Break your algorithm: Go Local

On the ground reporting from Minneapolis is the signal through the internet noise

I used to teach a class on how to be a better news consumer, and how to better spot commentary disguised as reporting, and manipulated information posing as news.

This was close to 10 years ago, back when terms like “fake news” and “alternative facts” hadn’t yet become part of our everyday language.

One of my primary suggestions to those in my class was to verify stories they found online with reports from local news sources. If the very dramatic and very upsetting thing you had just read online really happened, and was really that terrible, it would be reported at the local level.

For an example I used this photo that was widely shared on the internet after Hurricane Harvey hit Southeast Texas and the Houston area.

The message was that climate change had raised sea levels so much that after the hurricane the entire Houston airport was underwater, and would be for months.

In truth, this was an artist rendering of what the Houston airport could look like if sea levels rose a certain amount, as estimated in some report.

I also threw in these bits of fakery, to demonstrate that liars and the dirty lies they tell are all around us.

This of course isn’t true at all. The photo was from a protest several years earlier in Atlanta, not Houston, and not as part of an effort to thwart rescue efforts. What’s worse is that the site that published this carried two disclaimers in the small print telling people that nothing they publish is true.

Very few people got past the emotionally charged headline - and since it conformed with what they believed to be true, they shared it all over the interwebs. Sadly, instead of us becoming collectively more savvy at spotting bogus news, it seems we’ve actually become more likely to consume it and promote it - and it’s only growing more pervasive and insidious with the proliferation of AI generated photos and videos.

That brings me to today, and what’s happening in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Recently, I shared a post about a 5 year old Minnesota boy being detained and used as bait by ICE agents.

The story and the reporting is accurate, but there are differences of opinion about how this happened, and the ICE agents’ motivation for detaining the child.

That encouraged some passionate conversation and disagreement in the comments about the legitimacy of claims that U.S. Citizens had been detained and deported, and claims that the child was actually being cared for by these agents because no other adults wanted to care for him.

Vice President JD Vance said as much.

I decided to take my own advice from all those years ago, and look local. I now have a subscription to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Since Minneapolis is emerging as the epicenter in this conflict between dueling ideas of what America is to become, I will rely primarily on its local reporting and far less on national news.

For the record, these days, I assume just about everything I see online is either manipulated, spiked with emotion or vitirol, or outright fake - unless it’s from a known and trusted sorce. Otherwise, the sheer volume of bad information masquerading as news has forced me to seek second and third sources to verify most everything I read.

Local news is the best way to break through the noise of our curated, manipulated, and harmful online bubbles created by the algorithms we constantly feed - and that in turn reward us with more of what we’ve shown we already crave.

So, what does the local reporting say? I’ll let you read for yourself. You should be able to get a few free stories from this site. But there are a few points I want to call out.

Here’s the local reporting on the issue of whether the child was being helped by ICE agents:

“Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that ICE “did NOT target a child” and that as agents approached Arias’ car, he fled on foot. “For the child’s safety, one of our ICE officers remained with the child while the other officers apprehended Conejo Arias,” she said.

School leaders say that several bystanders disputed that account, adding that the father ran to the house to alert his wife not to open the door.

School Board Chair Mary Granlund said she arrived while agents were still on scene and heard adults plead with them not to take the child, offering to care for him. She and others also told agents that school officials could help.

“There was ample opportunity to safely hand that child off to adults,” Granlund said. She said she believed the boy’s mother was inside the home and afraid to open the door as agents surrounded it.”

I also thought this added context from the story and the effect on schools and students was heartbreaking…

“After moving recess inside because of nearby enforcement activity, Stenvik said she heard one elementary schooler ask her to confirm if recess couldn’t be outside “because of ICE.”

Also in this edition of the local newspaper, you’ll see a story about a local 23-year-old woman, a U.S. Citizen born here, who was beaten and detained for two days. You’ll also be able to read about how in-person attendance at local schools is alarmingly low, due to students and families fearful of ICE raids targeting students while they’re at school.

In this moment, I think back to my childhood in Nickerson, and my days running the unfenced playgrounds at Nickerson Elementary School. I can’t imagine what it must be like for some of these kids to be aware of the dangers they face. To worry if today is the day their lives change forever. I wonder, too, how our actions today will reveal themselves to us 20 or 30 years down the road.

My mom used to sing me a church tune that I heard in Sunday School just about every week. She loved it so much, I wondered if it was her favorite song in the whole wide world.

It has remained in my head to this day. If I think about it, I can hear my Mom and my Sunday School teachers singing it. At the time, it made me feel special and loved, and safe in the idea that all of my friends were loved, too.

Nowadays, I wonder if the people who sang that song to me really ever believed it at all. Or maybe Jesus just loves some of the children.