Media
Media is a ubiquitous term that doesn’t describe any one thing clearly enough to be useful in understanding its role in political exchange. A brief examination of the term shows by definition Media could be anything from a comic book to a scholarly Journal, and by extension your Aunt Betty’s blog on baking to a pod cast followed by over 150 million people. Most people would associate the word or concept of Media in today’s information age as a source of valuable information by which we understand the World around us. Most of us believe the people who sit at the desk and report to us on the issues of the day do so in an honorable way.
A recent notion in the last decade and a half s the concept of “Fake News.” Before that term was uttered and became part of our modern vernacular there were words like bias which meant the story was true but may have a particular perspective. Today, we are bombarded with information that is so unreliable that it is not useful information at all. If you as the consumer do not approach everything you are told and even with AI the things that you see with the knowledge of personal responsibility and due diligence being paramount then you too can be a useful idiot.
In a court of law if you are on trial for slander the responsibility to have taken the necessary steps to verify the accuracy of your statements is absolute. Failure to check the facts before speaking and doing so in a notable way will open the door to your being found guilty. So ignorance is not a defense. I’m sure most of anyone reading this will have seen the montage of the 150 (number is not important) news anchors reading the word for word script of an incident or news item or the 25 Politicians who all the sudden find a new word in their vocabulary and all start using in within an hour or two. A person needs to give some thought to how much “due diligence” was given to any of these statements. They are all Mouth pieces of an agenda.
A general rule of good decision making is if you find someone who you trust is lying to you, you treat that person with some caution being aware of future lies. If you find that person is lying to you everyday you should disassociate yourself from that person. This is a rule of life that will lead you to a happier life. Now remove the words “someone” and “person” and insert the term “a media source.”
You will not find any news source or Media outlet that you will agree with 100% of the time nor should you especially when it is an entertainment or opinion show. When it comes to news there should be no entertainment or opinion. There should be little agenda. News should be a fact-based genre in our Media. It should stand the of scrutiny and should be judged harshly when it intends to deceive.