Welcome to my 24-hour media diet journal for August 22, 2022! I chose a workday to monitor my media habits during because I work 5 out of 7 days during the week, so this is typical of how most of my days are spent.
7:30am: When my alarm goes off I wake up and check emails, social media feeds (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter), and also check news headlines on my phone. Sometimes I will read articles but didn’t today. What I’m usually checking is to see if I missed something since I set my phone down the previous night.
8am – 11:30am: I reported to work (from home) and I spent the entire time in front of my computer checking or sending emails, working on a particular item, or in Microsoft Team Calls.
11:45am – 12:00pm. Lunch. Browsed Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter feed again. I didn’t post anything and only browsed postings and comments. Really wasn’t much going on that interested me and it felt like I was seeing more ads or page postings than friend postings.
12:00pm – 5:30pm More time spent at work in front of my computer checking and responding to emails, working on a particular assignment, or in Microsoft Team Calls. I did get up and stretch a few times.
5:30pm – I checked into my Crossfit gym app to see what the workout will be for the day and signed into the 6:30pm class in advance
6:15pm – In the car ride to Crossfit, my favorite Podcast, Crime Junkie automatically started playing and I listened to the story of Kathy Page being told on the 10 minute car ride to the gym.
7:30pm – Car ride back to the house I continued listening to the Crime Junkie podcast for about 10 minutes until I arrived home.
8:30 pm: My husband turned on the TV and streamed YouTube videos while I worked on school assignments and knocked out discussion posts. I was multi-tasking by sitting in the living room watching the TV with him and I was also on my laptop.
9:30 pm: In the evenings we will normally turn the TV on and watch a movie or documentary. Documentaries are what I prefer to watch. Since it was so late, we ended up deciding to watch an episode of “Only Murders in the Building“ on Hulu. Normally I like to binge watch TV shows but this is one where episode are released weekly and was perfect because it was only 30 minutes long.
10:15pm: I briefly browsed Facebook and Instagram while laying in the bed before going to sleep – my eyes were starting to close as I held my phone. I got on Twitter and was immediately overwhelmed by the amount of information going on with trending news so decided it was not a time to delve down into specifics before trying to fall asleep.
How do I rate news outlets?
I look at a variety of news media outlets and I would say they are all biased in some way, meaning they support or oppose a particular thing or person in an unfair way. What I find the most frustrating is when information os being conveniently left out in one outlet but it exists in another. I believe purposely leaving context out in order to further an argument and sway readers in one direction is deceiving and is one of the reasons the lack of trust exists with the public. I really just want to know the facts but I have to visit several different places to get them. I like reading different perspectives but all the facts should be present. I read several different sources that includes The New York Times, The New York Post, The Associated Press among several others although I believe bias exists in the articles I read. I’m not sure I find any particular source completely trustworthy and I like to do my own homework before forming an opinion.