"Fake" News. Many of us think of the President, many of us think of other examples. For the vast majority of us, it's a hot-button issue that can polarize us in a litany of ways. What if I told you it wasn't the journalist's fault for this surge in fake news? What if I told you the cause to blame was the readers themselves? It's not a popular stance by any means, but hear me out.

Not that long ago the way we gathered our news had a world of difference. We had constraints on where we got our information from whether that be local, state, or at the national level. Your options were the Newspaper, Radio, and the nightly-news on Television. There was a scarcity of information available to us as consumers. The "media" we so broadly define today was nowhere near the size of its current state today.

At the advent of the internet and what we so fondly call the digital age, we arrived upon a news and information abundant age. Being media literate today is almost a task in itself in regard to keeping ourselves informed accurately and as close to the truth as possible. In this shift of information scarcity to abundance we have encountered the issue of the proliferation of false information and fake news, and in large part, this is due to how we consume and spread the information we find around on the internet.

The problem with pinning the issue of this proliferation of fake news onto journalists is that they are the ones who are supposed to pursue the truth to stories, and coverage. To muzzle the ones who are actually on the front-lines of gathering information is to muzzle the freedom of speech itself. As Americans, it astounds me to see us doubt our ability to speak freely, yet so hypocritically attack those who represent the embodiment of upholding the first amendment's rights.

We as a society today can not afford to relinquish our ability to speak freely as this has always been one of the foundations for journalists finding the truth to stories, and their coverage. It's true, there is a surplus of poorly accredited journalism and false information. For that matter, there's probably more fake news than there is real news.

So, I keep defending the first amendment yet there's also a profuse amount of false information circulating where we go specifically to find our news, (most of the time) the internet. The answer to combating fake news is in the hands of us, the consumers. As this is an issue the people must handle we have to find a means to reduce the amount false information and fake news we circulate with each other to improve the overall quality of news we see among ourselves.

I believe Media Literacy is the key to starting the right path to more quality information. We must all increase our media literacy as a society so we avoid pooling ourselves into echo-chambers of our notions. A couple steps to that are relatively simple too. We have to question who is writing what we're reading, and the background knowledge of the writer on a particular topic. I find myself astounded at some of the thoughts some journalists postulate with the degree, and background experience they have in being knowledgeable on a topic.

Another simple step we can take is to gather information from multiple sources across the aisle to understand how a more conservative person feels on a topic, and how a more liberal person might feel on a topic as well. As humans we are not empty of bias, yet we can do our best as consumers to gather the whole picture of stories if we understand how those on both sides feel. Through, and through it's important for us to remember that the reality of stories is somewhere in the middle ground when it comes to how things are portrayed, and what parts of the context writers decide to share with us.

I'm not here to suggest the best path to media literacy for everyone. Some people don't have the time to do what I just suggested, even those two steps alone can be a tall task for someone who isn't a news junkie. I do believe that if we are to see any change in our quality of news it is going to be because we the people view journalism in a more critical eye to advance the field and ignoring poor-quality journalism/click-bait.