I have an addiction to information, particularly news. I’m one of those people who likes to know what is going on in the world, and I especially appreciate it when I see news and information presented with clarity, depth, and wit. Sometime around March of 2003 I hit a threshold. This was when the cable news “coverage” of the run-up to the Iraq was hitting its climax.

Of course, news junkie that I am, I had been following the reports from other sources. I got regular articles from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and many other news sources, including the growing blogosophere. The threshold I hit was the sense of starvation for quality information, combined with the distinct impression that I was being fed something more suited to feeding mushrooms. Cable news had become so transparently uncritical, so blatantly partisan, so intolerably full of bullshit that I swore I would never watch cable news on a regular basis again.

That was nearly three years ago. I have kept that promise, lapsing only once to watch a piece involving someone I knew personally. Otherwise, I watched not ten seconds of CNN, no MSNBC, and absolutely, positively no Fox News. I couldn’t even tell you what channel our local cable system carries them.

Recently I realized that I had participated in a kind of Morgan Spurlockesque experiment, but this time I was not intent on testing myself to destruction as he did with Supersize Me. What has been the outcome of actively withholding myself from a source of information that is followed religiously by so many other Americans?

I’ve found that in my conversations with other people on the news of the day, I am far, far better informed than they are. I can explain the background of many issues in greater detail than my friends who are cable news fiends. No contest. It isn’t even close.

Releasing cable news from the mandate to inform me brought that responsibility back to me. Implicit in this shift was the realization that I have a choice in information resources, leaving me to select the ones that, over time, proved to be more accurate and less liable to trip my BS meter.

I won’t go into what my news sources are, for they change as my needs do. For foreign affairs I’ll go to one set of sources, for science news I go elsewhere. My set of favorites is under constant refinement—all this is grist for another grind. But it clarifies something that may prove to be one of the deep personal struggles of our age: in a world awash with data, who you choose to dismiss is even more important then who you choose to believe. If you’re using your critical faculties you will find most sources lacking. Only a few should make the cut.

You don’t have time for inferior information.

Restrict yourself to a few trusted news sources, which trust can be immediately revoked if something better turns up. You don’t want to spend a great deal of time in the current “journalistic” fad of “he said-she said”. You want facts and clear-eyed analysis in the shortest amount of time. That time that remains should be used to reflect and digest the good information into insights.

American citizens have never really been long on solid critical thinking, and the streak of anti-intellectualism endemic to America is alive and well. The sad state of popular journalism has only made it worse. The good news is that more people are starting to realize that it is bad and getting worse. And if this prompts more active evaluation of news and other information by the average citizen, more careful, thoughtful and artfully applied criticism, so much the better. Choose your news carefully. If you choose propaganda instead, do so knowing that there will be consequences.

Stay tuned…