Time and time again as I travel and talk to people about what I do at AllSides, I hear a plea for sanity. 

People ask me: can we truly listen to each other, discuss the key issues of the day, consider possible ways to address those problems and collaborate (or even compromise) as needed to implement solutions?

News and social media love to highlight the worst examples of what’s broken, and the most extreme, you might think that sanity is not an option, that it is not possible, or even that people don’t really want it. You would be mistaken. The demand for sanity is real, and we have the real opportunity to offer sanity to enough people to make a difference.

In early 2024, Linda Lorelle and Jean Becker of Civil Dialogues invited me to the Baker’s Institute to participate in the Town Hall "Labor Shortages, Border Crisis, & Immigration Reform.” This event primarily addressed immigration, but it raised many of the same questions and themes I've encountered at other events and panels over the past few years (my portion starts at 30:40). This dialogue on immigration – like many policy conversations – quickly turned to the issues of media and information. 

Media makes us angry, prevents clear thinking

Raymond Robertson of Texas A&M University expressed concern that the United States isn’t making meaningful progress because “right now Americans are very addicted to anger” which he attributes to “this dopamine rush from watching news that makes you angry…” He concluded that progress can’t be made until people can “take a step back and say, what are the facts? What information can we get on all sides and start thinking more clearly?”

Several other panelists and attendees shared his concerns and were skeptical of the possibility of meaningful progress. If we can’t have a sane discussion with each other, how can we solve this or any other problem?

Good examples and progress – from the news media!

People inside and outside of that room were and are fed up with the status quo. While many are so fed up that they feel depressed and hopeless, I see dramatic change and opportunity.

Many news media companies that have very tangibly become more clearly partisan over the last few years are suffering dramatically right now - huge declines in readers and audience. That is what I described a year ago, and it has gotten much more dramatic since then and since the election. The Washington Post for example, has lost 90% of digital readership in only 4 years. 

But news organizations focused on balance rather than their own partisan agenda have been growing. Newsweek, after making a huge internal shift from clearly left to an even balance of left and right opinions, has grown tremendously. Start-ups like The Free Press devoted to the ideas of traditional journalism have gone from zero to national influence and prominence over night.

Major news organizations are seeing the change and trying to reverse their partisan bias spiral CNN announced their intent to be more center, and their hosting of a presidential debate was widely seen as more balanced. Politico announced similar changes. We worked with the LA Times throughout the winter, and they recently launched a new AI tool called Insights, revealing the political bias of its opinion pieces.

At AllSides, our audience dramatically grew last year, by over 250%, and continues to grow even after the election while others fall. We earned over 550 million views – not because we've done anything great with advertising, but because there's a huge unmet demand for sanity, for understanding each other, for connecting with each other, and actually solving problems.

What it takes to change our society, to change history

Those of us who have been devoted to strengthening our democratic society to enable better thinking and results for all have asked academics and other experts what it takes to change society. This is what they tell us. When you get about 3.5% of a populace engaged in that movement – things change. Policy changes. Culture changes. Politicians change. Laws change. 

Tony Payan, Director of the Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics, and Public Policy echoed this during our panel discussion – “How many people actually participated in the civil rights movements in the 1960s? 2%. The other 98% of all Americans were sitting on the sidelines. 2%. You [John] say it takes 3.5% – either number is low. That’s all it takes to change society.”

There's a real huge unmet demand for sanity

Linda added an important point about media literacy. “Negative news is, of course, what sells. I think part of the answer is for all of us to become better consumers of media. That we have to educate ourselves not to just look at one particular station or read one particular news paper… And that’s one of the reasons … I loved the concept of AllSides.”

One thing I have learned, with the help of one of our co-founder Joan Blades, is that it is about much more than just news and information. “If you really have a kind of dialogue – civil dialogues like these two are running – then you give the power back to the people, and away from the power brokers…” I should have added that dialogue, especially empathetic dialogue across differences, also takes power away from partisan, divisive news and social media. “And then these great solutions become law… it’s a matter of us enabling each other to be more powerful than all those noises.” 

It’s understandable to be skeptical, even cynical about the state of information and dialogue when we appear so divided, but at AllSides we believe in humans’ ability to solve problems. We believe that most people want to be a part of the solution if we empower them with good information. Some people think to restore sanity, we must shut down certain speech and information, but that disempowers people from deciding for themselves what information is good. We believe we can restore sanity and give the power back to the people. It’s an ambitious mission, but a necessary one. 

Thank you for joining us as we normalize sanity. 

– John Gable