Most Americans believe the news they consume is biased. According to a Gallup/Knight poll taken last month, here is a snapshot of what Americans think:
86% say the media is biased
69% said that media outlets they don't use are biased
29% said that media outlets they do use are biased
84% say that the media is to blame for political division in the country
78% say that information on social media is the leading problem with news today
There was a time when I thought news sources were trustworthy. I had confidence in such networks as PBS, CBS, ABC, and NBC. I didn't doubt the news sections of the Chicago Daily News. And I reckoned that news magazines like Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report gave me a good balance of information.
Of course, I learned all about detecting "Yellow Journalism" (where only sensational stories are reported in order to sell more papers...and the truth is altered to make those stories more sensational.) I would regularly turn up my nose at the National Enquirer when I waited in the checkout lane at the grocery store (all the while wanting to take a peek inside and see what gossip was within.)
But then the Chicago Daily News went out of business, and 24-hour news networks launched and needed something to fill up their time, and social media was created and became a venue for unfiltered factoids and lies, and comedians started devoting entire programming to caricatures of the news...
And now I don't trust any news source without running it through a checklist I have been developing.
In the past week, both Donald Trump and Joseph Biden were featured in town hall meetings, where they fielded questions from ordinary citizens. ABC carried the Trump town hall and CNN carried the Biden one. I was unable to watch either one of them at the time they were broadcast. (I do have a life, you know!) But when I used my internet search engines to try and find unabridged replays of either of those, all I could find were "selected" segments that the news media wanted me to see. Why not post the entire video online so I can see for myself what is important and what is not?
I did find a written transcript of the Trump town hall. If any of you can find me a link to the entire town hall for either candidate, please let me know. For the transcript of Trump's town, click here.
Anyway, I'm developing my own set of rules for sorting through what is worth noting...and what needs to go immediately to trash. Here's what I've got so far. (Please let me know if you have some additional ideas.)
Rules for sorting out what to believe, whether it is coming from a candidate, supporters of a candidate, or a news source:
- Believe absolutely nothing on Facebook or Twitter
- No one can truthfully impute "motive" to another person It is outrageous that we can say of any public servant, "he or she wants to destroy American" for instance. That's ridiculous. We may think a person's policies might destroy the country...or the planet, but it is dishonest and poisonous to impute motive to another.
- No one can predict what will happen if the opponent wins and puts his or her ideas into play. We can only give a reasoned and probable guess at the consequences. So, give me your probabilities...and the reasons behind them
- Spare me the "gottcha" stuff: blunders, common mistakes, and understandable human weaknesses that are strung together solely to make the other person look bad
- Quit acting like you are an "expert" on someone you don't like. People are complex, and when we are talking about someone else, the "real" expert is willing to say, "I don't know" rather than attempt to fill in our knowledge gaps with guesses in the disguise of insight.
- Spare me the legalism of picking on things a person did wrong in the past. Everyone has that sort of stuff. And if you don't have any of it, it only means you never even tried to do anything meaningful. By the time you are ready to run for president, of course you will have done and said stupid stuff, and even done some harm along the way. I want to know if the candidate know what they did wrong...and how they've changed...and why...and what trajectory they are currently on.
- Leave out the name calling and the labels. It just means you don't have any substance.
- Don't villainize your opponent. It is never either/or. If you can't see something valuable, even in a stinker, you are insulting my intelligence.
- Don't trust summaries. Listen to the person yourself. Don't let someone else summarize an opponent's position. Listen to the whole speech, read the candidates own writings, check out everything on a candidate's website.
- Be suspicious of so-called news articles that use emotional and loaded adjectives to describe actions or words of a candidate
- Be suspicious of news organizations that only include one or two news stories per hour. Many things are happening in the country and the world, and they never get reported. Check out a foreign news source to get a sense of whether an American news outlet is "stuck." Underreporting other stories indicates that there is an obsession with a single story...and the reporting of that news agency, particularly in regard to that story, is unreliable. If a news source seems obsessed about something, even if you are sympathetic, you can't trust them.
