There is no hiding the dissatisfaction that this election has offered. The two-dinosaur party system has left over 50 percent of voters feeling hopeless between two candidates that they can’t stand behind. Leaving many of us to wonder, what are we to do? Do we really vote for the lesser of two evils? Do we write in a candidate? Or do we come across a third party option and deal with the garbage narrative that a third candidate vote is a vote for the “eviler” candidate? It’s annoying to say the least. But how did we get into this predicament to begin with?

This election has left me in a vicious cycle of feeling overwhelmed to hopeless, over and over again. As voters we must gather accurate information. Unfortunately, most of our information is largely biased and controlled on a large scale. Did you know that 90 percent of news sources are owned by 6 mega companies? That’s a huge difference compared to 1983 where the same 90 percent was owned by over 50 different companies. This is a massive issue that has put our country into a pigeon hold.

Now, instead of gathering different perspectives from one issue; there are only two. And they are extremely polarized leaving a large majority unaccounted for. I do not believe this was the original mission statement of news outlets. I envision their original goal to be something along the lines of “informing the public to allow them to make their own educated opinions and decisions.”

They’ve missed the mark. There is no “letting us make our own opinions.” The news outlets have made up our minds for us. Dictating the “spin” that each story will get to rally the large majority to feel and think the same way. The original news channel that turned our news into opinions and destroyed the art of journalism was CNN. Back in the day, CNN came up with this idea to run news 24/7. The only downside to this idea was that there wasn’t enough news to cover 24/7. So what did they do? They just started interviewing people for their opinions and running it as news. Many of the other networks tried to keep up with this revolutionary idea. The only problem is, the majority of it is filler. Journalism used to be about research and connecting the dots and checking their sources.

I don’t know about you, but this election has made me more aware of the information that is being force fed to us. And it IS being force fed to us. It’s on your weather channel, on your radio, in the newspaper, on Facebook. And it’s always the same message. So who are these companies that own all of these news sources? GE, News-Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner and CBS. Some of these companies are household names, but don’t let their familiarity deceive you. They are in control of what the majority of not only Americans, but Europeans and Australians consider important. Now THAT is a large influence.

This election is on track to be won by those who control our news. But you don’t have to have to drink their Kool-Aid. There are 100s of independent news sources that tell real stories, the one’s that aren’t getting any coverage. We live in a big world, and limiting the narrative to just a few is injustice at the extreme. The internet is a double edge sword, but you can use it to your advantage. I challenge you to stretch out of our comfort zone and look for opinions you might disagree with, and above all else, check your sources!!