… but one takes the popularist view, and the other shows you a different take on the headlines

Last week, The Echo Chamber looked at the influence Putin may have over American politics. It was clear that Russia was all over the news, and many American commentators were concerned about Putin’s relationship with Donald Trump. They believe they were ‘in cahoots’. A serious allegation indeed against a potential American President.

The Week, an extremely high quality and popular magazine also picked up on the story. They produced a fantastic front cover and the following editorial:

The text on that image may be quite small for many of our readers to inspect. So here is the top line story. Anne Applebaum in The Washington Post states that “Trump has never made any secret of his admiration for Russia’s President”. Paul Krugman in the New York Times is quoted as noting that Trump’s campaign manager also worked for the pro-Russian Ukrainian President ousted in 2014. Dana Milbank in The Washington Post notes that if the shoe was on the other foot, Trump would be throwing these allegations at his opponent with full enthusiasm.

The Week also puts a balanced view in from Julia Ioffe in Foreign Policy – she rightly notes that no hotels that Trump owns exist in Russia and furthermore offers the opinion: “the very fact we’re discussing Trump being a Putin plant will delight Putin”.

This was the point made in The Echo Chamber last week. When all the editorials were commenting on Trumps potential involvement with the Kremlin, we focussed on New York Times editorials which shows that it’s in Russian interest to spread paranoia. By reading up on The Internet Research Agency you’ll be more tuned in to how information is being presented to a Western world.

What you read shapes how you view the world

Please note, that above I have paraphrased a paraphrased article. I’m well aware of the effect chinese whispers can have on facts. However, I’m not intending to commentate on whether Trump is in ‘kahoots with the Kremlin.’

My commentary on this subject is to show how millions of middle-class, well educated people are potentially mis-informed by the press every single day. This in itself may be a fairly moot point – but we would like to point to many instances where we are mis-informed by our media, and indeed by the articles that are readily shared on social media channels.

This is yet another example of where popularist opinions and media can mislead you from what is actually going on. In a world which is becoming increasingly divided, it is becoming more important than ever before to be empathetic towards other points of view. But you can’t be empathetic to other points of view if you have no access.

This is where The Echo Chamber comes in – subscribe to our weekly newsletter today.

[In a fairly petty manner, we’d also like to note that we got there a full week before The Week too. Just for the record.]