Stop the hysterics. Nobody gets their news from Facebook.

Out of the myriad problems with social media, it is deeply misleading to suggest they have outsized influence with the news-reading public.

Two-thirds of Americans report seeing the news on social media at least occasionally but nobody actually gets their news from Facebook. They get it through social media but they are still reading their news from the same sources they have for a long time; traditional TV and newspaper journalists. Clicking a Facebook link to read a story from your local newspaper is no different than when there used to be one copy of the local paper at the breakroom at work that was shared by everyone — but nobody would be daft enough to say they got their news from their employer.

Most of the news the public consumes comes from traditional media. Even as an industry teetering in existential crisis, print media still rules the information landscape. You may have watched the Harvey Weinstein story on ABC or read about it on mytotallynotpartisanblog.com but the initial reporting came from The New Yorker magazine. From Watergate to #MeToo to WMDs, the big stories usually come from a newspaper. After that come radio and broadcast journalists and then online only outlets, including blogs, podcasts, and YouTube channels. That’s where your news comes from. And pretty much every single one of those papers, magazines, radio shows, news programs, websites, channels, and podcasts has a…