We Enter into A Strange Time for News
As we begin 2024, which is a presidential election year in the United States, we enter into the silly season. Unfortunately, based on history and new technology, getting the facts is more challenging than ever.
There's an adage I like to use every once in a while. “You're entitled to your opinion but you're not entitled to your own facts.” Unfortunately, that adage is becoming less and less true as people seem to make up their own facts to suit their own opinions. And it doesn’t seem to matter if the information is found online, on the news, or even self-discovered. And when given hard data, true and accurate data, people dismiss it as a lie. As not factual. As incorrect. What is one to do?
The only thing one can do is to control what they can control. And thus, the ever more important regular occurrence of finding actual true data and facts to support their opinions. It seems like an old habit of mine is beginning to pay some dividends.
Every morning when I get up one of the first things I do is read the newspaper. Well, technically it's not paper, it's online. And even more accurately, it's not one newspaper or news feed, it's 14 different ones. I certainly start with our local newspaper, and then stretch into all three television network websites and news stories with two additional stops at newer online local newspapers. Then I am off to three newspapers of two different cities that I used to live in, and then I matriculate into the national news.
I learned long ago that the truth normally resides somewhere in the middle. At least the truth lies between two different perspectives. That's why I want to read both sides of an argument.
Each morning, I read the New York Times and CNN. I peruse Fox News online as well as the Wall Street Journal. I also go through Bloomberg daily. What I find amazing is that the same basic story seems to have a different set of facts, depending on who's writing the article. Different quotes are used to illustrate a particular perspective in one publication and not the other. While some basic facts may be the same, the additive data, quotes, or insights certainly slant the story one way or the other.
There are too many people only reading one side of the news. In the olden days, the most trusted man in America was Walter Cronkite, the amazing journalist who hosted the 5:00 news on CBS. What he told you was only the facts, the news as we knew it, and let you make editorial decisions as to what you thought. Nowadays, you can't even turn on the television for most programs that are related to the news that doesn't hit you over the head with their perspective, that they want to be your perspective as well.
And an additive challenge in today's world is artificial intelligence. More and more we are seeing conversations around the computerization of someone's voice and face, but not using their actual words. In some cases, computer programs are authoring new verbiage out of a known face, almost seeming perfectly real, which will even confuse people more and more.
Our responsibility has to be to try to get both sides of the story and to see multiple perspectives. To try to find out the truth. It's more time and more work. But I'm more comfortable with my belief system when I hear both sides of an argument and then make my own decision, and am not told what to think.
Remember, the story normally has three perspectives. The first person’s perspective, the person across from them and their perspective, and the truth that lies somewhere between them and their versions.
