If Michael Kitchens’ research is any indication, the answer to both questions is: not many. An assistant professor of psychology at Lebanon Valley College, Kitchens conducted a study that investigated whether people’s religious backgrounds influenced their choice of media on religion. He and his students asked 213 participants to rate their preference for one of three fictitious research summaries: one with positive information about religion, one with negative information about religion, and one neutral.

You can guess what the study found. Religious people preferred the positive summary. Non-religious people preferred the negative summary.

In an article on his research, Kitchens extrapolates from these findings to the political realm. It makes sense, he writes, that “people’s political identity fuels the need to seek information that confirms” their beliefs. This, he reasons, has given rise to a fractured media landscape in which “media sources continue to validate people’s preconceived notions and worldviews.”

I think he’s spot-on here.  What surprises me, though, is his bleak outlook for the future: he says that “harmony is unattainable” and the best course of action is to learn how to conduct “a reasonable debate about ideas.”

But how do we even get to the debate if we are so suspicious of the “other side”? That suspicion comes from the same cycle that Kitchens is on about. As we take in the news media that agree with us, we inevitably hear criticisms of those who disagree. In today’s toxic public square, those criticisms are particularly nasty: we hear our adversaries’ motives questioned, their patriotism impugned, their truthfulness cast into doubt. So how can we approach them with anything that appears like listening?

What if, however, we took one simple step long before the debate: what if we all read or viewed media that disagree with us?

What if we all committed to reading one newsmagazine, watching one news program, or visiting one blog whose worldview is completely different from ours? We could do this not just across political lines, but across other divides too: divides of gender, color, sexual orientation, and yes, religion.

Here’s what I’ve seen happen: once we take in this media from proponents of the “other side,” we realize that their thinking has some rationality behind it, that their motives have more integrity than we’re led to believe, that maybe a few of their points make sense—even if we still disagree with them. This opens our minds a bit. The next time we approach these people or their ideas, we might be just a bit more inclined to listen, and our minds open wider.

Now I’m not talking about the ranting media—particularly the talk radio programs whose sole purpose is to inflame passions and get ratings. I’m talking about thoughtful columnists and pundits who believe something different. This is why I read David Brooks and Kathleen Parker as well as Cynthia Tucker. Maybe I need to suck it up and read George Will, too.

What about you? If you could read one columnist or magazine or blog from the “other side,” which would you pick? Share it here. It might just be a resource no one else has thought about.

Why is that a problem? Because every human being comes with her own upbringing, experiences, values, and opinions. Try as they might, then—and I sincerely believe they try their hardest—journalists can never attain perfect objectivity. Of course there’s bias; it can’t be any other way.  

As a result, no one media outlet can provide the diversity of perspective that reasoned dialogue requires. To prepare ourselves for dialogue, then, we need a “balanced media diet”: a healthful blend of newspapers, magazines, websites, blogs, TV news, and other sources that provide a cross-section of viewpoints. I took a look at this in my last post. 

Now, what does a balanced media diet look like? 

Part of it is pretty evident: we strive to absorb views across the political spectrum, as President Obama mentioned in his recent commencement address. Conservatives who love The Wall Street Journal or the National Review could try reading Mother Jones. Liberals who get their news from the Huffington Post could tune in to FOX News now and then. (Stop cringing. This hurts me worse than it hurts you.) 

Straightforward, right? Except diversity comes in more than one flavor. For instance: 

• Ethnicity. If Anglos like me tapped into Latino news sources, how much more would we learn about the immigration debate?
• Gender. GQ readers, when is the last time you picked up Ms. Magazine? And vice versa?
• Faith. If atheists subscribed to God’s Politics, how much common ground might they find?
• Reporting vs. analysis. Reporters by definition are held to a higher standard of balance and objectivity. Getting all one’s news from analysis and op-eds makes it too easy to absorb predigested opinion, however, thoughtful, as fact.

 There’s another way to balance your media diet too: perusing media that themselves present a diversity of opinions. I think of these as the “mutual funds” of news. Just as each mutual fund contains a diverse array of investments, so these diverse media present us with more breadth of perspective per hour spent ingesting the news.

I personally gravitate toward these “mutual funds.” From the PBS NewsHour I get in-depth investigations of a few issues each evening, usually with a well-struck balance of insight and opinion. Our local newspaper carries a diverse blend of conservatives, liberals, and everyone in between. In the pages of Tikkun I read social and spiritual insights from across the spectrum of faith traditions. Because of its thoughtful insights and analysis, The Economist also makes my list; it gives me a bias toward the free market while reporting on some of the world’s least reported stories.

What happens when we take in a diverse media mix? Inevitably, we come across the same story from different angles—and begin to see the legitimacy of each point of view. The complexity of the situation and the lack of easy answers become clear. We grow instinctively skeptical of easy answers for any issue. We start to take political and social heroes with several grains of salt, knowing how fallible humans are and how quickly we fall. Overall, we gain wisdom, empathy, and an ability to live with ambiguity.

Of course, we can’t read or watch everything we can put our hands on. But to the extent we broaden our media mix, we broaden our perspective. And to the extent we broaden our perspective, we prepare ourselves more deeply for dialogue.