I feel like the powerful special interests influencing what we hear (and don't hear) is what led to society's fragmentation, and the media is the means of making the societal fragmentation happen. If all we hear is what's not working, and how dysfunctional and incapable of civility we are as a society, that's the reality we'll construct and therefore act from. We become easy to control and manipulate. Most people won't have the capacity to appreciate/make sense of nakedly slanted articles the way you can given your intellectual skills.

The linear reporting of "facts," which is what the mainstream press is largely doing these days, isn't resulting in us being more informed. In fact, it keeps us to a static, polarized world of endless culture/info wars.

So we need to start somewhere with creating that consensus about shared reality you speak of. For me, this means inviting the discomfort and confusion of facing our differences. Yet I believe there are many ways that involving multiple perspectives can reduce collective anxiety, as opposed to adding to it. The skillful means of organizing diverse information is how we prevent it from being a daunting proposition. I think it will largely depend on more of that sense-making approach, where we foreground dialogue/debate across our differences with social norms around mindful inquiry and basic listening skills. Utilize visuals and other ways of processing information rather than read through thousands of words that most people don't have the capacity for. Of course this process will be messy and imperfect, but at least it'll reveal how complex things really are.

I'm fascinated by what the reinvention of structures, ethics, and methods will look like in journalism and media ... in this new digital era.