Silos are terrible for democracy

It’s time to start tearing down the silos.
No, we’re not talking about grain storage.
We’re talking about the flow of news, fake news, information, misinformation, disinformation and all that other clutter that afflicts our overly rich media environment in the 21st century.
Because the fact is that many of us — if not most of us — consume our media flow in a silo, one defined by our personal philosophy or political ideology. So the stuff that flows our way simply reinforces beliefs that have already been identified thanks to algorithms on Facebook or any one of a thousand other internet outlets.
In other words, we read stuff that coincides with what we already believe. That keeps us safely away from ideas that might challenge our preconceptions, ideas that actually might make us think.
The editorial page of a newspaper like this one is intended to be an open marketplace of ideas. There are conservative opinions, liberal opinions, contrarian opinions and conventional opinions. And who knows what else.
The purpose is to allow readers to sample a little of this and a little of that. One columnist might make you feel good. The next one might raise your blood pressure. The third might make you reconsider your original opinion. In other words, it might make you think.
Ironically, the internet — which has allowed for a greater spectrum of political expression than anyone ever dreamed imaginable — has changed all that and changed it in a bad way. Faced with this broad array of political viewpoints and broad array of perspectives on the news, far too many of us have retreated to our silos.
Instead of opening doors, the sheer abundance of the internet has prompted us to close our doors.
Increasingly — and to our detriment as a democracy — news and opinion consumers only read and listen to what they want to hear, the stuff that reinforces and rigidifies views they already held.
That’s true on both the right and the left. And it’s not healthy.
In fact, it may be the greatest threat to maintaining a democratic republic in the United States of America. 
Because if we only read what we agree with, we’ll never learn anything new. We’ll never be able to fashion a compromise. And the notion of common ground — something that has held the country together — will become harder and harder to find.
The silos are the problem, and each of us has a responsibility to tear them down.
You can start today. Make an effort to read something you wouldn’t ordinarily read or listen to something you wouldn’t ordinarily listen to.
Will you agree with it? Probably not.
But will it make you think? Of course it will.
And that’s the whole point.
Citizens in silos aren’t fully engaged citizens at all, and democracy suffers from their detachment. — J.R.