Stop relying on the media for your understanding of what the government is doing

Hi there, I'm the Inertia Kid. You might remember interactions you have had with me previously such as 'flippant joke to derail a debate that I was at risk of losing'. Today however, I'd actually like to make a serious point about how we on this sub actually understand what the Labour government is doing.

For the 'normies' out there who have functioning lives and fulfilling relationships with other people, it is understandable that they should get their information about what the government is doing from the media.

We are not normies. We are members of a subreddit focused on a single political party. By even reading this post, you have branded yourself among the top 0.01% of political saddos. That you should get your information about what the government is doing purely from the media isn't good enough.

Ask this sub 'can you trust the media in the UK to report accurately on politics?' and the answer will be obvious. Yet we spend all of our time discussing it, and through that process it gradually coagulates into something like accepted wisdom even here.

Example: the idea that has been repeated multiple times on this sub just this morning that 'Labour is doing nothing the Tories wouldn't have done'. This is a conclusion you could easily reach by gaining your information on what the government is doing from the media.

The media is not interested in informing you properly. This is not because the media is evil and thus wishes to misinform you so it can control you. This is because the financial incentive for the media is to generate clicks. It therefore wants to do the things that generates clicks most easily. The content that generates clicks most easily is 'content that confirms your existing beliefs'.

The belief 'the Labour government is going to to do some really great things' was never a widespread belief, which means that there is little financial incentive for the media to feed that content to people.

If you don't use primary sources for your understanding of what the government is doing, you will be poorly-informed. And by this I don't mean believe everything they say in speeches and press releases - those are not really primary sources.

The best source to understand what the government is doing is the parliament website. This link is a search for all the bills that have been introduced by the government during this parliamentary session. There are 29 of them currently. It details where each of them is up to in its 'life cycle' as a bill (between first reading and receiving royal assent).

You can use this as a basis to google what each of the bills will do. If you're a proper elite sicko you can even read the legislation itself. Then you'll have a real, usable understanding of what the government is doing. And you'll also have a very firm grounding from which to criticise the government, rather than just repeating memes someone else made up to try to game people into clicking something.