvy manipulators are distorting, deceiving and downright lying to you. For news organizations are increasingly cutting back on professional fact-checking and editing – just when we need them most.

For decades, we journalists liked to remind each other of our craft’s ultimate wisdom – the oft-quoted line of The New Yorker magazine’s A. J. Liebling: “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” Today you don’t need to own a big inky press or a TV studio to start spreading the news. You just need a laptop or smartphone to start reporting your slant on what just happened, or the slant of the special interest or political wingers who are paying you. Oh-oh.

That’s why, today, democracy’s most responsible voters need to become their own news fact-checkers. It doesn't have to be as hard as my colleagues want you to think. Today, we are going to end with a brief, but tuition-free, class on the basics of how you too can become a democracy-safeguarding, do-it-yourself news fact-checker, and catch, in the act, even the most highly-placed prevaricator-in-chief.

Journalism 101: AI vs. AOI (Translation: artificial intelligence versus the crafty art of official intelligence). Throughout the first year of his second presidency, Donald Trump has been regaling audiences with speeches that have grown in length, meanderings, repetitions and (as you’ll see) distortions. But whether he’s talking to world leaders, religious leaders, soldiers, farmers or journalists, Trump recycles his famous hit-list of volcanic vexations. These include name-calling attacks about having inherited the world’s worst economic disaster from Crooked or Sleepy Joe Biden.

In his rambling speech to the world’s leaders at the recent economic forum in Davos, Trump said: “Biden and his allies destroyed our economy and gave us perhaps the worst inflation in American history… He has to be rated as the worst president we've ever had by far… We inherited a mess, but we've done a hell of a job in 12 months.”

In the hall, the world’s leaders knew better – and now you can, too. Just turn on your computer’s Google machine, and type in a search question, such as: “How did Biden’s economy compare with other world economies in rebounding from the global economic shutdown during the pandemic?”

Now A.I. will respond instantly: “The U.S. economy, under the Biden administration, experienced a faster, stronger recovery from the pandemic-induced shutdown compared to other G7 nations and advanced economies.

“Fastest recovery: The U.S. showed the strongest recovery among comparable advanced economies, with real GDP exceeding pre-pandemic levels (Q4 2019) faster than other G7 nations.

“Stronger output: U.S. real GDP grew to be 5.4% higher than at the end of 2019, while other G7 nations generally lagged in their recovery.

“Inflation management: Despite high initial growth, the U.S. managed to bring core inflation lower than many other major advanced economies as the recovery continued.”

Of course, as we know, A.I. could be wrong. But here it footnotes its statements and cites studies from famous think tanks of various political orientations. That’s how your fact-checking tells you Trump was blatantly misleading you.

You’ll also discover another of Trump’s most famous claims is false: his repeated insistence that he brought America $18 trillion in new investments. You’ll see the claim is universally rejected by experts of the left, center and right. And one more source even Trump can believe – Trump’s White House website lists the investment figure at just $9.6 trillion.

We have long believed what The Washington Post still proclaims: “Democracy dies in darkness.” But after the massive abdications of responsibility by journalism’s owners – most recently at Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post – we are sensing our democracy’s new reality: Nothing can be darker than the glare of a news screen that keeps flashing falsehoods politically crafted to con and deceive people who only want to know what is true and who they can trust.

In this election year, American voters may be forced to vote in the glaring darkness for the new leaders they hope can save our truly troubled democracy.

_____

_____

©2026 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.