A cautionary tale of (mis)information…
the dark hole of untruthsI haven’t been a fan of the media for almost two decades.
This from a woman who started her college career as a journalism major. It took one quarter to realize I couldn’t do it. Oh, I could write – still can. But to adhere to the tenets of “who, what, where, when, how” – nope, I couldn’t do it. Writing news stories involves objectivity, and you see, I have opinions. Tons of opinions. I can’t lay out “just the facts, ma’am” if I tried. Even if I were paid millions.
Fiction is a better venue for me. Fiction is great. You can weave quite a tale basing your story on facts, but interlacing your own take. Embellishment! I love an artful turn of phrase. I love story lines that teeter on reality, but are exciting enough not to be. Plus if you call it “fiction”, you won’t get called out when you get the story wrong. Fiction as a genre means in all likelihood you won’t get sued too.
I’m not sure how or why I became a skeptic of the media. It might have started with a liberal dose of adverbs and adjectives and inflammatory nouns and verbs in the news articles I was reading. It might have been having finished an article and being left with the hollow feeling of only getting a fraction of the story…not once, not twice, but too many times.
The “news” is just not the news anymore. It’s pointed and biased.
At one point about 15 years ago, I belonged to a social media network, not unlike the current models. So disgusted with the “news” back then, a friend of mine and I started a “Non-News” page to point out the hypocrisy. We weren’t as good as the Babylon Bee, and we had families, so that idea bit the dust out of neglect not long after it began.
I currently don’t seek out “news” of any kind. I haven’t watched TV “news”, either local or national or cable, since the beginning of January. On occasion I’ve been subjected to it in my car but that’s rare. I’m a fairly intelligent, thinking human being. I don’t even need the weatherman, because I can look outside and determine sunshine from clouds. It’s tough. You want to believe those that have descended from the likes of Walter Cronkhite, but no, I can tell when I’m being snowballed by legacy media. I know where to find information, and I like dissenting viewpoints. You won’t get dissenting viewpoints on your TV.
So I’ve enjoyed the last seven or so months of blissful ignorance of the fake media, picking and choosing what I want to consume…
Until…
A couple of weeks ago, I got a text message from one of my cousins. It appeared that her sister was a subject of a “news” story that was published in the “news”paper in Minnesota a month before. (I refuse to link the article for reasons you’ll soon know if you continue reading. If you really want to read it, message me and I’ll tell you where to find it.) My cousin and her sister aren’t on lovey-dovey terms, otherwise we’d all have known about this article in June when it was first published.
Now a little backstory: I know my “news” cousin is a narcissist and it doesn’t surprise me that she was prominently featured in this article. I’ve maybe exchanged a few words with her since I’ve known her. Not my fav.
I would have ho-hummed after reading this tripe, but for a few things. One, she mentioned my father. Mentioned speaking to him. Quoted as much. Said my father was her favorite uncle. (He’s the only remaining uncle.)
“News” cousin has never spoken to my father about this or any other matter. They’ve probably only exchanged a few sentences between each other since 1974. “News” cousin is definitely NOT his favorite niece.
But here’s the kicker: “News” cousin said it was my father’s “dying wish” for her (or someone) to complete this task she was in the paper for.
Except for the fact that my father is old (nearly 90) and has some health issues, he has not now nor has ever been on his deathbed. (Yet.) The article made it seem as though my father was deceased. What a surprise! A total shock to me.
My sister was also misquoted in the article. Actually, quotes were attributed to her which she had never uttered, so perhaps “misquoted” is the wrong term. The fact that my sister’s name was misspelled led me to believe said reporter had never spoken to her at all and manufactured “quotes” to fit her narrative.
My sister was heartbroken, as she felt she had done most of the work in this task. She was about doing a good deed, not about publicity or making her actions about her. My father, upon finding out that at some point he’d been on his deathbed, laughed and laughed. (He might be old but he’s got a wicked sense of humor.) He wouldn’t mind going back to Minnesota at some point, but he won’t be visiting with “news” cousin. (I doubt any of us will.) I cannot convey his true feelings about this relative, just know it’s not positive.
I wrote a rather scathing email to the author of this fluff piece, laying out all the facts. I asked her why she hadn’t spoken to my father, or my sister. I asked her to consider adjusting the article to reflect what the truth of the matter was. I suggested she contact my father if she wanted the true story. I especially wanted her to point out that my father isn’t dead, hadn’t been on his deathbed, and that he hasn’t yet had a “dying wish.”
Nope, she wouldn’t do it. She became combative, actually. She tried to justify her poor reporting by aligning herself with a worthy cause.
Yes, I know. This, my friends, is a small story in a fairly large city’s newspaper. So my “news” cousin is an attention whore? So what? So the “reporter” is a sloppy one? She got paid, didn’t she? It wasn’t a life-or-death story, had nothing to do with national security, right?
I don’t care what they call it anymore, but truth is truth and ethics are ethics. No amount of modernity can change that.
The moral of this story is you can barely believe anything you read (or see, or hear). A true reporter would have gotten her shovel out and dug a little deeper. A true consumer of information has to do that as well. What is offered on the surface is a veneer. Writers, especially of “news”, are masters of exploiting emotion. Throw in some adjectives, adverbs, and descriptive nouns and verbs, and all of a sudden you have a cause. I see data all the time, and I’m thinking (critically) what about the missing link?
It’s time to think about how the sausage is made and what it’s made of before you’ve ingested it.
