Seriously, you wanted a shake-up in government and you got one. Your candidate (or maybe not even, but your preferred party) now has the Presidency and the Congress to boot. He can go about bringing the change that I think all of us really want to see: less corruption, more jobs, better income for working class families, and possibly most importantly, a hopeful and united country. What a great thing that would be if it comes to pass that way.
But I'm actually going to ask you a favor.
This isn't sour grapes. I've been on the losing side of elections before. We all have. And in my case, twice my candidate has won the popular vote but lost the election. So, believe me, I know what it's like to be disappointed.
We didn't have social media as influential the last few times around. We didn't have the internet posing as a source for news. Hopefully, both sides are beginning to learn that just because it's online doesn't make it true. Or even close to true.
So I'm asking that we all take some time to work on educating ourselves in media. I've seen the equivocation done on who is moral and who is not throughout this campaign, an experiment in abject failure on both sides.
But I have also seen the equivocation of media outlets, with sites like NewonNext.com, Bipartisanreport.com, Washington Times, The Daily Caller, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, Breitbart News, the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post all placed as equals.
Please accept this -- they are not the same.
Please accept that large newspapers are the last bastion of as close to unbiased news as you're going to get. They employ hundreds of reporters, fact-checkers and editors. Each story is weighed heavily for its accuracy and of course, what will sell papers.
Thus the most important part of reading news IS NOT THE HEADLINE. Headlines are like neon signs advertising locations in Vegas or Time Square. They are meant to catch your eye and turn your head. But they don't tell you what actually is going on inside the establishment. You might find a beautifully lit sign with huge red and white lights gracing a wedding chapel in Vegas. But chances are when you walk in if you're counting on elegant architecture, sculptured pews and a choir echoing into the rafters led by a traditional priest, you're going to be disappointed.
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| Huge Chapel Sign - Probably not the church you've always dreamt of |
Bias is in all forms of media, even in news. It is. But there is a very simple way to detect actual news versus complete opinion-laced rhetoric.
News doesn't seek to tell you how you should feel about the event being reported.
News will attempt to cover both sides of the story within the same story. Sometimes the other side will refuse to comment, leaving the story feeling incomplete. That story might be updated or run with a different headline as more information comes to light.
News doesn't stump for a particular political candidate. This is not to be confused with when a paper ENDORSES a candidate. That exercise of endorsing a candidate is done by the editors and is noted with clear exception this is their opinion. This used to very important (and still should be) because newspaper editors are among the most informed people in the country.
Who owns the website you're reading is AS important as the site itself. Newspapers are generally owned by giant corporations whose political agenda is as varied as the corporation itself. It has so many voices inside that it would be almost impossible to find complete agreement on anything. Small websites with a minor staff are almost always owned by a few select people, and you can find out exactly where they come from and what their agenda is besides adding click-bait to make money.
Most importantly, almost every fringe news group or smaller website seeks out these same large newspapers for the stories they cover. It all starts with reputable papers like the NYT, WSJ, The Washington Post, The Sun Times, The SF Chronicle, The LA Times. Why? Because of the same reason as mentioned - they have exhaustive staffs scouring the globe all at once. No website-based paper can compete with that.
I ask you to learn how our media works. It's up to you to hold the press accountable yes, but the radical elements of our society have decried our fourth estate (the press) as completely unreliable while creating their own 'news' outlets (and I use that term loosely) to influence you, tug your emotional purse strings, and manipulate the fact that you have little time and a headline is easier to catch than a full story.
How do I know this? What makes me credible? Well, besides graduating from Syracuse's Newhouse School of Communications, I have been published as journalist a few times, but more importantly, I have spent hours reading social media websites that claim they are reporting the news to us, only to find inconsistencies and crucial language that hedges headlines and pulls back initial claims in the body of the article.
I'll share one story that ironically comes from Glenn Beck (who has recently turned over a leaf of seemingly gargantuan proportions, but that's for another blog) and his site The Blaze. In the last election, a friend of mine sent me an article from The Blaze claiming voter fraud in Arizona I believe. The article covered two women who claimed when using the electronic voting machine, the 'footprint' (the area you press around each candidate's name) was much larger for Barack Obama than it was Mitt Romney. They claimed they had mistakenly voted for Obama because of this. Fair enough. But the next part of the article goes on to report the registrar was contacted on their behalf, the machines were double-checked to make sure they were calibrated recently and correctly, and the women were allowed to correct their votes. So, in the end, the report was taken seriously, the women were not disenfranchised and everything turned out all right. Yet the headline claimed voter fraud was taking place. I pointed out to my friend that the article actually contradicted voter fraud, perhaps unintentionally. He went silent. He never replied. Perhaps he hadn't read the entire article. Or perhaps after he did, he felt a sense of embarrassment. Either way, this was a clear case of bad journalism, with the headline attempting to push a partisan agenda even though it corrected itself inside the article.
I ask you to reassess your position on the press. Not the television media -- where panels are often culled to tell you how you should feel about a story. Not a station like CNN where they have a 24-hour news cycle that generally can't be filled. Not Fox News, where their emblem sits under the likes of news commentary shows like Sean Hannity, who is admittedly no journalist.
Read the papers. The large papers. Subscribe. Learn the difference between what an Op-Ed piece is and a news story is. Build these bastions of free speech back up to where they belong - as trusted sources for facts!
Here is a link of fake news sites as compiled by a professor at Merrimack College. Do with it what you will.
Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels said something very profound, as loath as I am to ever quote a Nazi:
A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth
Without facts, America will begin to falter under suspicion and paranoia, under false pretenses and false beliefs. Facts are everything. Those who distort them know this.
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