“Wait, what do you mean ‘the government is shutting down?’”
When your 9 o’clock news regurgitates story after story faster and faster every night, it can be difficult to fully grasp what everything means. Just as you’ve started to understand the whole Epstein files situation then everything switches focus to a new ICE incident.
Before you come to a rather rash or even hateful conclusion, it’s important to stop and ask yourself if you even understand the political situation at hand.
Political misinformation and illiteracy breed citizens who are unwilling to listen to the other side. Division in society is inevitable, polarization and hatred is what creates political issues.
Arguably one of the most pivotal factors towards being politically informed is where you get your news from.
Pew Research Center reveals that 40% of people who rely on websites, apps, radio and print fall into the high political knowledge bracket. Only 17% of people who primarily access news through social media fall into that category, and local TV comes in last at 10%.
It’s important to build a collection of news websites you trust and understand that are always accessible. It’s important not to fall victim to the convenience of social media news updates; they usually aren’t accurate or stimulating.
However, the blame doesn’t solely fall on you if you’re politically misinformed or uneducated.
FOX comes in first as the most watched news broadcast, MSNBC in second and CNN in third according to Adweek data. Fox notably serves a more conservative audience while MSNBC is most attractive to liberal viewers. Despite any great journalistic work each program is doing to inform people, they’re knowingly or unknowingly creating biased and sectionalized content.
A Virginia Tech study discovered from studying nearly 300 billion words spoken on CNN and Fox News and nearly 133,000 tweets posted by people followed each broadcaster’s account. They found that an individual who watches either TV program interprets key words differently, and echoes the same words used on their broadcaster or choice.
“Most news sources are very biased, it’s hard to find a good middle ground, especially like, through like televised news,” sophomore and debate team member NoeI Springer said. “That’s why we should encourage reading the news rather than looking at it through the TV.”
If people can’t even understand the basics of what news programs are covering, like how the Supreme Court makes decisions, who controls the House, and how bills are passed, there’s no point in watching the news at all.
Fancy news websites don’t exactly appeal to the large demographics who are not college educated or living in rural areas. The language used may feel elitist, and people in those categories are less likely to subscribe to big city newspapers. This is one of the reasons Trump appealed to people in those groups; his unconventional speaking style marketed himself as down-to-earth. In his 2016 Nevada victory speech, Trump even specifically stated, “We won with the poorly educated, I love the poorly educated”.
The dramatized, even manipulative way in which a lot of politicians speak is a tool used to excite and rile supporters up while concealing the real issues at hand.
“Sensationalization blocks the deeper issues,” junior and School Board Representative Joy Yang said. “I remember when Trump dropped the f-bomb, that was all they were talking about. It was like, wait, what? What about the actual bombs being dropped?”
At Haven, as of the 2025-2026 silver guide, there are two options for the senior grade social studies course. A U.S Chamber of Commerce survey of 2,000 registered voters reports that while ⅔ of participants took a civic course in high school, less than 15% said they feel “very confident” they could explain the U.S government system and 70% failed a basic civic knowledge assessment.
It’s hard to maintain knowledge from high school; if you didn’t go into a mathematics field in college, it’s unlikely you’ll remember your junior year trigonometry course in 20 years. The same thing can be said about any political information anyone learned as a teenager.
We need to be doing something more to educate ourselves other than passively watching the news. Watching and reading the news is nearly useless if you don’t have a strong base of political knowledge.
“I hear this as a teacher all the time with people who aren’t teachers, they’ll say things like, why didn’t they teach us how to do taxes in school? My response to that is, we do teach you a lot of things in school. However, what are you able to understand at that time?” AP US History teacher Tom Babcock said.
Until a simple and effective political education program gains enough traction to garner usage from all demographics, it’s entirely up to the individual to ensure they are educated enough to navigate today’s political climate.
Read, read, read. It can be hard, but identify news sites and coverage that are trustworthy and correct. If you need extra help, engage with civic education programs like iCivics to reinforce anything you learn in school. Carry these resources into adulthood, when you won’t be taking civic engagement courses anymore.
As a high school student, you are going to be coming up in this confusing political landscape. The world needs educated citizens to fight for their rights and representation, no politician is going to do that for you.
“We have time for a lot of nonsense,” Babcock said. “I feel like in depth reading sometimes is more important than some of the nonsense we fill our time with. I’m trying to think of how many Instagram reels I sent my wife yesterday. If I could do that, I can spend a couple extra minutes learning something about a topic in depth.”
Each opinion represented in The Panther Press is the view and voice of the writer. Opinions, as the selection and curation of content by the editors, do not represent the views of the entire Panther Press staff, the adviser, the school, or the administration.
