I Read It In The News So It MUST BE TRUE! Right?!
Did you hear? Did you read? Did you know?
That…millions of people voted illegally in the November 8thpresidential election. No, really. I’m not kidding. I read it in a tweet from our new President elect. Well, I didn’t really read it on Twitter. I actually clicked a link on Facebook and that brought me to a story in an online newspaper about that tweet and that claim, and so since it is in print, it must be true. True!
Right?
Did you hear? Did you read? Did you know?
That…members of the Electoral College are getting ready to revolt. Huge numbers of them are going to change their votes and totally upset the results of the election, because, after all, the losing electoral candidate won more popular votes and so she’ll end up being president under this “hush hush” conspiracy. Yup. I read about it on a website. Well, actually I googled “Electoral College Revolt” and that brought me to the story. It’s on my computer screen right now. Features a sharp headline and a crisp photo too, all looks very “official” so the story must be correct.
Right?
I also read that childhood vaccines absolutely cause autism. That President Obama is actually a secret Muslim. That CNN recently aired thirty minutes of pornography during a prime time news program. That the actor Clint Eastwood was offered the Presidential Medal of Freedom and refused it. I read all those things on the Internet so they all must be true, right?
What is true?
These days the answer to that question is getting harder and harder to figure out, at least for me. The gift of the web and our 24/7 wired world is that in 2016 we as news consumers have greater access to more “news” in more places through more devices than ever before in the history of news gathering and news reporting. The quaint days of Walter Cronkite saying “And that’s the way it is” on TV, and America actually believing him, are long gone. The notion that one or two national daily newspapers are “the papers of record” has been lost as well.
Now we have more news than we could ever hope to read or watch, let alone understand. Print news. TV news. Comedy news. Fox News on the right, CNBC News on the left, and all of these sources online too. Google reports there are about 1 billion unique web sites worldwide at present, so if even one percent of those are news oriented, that equals 10,000,000 places to get “the news”.
Which is good, I suppose. More news, more stories, more reporters, more news outlets, more news sources should lead to more truth, correct? A better informed citizenry. A stronger democracy. The media as a more powerful watchdog over the institutions that run the world: government, business, education, etc.
True and yet…the conundrum in the midst of this news glut is this: how do we determine what news is really true? Factual? Real? And how do we figure what news is slanted? What news is not really news, but is instead opinion or speculation or rumor? What news is totally fake, completely made up? Consider this fact, as reported on Vox.com: the most read “news” stories on Facebook in the three months leading up to the election were false, so-called “click bait” stories. Like one “story” that reported Pope Francis had endorsed Donald Trump. When you or I clicked that link (admit it—you did!), the creator of that tall tale made money on our sincere desire to just get the news. The truth.
What is true?
To answer that question, we as citizens and news consumers will just have to work much harder now to get to “the truth”. Read sources that challenge our bias, not merely confirm our views. As a devoted nytimes.com reader I need to also read the “Wall Street Journal” more often. We’ll have to adjust to having a new commander in chief who is addicted to tweeting, saying, and declaring as “true” whatever is on his mind at anytime of the day or the night. Reality TV: meet the news cycle. We’ll have to just be much more skeptical and much more curious when it comes to the news.
Quid est veritas?What is true? That is the question. God help us all as we seek to find an answer.
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