Minichiello writes The Sift newsletter for educators at the News Literacy Project.
I see misinformation all the time. Scrolling through Instagram, I saw a musician I follow sharing false posts about the Israel-Hamas war. Out to eat at a restaurant, a server making friendly small talk shared true crime content she finds online — while rattling off names of accounts that I later discovered were conspiracy-minded. A friend of mine thinks the Infowars conspiracy theories site is a delight. And there’s my relative who started entertaining the idea that the world is flat after watching YouTube videos.
Misinformation affects everything from our health decisions to our personal relationships to business to, of course, democracy. It’s easy to get angry when we’re confronted with misinformation — that’s what it’s designed to do — but learning how to sort fact from fiction online while also practicing empathy will go a long way in fixing the misinformation crisis.
And the News Literacy Project, where I now work after a career in journalism, can teach people how to identify credible news.
First, if you’re fortunate enough not to live in a local news desert, you should get your information from your local newspaper, radio station or TV news programs. Beware of online “news” sites that are partisan propaganda. If they have very few or no local stories but plenty of politically charged articles, it’s a red flag. Also, follow news outlets that adhere to journalism standards and ethics, such as being transparent about corrections. Quality local news not only empowers us individually, but studies show it’s also good for democracy.
Second, when navigating difficult conversations where misinformation may come up, try practicing what NLP calls “PEP”: patience, empathy and persistence. You can’t convince people of anything in one heated conversation, but if you listen you can walk away with a better understanding of how they developed their beliefs.
“We don’t all think the same,” said one of my relatives, who refused to get a Covid-19 booster shot after seeing misinformation about how it might affect someone’s hair.
I responded: “I’m not saying we need to think the same thing. I’m saying we need to know what’s true before we agree or disagree.”
It’s hard when someone you love is repeating falsehoods, but that doesn’t mean they’re not intelligent or they are a bad person. We’re living in a system where social media platforms don’t properly moderate content for misinformation and, in fact, incentivize its spread through outrage. Laws and regulations haven’t caught up to how quickly artificial intelligence technologies — including misleading images, videos and posts — are being developed.
Additionally, remember that none of us are exempt from falling for misinformation. It’s embarrassing, but it’s happened to me too. During the early days of the pandemic, photos spread online of dolphins swimming in Venice canals. It seemed mesmerizing and magical. Of course, those photos later turned out to be false. And I felt like a fool – something to remember the next time I spar with a friend over misinformation.
It’s a systemic problem. We can do our part to counter it by seeking out credible sources of news. We can keep in mind that it’s easy to be fooled by falsehoods. And we can engage in tough, face-to-face conversations with the people we care about, but lead with empathy — not accusations.
One tactic that has helped me immensely — not just in countering misinformation I see online but also when talking through hot misinformation topics with loved ones — is to simply take ... a ... pause. This is actually a news literacy skill. Being news-literate means being able to identify credible information, which is often as simple as pausing to confirm whether something is true before sharing it online or in conversations.
It also means seeking out credible news sources like your local TV station or paper. By practicing news literacy skills, we’ll be better equipped to find trustworthy information and engage in difficult conversations about conspiracy theories and misinformation.
During National News Literacy Week, which runs Jan. 22-26, you can learn how to push back on misinformation and empower yourself and your communities to seek quality, vetted information. Join us in our effort to build a national movement to advance the practice of news literacy throughout American society, creating better informed, more engaged and more empowered individuals — and ultimately a stronger democracy.
A deep look at how "All in the Family" remains a striking mirror of American politics, class tensions, and cultural manipulation—proving its relevance decades later.
All in This American Family
There are a few shows that have aged as eerily well as All in the Family.
It’s not just that it’s still funny and has the feel not of a sit-com, but of unpretentious, working-class theatre. It’s that, decades later, it remains one of the clearest windows into the American psyche. Archie Bunker’s living room has been, as it were, a small stage on which the country has been working through the same contradictions, anxieties, and unresolved traumas that still shape our politics today. The manipulation of the working class, the pitting of neighbor against neighbor, the scapegoating of the vulnerable, the quiet cruelties baked into everyday life—all of it is still here with us. We like to reassure ourselves that we’ve progressed since the early 1970s, but watching the show now forces an unsettling recognition: The structural forces that shaped Archie’s world have barely budged. The same tactics of distraction and division deployed by elites back then are still deployed now, except more efficiently, more sleekly.
Archie himself is the perfect vessel for this continuity. He is bigoted, blustery, reactive, but he is also wounded, anxious, and constantly misled by forces above and beyond him. Norman Lear created Archie not as a monster to be hated (Lear’s genius was to make Archie lovable despite his loathsome stands), but as a man trapped by the political economy of his era: A union worker who feels his country slipping away, yet cannot see the hands that are actually moving it. His anger leaks sideways, onto immigrants, women, “hippies,” and anyone with less power than he has. The real villains—the wealthy, the connected, the manufacturers of grievance—remain safely and comfortably offscreen. That’s part of the show’s key insight: It reveals how elites thrive by making sure working people turn their frustrations against each other rather than upward.
Edith, often dismissed as naive or scatterbrained, functions as the show’s quiet moral center. Her compassion exposes the emotional void in Archie’s worldview and, in doing so, highlights the costs of the divisions that powerful interests cultivate. Meanwhile, Mike the “Meathead” represents a generation trying to break free from those divisions but often trapped in its own loud self-righteousness. Their clashes are not just family arguments but collisions between competing visions of America’s future. And those visions, tellingly, have yet to resolve themselves.
The political context of the show only sharpens its relevance. Premiering in 1971, All in the Family emerged during the Nixon years, when the “Silent Majority” strategy was weaponizing racial resentment, cultural panic, and working-class anxiety to cement power. Archie was a fictional embodiment of the very demographic Nixon sought to mobilize and manipulate. The show exposed, often bluntly, how economic insecurity was being rerouted into cultural hostility. Watching the show today, it’s impossible to miss how closely that logic mirrors the present, from right-wing media ecosystems to politicians who openly rely on stoking grievances rather than addressing root causes.
What makes the show unsettling today is that its satire feels less like a relic and more like a mirror. The demagogic impulses it spotlighted have simply found new platforms. The working-class anger it dramatized has been harvested by political operatives who, like their 1970s predecessors, depend on division to maintain power. The very cultural debates that fueled Archie’s tirades — about immigration, gender roles, race, and national identity—are still being used as tools to distract from wealth concentration and political manipulation.
If anything, the divisions are sharper now because the mechanisms of manipulation are more sophisticated, for much has been learned by The Machine. The same emotional raw material Lear mined for comedy is now algorithmically optimized for outrage. The same social fractures that played out around Archie’s kitchen table now play out on a scale he couldn’t have imagined. But the underlying dynamics haven’t changed at all.
That is why All in the Family feels so contemporary. The country Lear dissected never healed or meaningfully evolved: It simply changed wardrobe. The tensions, prejudices, and insecurities remain, not because individuals failed to grow but because the economic and political forces that thrive on division have only become more entrenched. Until we confront the political economy that kept Archie and Michael locked in an endless loop of circular bickering, the show will remain painfully relevant for another fifty years.
Ahmed Bouzid is the co-founder of The True Representation Movement.