Free Press

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but they are not similarly entitled to their own facts. Two things have contributed in recent years to the belief that everyone is entitled to their own facts. One is the proliferation of easy-to-use platforms such as blogs and podcasts. The ubiquity of cell phone cameras make everyone an on-the-spot reporter. These platforms are also easy to access. We have at our fingertips more information than previous generations could have imagined possible. The other contributing factor is the attacks that have sought to undermine any trust that we had in corporate, mainstream news sources. Do the "big dogs" get it right all the time? Do they sometimes rush to get a story out and get the facts wrong? Do they often have agendas, biases? Of course they do. They're run by human beings! But the belief that there's some kind of media conspiracy among multiple information outlets that are in competition with each other is not supported by facts. 

While there have always been people who were skeptical of what "the media" was telling them, it's only been since Donald Trump entered politics that previously respected news organizations were routinely labeled, without evidence, as "fake news". Most of us don't remember that the term fake news briefly referred to web sites that purposely "flooded the zone" with intentionally false information. The goal of these sites was to start rumors that would spawn and multiply throughout the information ecosystem until ordinary people would just assume that they were true. Trump quickly appropriated the label and applied it to any news that reported on his shortcomings. 

A big difference between news organizations like The New York Times, Fox News or CNN and the typical blogger or podcaster is one of access to information and experts to explain that information. Another is the time to sift through the multitude of events and tie to together multiple threads of information into a coherent narrative. This is their full-time job. This is what they do! Not a week goes by that I don't encounter someone who is skeptical of some news story...based on nothing more than their feelings. None are ever able to support their skepticism with facts. 

What confuses many people is the difference between the news and opinion sides of any news organization. "News" is what happened. "Opinion" (or editorial) is why it happened (according to the columnist). Yes, sometimes they get the facts wrong or jump the gun before all the facts are in, but you would be hard-pressed to find an actual lies, or even major errors in the reporting of  mainstream media. Editorial or opinion pieces are different since they are presenting...opinion.  "Senator 'A' hates children" is opinion. It's subjective and you could argue that Senator 'A'  doesn't hate children. "Senator 'A' voted for XYZ legislation which will decrease the funding for free school lunches for impoverished children" would be an example of a fact. Various conclusions can be drawn from that fact, and those conclusions are...opinion. An argument can be made that a news outlet shows bias by spending time identifying problems with one politician while ignoring issues with another. It very well might be bias. Or it might just be that one of them has a lot more problems than the other. Showing bias doesn't mean that the information being presented is wrong, just that the choice of what to publish is a function of what the outlet believes is important. 

We hear a lot about the "media narrative". Whether it's the recent speech by football player Harrison Butker or coverage of Losin' Don's various legal woes or Ron DeSantis' weird laugh, media skeptics insist that there's a "narrative", a story about how "they" want you to think and act that pervades everything that you hear, see and read in "the media". For this to be true there would have to be some shadowy cabal behind every newspaper and television network - puppet masters pulling all our strings. Somehow the media skeptics find this easier to believe than the possibility that they're simply reporting the facts. I've also noticed that when people complain about some unflattering information about them being disseminated they blame "the media", when often what's keeping the information alive is social media chatter. Are social media participants brainlessly parroting what "they" want them to believe, or is it just opinionated people latching on to something that confirms what they already think? 

Personally I try to keep informed with various sources of information. I trust that the news professionals are doing their jobs, but know that I'm not always hearing the whole story.