With recent SCOTUS decision on TikTok there is a high likelihood that a precedent will be set for a more restrictive internet with in the USA. This is will compounded by the rolling back of Internet Neutrality with the ruling of the 6th circuit court and the growing power of large tech companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon.

This can lead to some issues when trying to find reliable sources of information on current events around world. Let alone reliable information on anything that the state deems “unsafe”.

This is a topic I’ve been focused on for some time now, starting back in the late 1980’s it was clear to me that the domestic sources of media in the US where not giving us the whole story, and so I sought out other source of news where I could. Being that this was the 1980’s in Eastern Washington state, I didn’t have an internet connection to search. So I used shortwave radio has my window to the world to find out what was going on, without the filters of the US media in the way.

It is a rather odd feeling talking about this again in the year 2025, but I guess it’s a good skill to have no matter what year you are in. Because keeping knowledge freely available is the primary way we can keep humanity free. And that feels a bit more important to me than a bunch of likes on “insert platform name here”.

Knowing the Source:

The biggest thing I have found is to know your sources and to understand the lense they see the world through. Every source of information will have their own spin on things, regardless of who they are. State sponsored media has a spin just as much as a random person on Social Media. Spin is not a bad thing, it’s just something to be aware of and to include into your calculations while gathering information.

The best way to understand the spin of a source is to compare their coverage of an event with the coverage of other sources. See what they talk about, focus on, and leave out compared to what others say. This will help you understand the spin.

Also pay attention to what they don’t talk about at all. A great example of this was the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia Today made a very clear effort to avoid the topic, where as the BBC, NPR and DW had on the ground and detailed coverage of the events.

How to get it:

The how can be the tricky part. Back in the 1990’s the main source for many was Shortwave Radio. For those who are unfamiliar with this part of the radio band, it’s a range of frequencies from 3MHz to 30MHz that allow for long range communications. It does this by refracting through a layer of the upper atmosphere called the Ionosphere. This layer of the atmosphere is charged by the sun, and depending on the charge it receives will affect the propagation of Shortwave dramatically. One day you may not hear much, the next you may hear stations from all around the world.

Historically state sponsored media groups(as well as religiously sponsored media) took advantage of this to get their programming into as many locations as they could. Including areas they were band from.

A great example of this was Radio Free Europe. From the end of World War 2 until around 2010 this US sponsored shortwave station broadcasted pro democracy programing into Eastern Europe and the Middle East from Western European locations. The hope was that people in these areas would listen to the station to learn what was going on in the rest of the world without their local governments filters or propaganda.

To be fair RFE had their own spin on the information they broadcasted, which in these situation could have been more useful to those listening then the information form local sources. Again it is important to keep the spin in mind when gathering this data.

If you had the money, you could also use Free to Air Satellite TV in the 1990’s. This would have been more prevalent in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East than it was in the US at the time. But it was still a way to get information from outside your local area.

In the current day most people just use the internet, as it is a relatively cheap, and very effectively connects most of the world together. But as I’m sure many of you have seen it’s becoming harder and harder to find reliable information on the internet. With the invasion of AI slop, filtering and clamping down of the platform owners, and the increasing interference of state sponsored actors it is starting to feel like the internet of the late 1990s. Where it took a lot of time and digging via multiple search tools to find much of anything. But now it’s because of too much stuff, rather than not enough.

So how do you find and keep up with the info you are looking for in this environment? Here are some of my suggestions based on my 30 years of news hunting:

Find Direct Sources:

Use an information source that is as close to the event as possible. Many times this will be a state sponsored media, or a local media company. If you have access to social media see if you can find users posting about it from that area. Be careful of state sponsored disinformation campaigns when gathering info on social media. Waves of disinformation will start to spread shortly after any large event. And it’s important to get out a head of this and Identity those posts so you can filter them out.

My advice is to use social media as a supporting source, or secondary source for information. Using it to support information you find from Local media or state sponsored media.

OSINT:

Open Source Intel is another great source of information. For those who are not familiar with OSINT, this is a method of gathering intelligence via publicly avliable information sources. Organizations like Bellingcat using this information to do their investigations. (I’ll make another post just on this topic at a later date)

I feel it’s important to point out here that OSINT can be gathered off line as well. Most of it comes from the internet because that is the easiest way to collect it. But if you have the resources you can gather some of it yourself by recovering unencrypted satellite downlinks, listening to local unencrypted public safety systems(Within the limits of your local regulations), and monitoring telemetry systems like ADSB, AIS, and ACARS.

(Again, I’ll post more on how to do this in another post)

News Feed Service:

Back in the 1990s AP and Reuters use to a Radio Teletype service on Shortwave that would feed a string of headlines and summaries of the news stories of many different agencies. This was a really useful way to keep up to date with what was going on, and catch stories as it was happening.

Now a days the AP and Reuters RSS and Line feeds having taken the place of RTTY.

Note: It looks like both Reuters and AP are moving away form RSS feeds, I’ll update this section when I find a better way to capture this data. There are APIs, but no easy way to grab the data from them.

Take your time:

This is a big one, in chasing the news you can really get caught up in the moment. Wanting to find the most up to date information, or find that data that no one else has. Remember to take your time. Gather all the information you need, build a picture up and only act when you really need to.

Because in the end, this is all so you can stay informed of what is going on. And sure, in some cases it may help you out. I have had situations where my info gathering helped to save a friend’s farm from a wildfire, helped me to dodge a wreck on the freeway, or change my travel plans do to weather. But in the end it’s not something to stress out about, feel hopeless about, or to drive to some conclusion. Because it’s just information, and it’s up to you to make the call on what to do with it. So please take your time.

The Data:

In my next post I’ll build a list of sources I have found useful in my news hunt. Along with how to access that data in all the multiple ways it’s accessible. I’ll also be posting info on how you can build your own infrastructure up to get this info off line. This is something I’ve been working on doing here, and I’ll do my best to share that info with all of you.

This change is not the end of the world, in fact it’s not even the first time it’s happened here in the US. This is part of an ongoing cold war/post cold war info cycle that has been spinning for the last 70 years. This is a rather extreme swing this time, but I’m sure it won’t be the last. We can stick together and make it through this one, and all the ones to come.

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Filed under: News Gathering - @ January 18, 2025 13:23