With Donald Trump’s direct attacks on US media sources like CNN or MSNBC, we should anticipate that we won’t necessarily be able to rely on them all the time. Consider that we may be cut off from them entirely, or that they will self-censor themselves for preservation purposes. Potentially they will be turned into right-wing propaganda outlets for the regime. This might not be immediately evident if it occurs, so I’m not sure it’s wise to trust any US-based mainstream corporate-owned news outlets at this stage. I’m currently maintaining deep skepticism of everything I see right now.

We should also disabuse ourselves of the notion that we can trust algorithmically sorted news gathering via social media networks like Facebook, Bluesky, and Threads. Of these, I tend to trust Mastodon the most since it’s a decentralized open source federated network, which makes it resistant to manipulation. Sites like Reddit can be good as a means of gathering information, but due to their centralized nature are potentially easy to be compromised by bad actors.

I’ve made a list of news outlets I think are reasonably reputable and have gotten myself a nice RSS reader in order to obtain direct feeds of their content on an ongoing basis. You should consider getting one as well if you don’t already have one. You can subscribe to lots of feeds on there and export an OPML list of your subscriptions to clients on other platforms. I’ve included a download link at the end of the article to help you get started.

Here are some of the news sources I’m choosing to prioritize: Al Jazeera English, BBC News, CBC News, Democracy Now, DW News English, Jacobin, Le Monde English, NPR, ProPublica, RFI, The Globe and Mail, The Guardian, The Stranger (it’s a Seattle institution), WBUR, WGBH.

I’ve also got a VPN provider called Nord VPN, so I can use the British version of the BBC News website, which is somewhat different than the US version.

Consider getting yourself a shortwave radio. While I don’t use these as news sources, with a simple handheld unit (I have a Tecsun R9700DX), I’ve been able to pick up Radio Nikkei based in Japan, Radio New Zealand, Radio Havana Cuba, and various other broadcasters as far as the Philippines, China, Russia, Central America, and even Canada. There’s a long history of using shortwave radio to send information across borders to suppressed populations. That’s what we were doing with Voice of America and others until Trump shut them down this past day. It is possible this form of information dissemination will become necessary again in our time for our own use to gather news from abroad.

With regard to long distance radio, by the way, here’s a fun fact: You can also pick AM radio stations located across the country over long distances at night. From Seattle, when I’m DXing, I can often pick up AM broadcasters located in San Francisco, Reno, and Colorado.

Get yourself a ham radio. I have a handheld Baofeng UV-5R. You’ll find that there are local repeater groups regularly broadcasting that you can tune into and hear from people all over your region and indeed the world. It’s fun to listen to them, and hear people talk about things happening on the ground in your locality. Get a ham radio operator license. I haven’t yet done this, but I would like to eventually. Even if you don’t have a license, you can still listen, and in a life and death emergency situation, it is also permissible to use them unlicensed under specific conditions (see exceptions 97.403 and 97.405).

Above all else. Keep an open mind. Be skeptical of what you see and hear. Think before you share. Consider the source and keep in mind any biases the sharer might have had.

Good night, and good luck.

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My OPML file: While I tend to follow lots of tech news sites and bloggers as well, I’ve extracted just the information sources I’ve put together that are relevant to me for the purposes of this post. Maybe you can use it as a starting point for yourself: Download