Originally published on 29 October 2016 on LinkedIn.

I am so sick of the American presidential election. And I am not even American. Nor do I live in America.

Yet my Facebook, LinkedIn, news watching and everything else is constantly interrupted by the endless ‘he said, she said’ of the election all citing some media outlet.

It has all brought me to one conclusion – there is no such thing an independent media.

The media outlets are either privately owned and pushing the political agenda most beneficial to the owners and/or their advertisers. Or they are struggling for space in the ever-increasing noise of news media and therefore will print anything at the expense of fact checking and reason. Just ask any publicly funded news desk about how many people tune into factually correct and unbiased commentary. Sensationalism tastes better on our over stimulated palates.

So back to my point, let’s take back the public discourse on important items and write and learn for ourselves.   Don’t rely on the media anymore to broadcast news.  Part of this will require one to research, engage in deep thought and respectful conversation with others. It will not include citing articles such as this http://viralliberty.com/cell-phone-video-released-showing-vote-machines-changing-votes-democrat/ as fact (one will note and no doubt wish to peruse the other clearly intellectual and meaningful articles surrounding the main piece). It will call on one’s ability to question sources, logic and assumptions on any given subject. In short, you will need to use your grey matter.

I, for one, will not be discussing the American presidential election again as I think the truth is far more boring than the headlines – she is not as lily white as we would all hope and he is not as much of a train wreck as he appears.  They are both painfully mediocre.