'Trusted sources of information can step up'

"The value of honest news" outlets is more obvious than ever

(Image credit: Getty Images / Carol Yepes)

published October 20, 2023

'There is a good place to find trusted news online: actual news websites'

Dave Lee at Bloomberg

"Fake news" has been a problem for years, said Dave Lee at Bloomberg, but it's getting out of hand. "In the information war surrounding the Israel-Gaza conflict, fakery is taking many forms" — even video-game images presented as battle footage. And this kind of misinformation is about to be "super-charged" by artificial intelligence. "But while the internet served to cheapen the news," AI could save it by making "the value of honest news" outlets more obvious than ever.

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California's high taxes are backfiring, says Eric Boehm in Reason. Roughly 343,000 people "fled the state" from July 2021 to July 2022, shrinking California's population for the third straight year. Many of those leaving are wealthy people driven away by California's high personal income tax rates, according to online real-estate firm MyEListing.com. "Their exit threatens to blow a hole in the state's finances." Out-migration cost California $343 million in tax revenue in 2021 alone.

"The political chaos in Washington and the explosive situation in Israel" are discouraging the "due diligence necessary to determine whether it makes sense to give more money to Ukraine," says Daniel L. Davis in Responsible Statecraft. The reality is there's "no likely path to a Ukrainian military victory," no matter how much money and how many tanks Congress sends Kyiv. "It is time to acknowledge this obvious on-the-ground truth and seek out other pathways forward."

Finally, there has been "a breakthrough in one of the Western Hemisphere's most bitter" political and humanitarian stalemates, says Catherine Osborn in Foreign Policy. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's "undemocratic" government, opposition leaders, and the United States reached a deal exchanging sanctions relief for a promise to hold free elections. "Maduro's track record" suggests he'll try to hold onto power in the 2024 vote, but at least the opposition has a window to "build political legitimacy with voters."

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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.