This is a question that got brought up a lot in 2020. During the Covid 19 Pandemic, we had many celebrities and artists get called out for their problematic past and get “canceled” or what they really mean is wait for them to post their notes app apology and everybody forgets about it a few days later but that’s not the point of this discussion. 

After an artist gets called out, the next question that gets brought up (if they care enough) is “how do I continue to consume their art without supporting them?”. This question is not as easy to answer. Many people answer with “separate the art from the artist” but after multiple online discussions, I found that it isn’t as easy to do.

This conversation sparked up again at the start of 2020 because of one of the most famous authors of the past generations, JK Rowling. When her very transphobic tweets and her support for anti-trans companies were made apparent, many people came out to show their distaste and lack of support for it. 

Now I, like many, also read Harry Potter at a very young age. I grew up watching the Harry Potter movies. For a moment I thought “as long as I don’t buy anything that gives her money, I am good”. I can continue to enjoy this world and continue to read the books that I’ve owned for years. Until her racist and antisemitic portrayal of characters was called out. I’m not going to say that it was something new, this could’ve been called out years ago and I didn’t spot it or research it myself. But this brings up another question, “what happens when the art shows the views of the artist?”

You can’t force anyone to not buy a book, or to not watch a movie, or to not listen to this artist’s music. At the end of the day, we still have authors like Sarah J. Maas, Colleen Hoover, and JK Rowling who will continue to make money from everything with their names on it.

I have no idea if there really is a malevolent Big Brother pulling the strings of news media and political narratives but I do know that Rupert Murdoch exists. A long time ago I read a story written in the New York Times, a detailed history of Murdoch’s rise to the top of corporate media. I’m pretty sure I was in the middle of a process called “coming of age” which is when it’s time for a person to step through the door that leads from childhood to adulthood all the while you’re being dealt sturdy blows to the head and groin that come from either side of said door. It dawned on me that I would become a fully-fledged member of society soon. I’d become a voter. 

I’m pretty sure it’s a citizen’s duty to vote, so I suppose it’s their responsibility to be informed. However, as long as voting is a test with no wrong answer, becoming informed is a study session without a clear start point and no discernable end. This leaves one a lot of room when it comes to the process of learning about social issues.

Now, to become informed, we look to news outlets and journalists to give us the scoop on what senator is cheating with which campaign manager, who Dow Jones is and what it will take for him to be happy, and to keep steady count of the doomsday clock. 

There’s a lot of jungle to whack through just to figure out what issues are being decided on and what you can do to help accomplish what you want. Oh yeah! What do you want? You have some vague notion of what it is. You heard something about inflation the other day right before driving your head into the sand. As you wipe sand out of your eyes while watching CNBC you start to understand that inflation isn’t very good and that something caused it. You nod to yourself and resolve that you’ve earned a cookie. Whenever you do feel like you’ve brushed up enough on your city’s housing policies to make an informed ballot decision, you sip your coffee, unfold the newspaper and find out the goalposts were moved in the night and the opinions you’ve formed somehow spells destruction of humanity.

Both the desire to understand and the anxiety that society gives me have taught me to treat all “news” with at least some level of skepticism before I can fact-check it in one way or another. Then after that, if I can’t come to a conclusion regarding the issue, I decide it might have something to do with an old man in a control tower who owns a business and makes money the more viewers he has.

News is flawed, but we as humans are necessarily imperfect. If we weren’t we wouldn’t have social issues, and if we didn’t have those we wouldn’t need news. It’s an individual’s chore and privilege to think for themself.