What To Do About The News

Last Monday a local news reporter informed viewers that if they hadn’t filed their taxes yet, they had only one day left to file for an extension.  He added that some, but not all, states give an automatic extension based on filing of the federal form without filing additional paperwork.

This brought home an important point.  The report was local and an overwhelming majority of viewers lived in the same state. Why did the reporter not mention, by the way, into which category our state falls?  It would have taken maybe five minutes on the Internet.  It brought home the point that those so-called journalists are merely reading from a script.  When the one story is over, they move on to the next.  They don’t do their homework.  They aren’t interested in details.  They are not in the business of explaining or enlightening.

They are in the business of passing along dry facts, which are sometimes not even factual, or of repeating someone else’s opinion.  The biggest waste of our time is the speculation by experts, politicians or even fellow journalists on what might happen at a meeting or as the result of a certain decision.  The second biggest waste of our time is reporting on something we all knew would be happening anyway, just to rehash the original event.  An example is that when someone dies in a horrible or unexpected way, we are sure to hear mention of the funeral a few days later just to revisit the original story and reemphasize how horrible or unusual it was.

As the nation gets further and further divided, the bias of the media becomes more obvious.  They decide both what to tell us and how to tell it. Do they put a spin on certain news that will appeal to their viewers or do they omit certain stories that favor the opposition or reflect unfavorably on their political view?  If you don’t believe it, as an experiment, look at the headlines on the CNN website and then go directly to the Fox News website.  It’s almost like reading news about two different countries!

The science stories can be as bad, no depth or research, just a reading from the press release. There may be a comment from their science correspondent that puts things into perspective, but don’t count on that being totally accurate.  Remember, the primary objective of the media is to scare or manipulate customers with the goal of promoting their product and beating out the competition.  These are not a bunch of altruistic enterprises intent on dolling out the truth to all.  They are in business to make money.

That leaves two alternatives:  rely on the news from friends and newsfeeds on social media or critical thinking.

The first alternative may look unlikely, but as of 2016, 62% of adult Americans – get at least some of their news from social media, up from 48% in 2012 according to the Pew Research Center and others.  “I know it’s true; I read it on the Internet” used to be a joke, but today nearly one in five rely on social media exclusively for news.  Whereas network news organizations once required two independent sources, those who post or repost on Facebook don’t feel obligated to check the accuracy or timeliness of any information.  The same false rumors on health or politics recirculate every couple of years.

Unless you are going to count on the cute cats and puppy-dogs seen both on social media, and more and more on the mainstream, critical thinking is the only solution. Some stories make no sense on the surface. Some are not consistent with other known information that does not accompany the story.  Some are just made up stories to fit a particular worldview.

The critical thinker approaches all these with a skeptical mind and does research to find more information or different sides of the story. It’s impossible to find out the truth in every case, but as some sources prove to be more reliable and new subjects are often related to others previously researched, it becomes easier to narrow things down and sort out what's correct.  Also, our scope must be limited because it is impossible to be scared of everything.  Perspective helps focus, while critical thinking helps discover the truth.