Trusting what you read, seeing the truth
My oldest brother who was a coach of young men and was killed at 24 when a drunk driver hit him head on as he traveled to meet his team at a basketball game used to say around the supper table at the farm, “Only believe half of what you see and nothing of what you hear .” While I was only about eight years old at the time, that was a statement I pondered a lot. In high school and college, I was paid for my articles on various events by several news outlets, and later became an award-winning journalist. I wanted people to know that I was reporting the facts responsibly and that they could believe what they saw from me. Truth was not relative to me as a writer. How things have changed in journalism today.
Nowadays, we cannot trust that the news media will give the facts. There is a slant on news where the lines between reporting facts, editorializing, and just plain omitting details that change the entire basis of the event are so blurred that it is difficult to discern truth. We have so many blogs by so many so-called journalists that even they do not know when they are writing factually or just offering their opinions. News programs that have the look and feel of real news are often laced with opinions and half-truths, making it even more difficult to figure out what is going on. A twist of a word here, an alteration of an action there, and you has an entirely different “narrative.”
Take the case of Hillary Clinton’s health. You can see by her actions, the way she talks and laughs, the way she walks and carries herself, that something is amiss. And you can get several entirely different takes on her condition from just an allergy to pneumonia to the onset of dementia to stroke to heart condition to traumatic brain injury. Her “doctors” are trying their best to convince people that she is physically and mentally fit to handle the office of President. Depending on the news outlet you read, view or listen to, you will hear one or more of the variables on these themes. The one thing that you can discern from all this is that Clinton has something wrong with her and nobody is telling us what it really is.
A good journalist without an agenda would get to the bottom of the story. But most are just reporting supposition. It is no wonder that Gallup reports that “Americans’ trust and confidence in the mass media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly” has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history, with 32% saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media. This is down eight percentage points from last year.” 2 Timothy 3:13 says, “But evil men will wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.” The media in the United States was supposed to keep these deceivers in check, but they are so deceived themselves with strong personal opinions on morals and politics that they cannot see the truth.
