And That's the Way It Isn't

"The truth is just an excuse for a lack of imagination."

For years, I've been putting that quote on my AIM profile, Facebook page, and perhaps several official government documents. You might think that it's some kind of profound sentiment from a distinguished philosopher or a clever witticism from Twain or something. You would be wrong. It's from that most profound of shows, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Suck on that! Star Trek once again serves as a parable for life.

We rely on news outlets for our understanding of what happens in our communities and the world. Unless I start doing some serious traveling or develop some sort of extra-sensory perception (all the more reason to hang around gamma radiation and toxic spills), this will remain true for the foreseeable future. When it comes to the economy, those of us without our MBA have to rely on analysts to make sense of seemingly indecipherable stock values, though I have no objections to this if the networks follow NBC's lead and find extremely hot financial analysts for me to leer at. Once I accept that every news network, newspaper, magazine, and professional website is dedicated first and foremost to making money, I can sift through the information at my leisure.

What bothers me is that people don't understand that the news isn't "just the facts." Every once in awhile, I tear myself away from VoyeurCzechGirls.com and visit some legitimate message boards where people discuss current events, politics, and everyday news items. It kills me that a lot of people uncritically accept anything they read on the internet or see on television. Maybe it's just the latent bug up my ass about rhetoric that's reasserting itself, but I'm endlessly annoyed by the inability of the public at large to understand how the media works.

Let's take a look at today's CNN website. The headline reads, "Clinton: U.S. Shares Blame for Mexico Violence." The article addresses Hillary Clinton's perspective on the recent problems in Mexico. The informed reader should say, "Oh, this is what Hillary Clinton thinks of what's happening in Mexico." The undisputable "fact" of the story is that Hillary Clinton has shared her viewpoint. But the way that the headline is worded, many uncritical readers may assume the fact to be "The United States shares the blame for the violence in Mexico." The story's only source for anything cited in the article is, of course, Hillary Clinton. Granted, she's the Secretary of State and should probably know a thing or two about it, but many people will accept what she says as undisputed fact even though this is the perspective of a single person.

Now I use this example because it's actually, in my opinion, a legitimate news story. If the Secretary of State has something to say about contemporary foreign affairs, it's probably newsworthy. My objection is that too many people seem to read stories like that without considering how to read them. If there's video on the internet, very few people seem to consider that there might be a context for what's happening or that the cameraman only recorded what would sell. If there's a damning quote about a famous person, let's not consider that the quote may have been taken out of context.

Before I seem too comfortable sitting atop my high horse, let me hasten to add that I fall for the same stuff, but I like to think that I catch myself more often than not. For instance, I really don't understand what Bernie Madoff did, and I have only a vague understanding of what a ponzi scheme is, but I neatly filed the note "Bernie Madoff, maker of money-dollars, gets convicted for doing bad guy stuff" away in my brain under "Economic Stuff that I Don't Understand." Now I have to make sure that there's an asterisk next to that note that means, "This tidbit may have been deduced from incomplete information."

Slightly off tangent but still within the scope of this topic... when will Mr. Employer learn that forwarded emails can be completely fabricated? It was bad enough when he gave me a long lists of "truths" about Barack Obama shortly before the election and told me to "think long and hard about them" before voting. Oh I definitely thought long and hard after I found on Snopes.com that most of them were complete bullshit. Even after bringing this to his attention, I had to read his new one about Barack Obama having Narcissistic Personality Disorder because some doctor DIAGNOSED him by watching his television appearances. Never mind that the article lacked any citations or that the doctor doesn't exist. He still thinks the internet would never lie to him.

I won't even get into those occassional days when Mr. Employer decides to turn on Rush Limbaugh while we're eating lunch. If restating an oversimplified version of your opponent's viewpoint in a funny voice and then adding "Are you kidding me?" is your idea of a convincing argument, then you enjoy yourself. Hey Rush, check out the definitions for "ad hominem" and "slippery slope" and then ask yourself why they're both called "fallacies."

So to sum up: Don't trust anybody. They're all out to get you.

Especially me.

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JP: May only be bitter because news sites make more money than his website does.