Fake News. Or Alt-journalism.
We all hear it and read it and talk about it and maybe, just maybe, some
of it is true? The mainstay established journalist presentation has turned into
entertainment and the Internet is flooded with opinions and questionable
videos.
So what do you believe?
Well before there were newspapers or radio or television or even Google,
there was (and is) the word of mouth.
Who knows more about family than Aunt Fanny? She has all the dirt on
cousins and second cousins and cousins once removed and people you’d never
heard have. My neighbor Jen has the 811 on all the goings on in the
neighborhood so I don’t need to research the people who live in the same area.
There was always one person who would give you the skinny about anyone and
everyone around the water cooler at work. Every Sunday the preacher would
inform all of the happy unions and the sad illnesses of those who attend. The
newspapers are obligated to list the daily body count and for a fee will even
post a picture of the dearly departed. The guy cutting his grass across the
street can give a play-by-play of his favorite teams and who made the bad
calls. In high school, seems everyone knows everything about everybody even
though the network is not that good and it is mostly speculation and
perception.
What is the best source of news?
GOSSIP!
Gossip! The best source for up-to-date worthy news is gossip. As the rock
man said, “You see what you want to see and you hear what you want to hear.” Everything
is faked or everything is true. You decide.
The bookmark sites reaffirm what we want to believe and strengthen our
opinions (bias). With enough links to fact or fiction, there is proof of
diligent research, just like footnotes to confirm our resources. It was on Wikipedia
so it must be true?
Everyday new disclosures and exposures are reveled like the Kennedy
assassination where we find that it was Jackie who fired the fatal shot and
then climbed out to give the secret service guy the gun. Of course, if you want
to believe, anything can become fact and enlarged and manipulated by our vivid
imagination.
If your interpretation of the presentation called “News” does not
correspond with another’s, then a disagreement or even an argument can ensue.
Welcome to the family discussions over the holidays.
Ye Ole Newspapers separated what people requested for “News” into
sections that could share and passed about for enjoyable and informative
reading.
The main “News” section held the important stuff like politics,
robberies, business, blah-blah-blah and more boring stuff only father would
read. Besides after all the ink dried and was trucked and thrown on your
doorstep the information was already a week old.
The “Editorial” page was the publisher’s page to state his or her opinion
on various topics. These pages were to sway the reader to follow an
established, well-educated and knowledgeable thought and believe; yet indulge
in a bias. Think of it as “Intellectual Advertising” or propaganda.
Then there was the “Women’s” page. That right gals, you had your own
section of the newspaper full of recipes and sewing ideas and fashion trends
and of course the society page to announce whose daughter came out and which
family was having a gala affair at their estate. Gossip? Sure there was a
‘tell-all’ columnist who had the scoop on the dirt. Fact checking and footnotes
were not obtainable. The bonus to the retailers was to put advertisements for
the latest blender or refrigerator or fashionable garment to create envy.
OK fellas, here comes the “Sports” page. No upright American male could
possibly go without checking the daily box scores of his favorite team? Though
the numbers could have been from a previous radio report, the newspaper had
in-depth observation of how the team and manager and fans interacted. Gossip?
There are stories about your favorite NASCAR driver or quarterback but they are
press copies of resumes. Still every page was surrounded with advertisements
for tools or cars or liquor.
To end the fun were the ‘Classifieds’. Don’t know what the classification
was for but here were pages of tiny type showing houses, tools, cars, and
anything else people wanted to throw out for sale. There were even Yard Sales.
As newspapers progress and limited the number of pages due to printing cost,
obituaries were moved here. The legal obligation to announce a death was
required but with a little couching a long list of the legacy of the dearly
departed with a charge per word fee. Even death has a cost.
As the information, true or
not, floods our screens we can absorb it as reality. How could that video be
false? How could that opinion from that sweet face confirmed by other
good-looking folk not be true? If I hear it over and over then it must be real.
Ripley’s ‘Believe or Not’?
Disclaimer: I am a news junkie. I check the Internet for that seems to be
the fastest deliver of events but check various sources to confirm what I’m
reading or watching is factual. I’m still cynical to question the ‘why’ factor.
The same is with relationships. I have to rely on what I see and hear and
experience to form my opinion. With time opinions can change but judgments are
etched in stone.
Did you hear about ….?
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