I have never tried to pawn myself off as a journalist although I do have a penchant for writing about the world we live in. Still, I strongly believe that even when I am writing about “the way I see it,” integrity of facts must be maintained. Media sources, led by high profile elected officials, are taking us down a slippery slope where facts are no longer important or the basis for truth.
“You’re entitled to your own opinions. You’re not entitled to your own facts.” These lines are generally attributed to Daniel Patrick Moynihan and frequently get tossed about when one entity wants to shed light on another entity’s twisting of the facts. The real meaning gets obscured in the mockery of political discourse.
The slicing and dicing of facts goes into high gear during election cycles. A number of fact-checking sites have emerged. There’s also fact checkers for the fact checkers. This flurry of interpretations are brought to us in slick, non-stop packaging yelling the question: Who do you believe? Us or your lying eyes!!
In the age where every grunt or action by a public official is captured on videotape, it doesn’t seem to be curbing their propensity to stretch the truth or outright lie. Now you can see side-by-side clips of them lying and contradicting themselves. Strangely, this hasn’t seemed to change their behavior.
Take for instance the “fact” that President Obama is not a U.S. citizen. Depending on the poll, the percentages range from 33% to 50% who believe the President’s birth certificate in not authentic. Believing that the President is an illegitimate head of government has a myriad of implications—and most are negative.
Is this a case of low (or no) information voters who’ll accept anything that resonates with their core beliefs or a matter of repeating an image or comment enough times until it gets fully internalized? Both are dangerous scenarios.
There are some rumblings about the lost truth in media by bloggers and citizen-reporters but it must grow into a loud chorus of truth-seekers. Citizens must hold the political candidates or parties that we support accountable for the truth EVEN when they are talking trash about their opponent. These folks are not going to listen to constituencies that don’t endorse them; their supporters have to take them on.
U.S. citizens have been told some serious, costly lies. Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when there were none. The economy doing fine when it was about to go into free fall. Public schools not worth saving. The list goes on.
I fully understand that most of us don’t have the time to decode and decipher all the noise coming at us on a daily basis. If not, we are mere empty vessels for anyone to pour their version of the facts into our heads—as in Ditto Heads—and vulnerable to manipulation for someone else’s benefit. We must regain our intuition about truth and character that has been dulled by mindless television and radio.
I believe that we have a responsibility as citizens to both seek the truth and demand the truth especially from those in authority whether it is our faith leader, an elected official or a news director.
