Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes? -- Chico Marx
It must be true, I saw it on the Internet
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
If you see it in The New York Sun, it's so
Or so Papa said to little Virginia, who promptly wrote to the editor for verification. But we have been bombarded with so much verbiage, both written, oral and electronic, that it's hard to know whom to believe. It used to be that print had a higher "believability quotient" than neighborhood gossip, pictures were "worth a thousand words" and eventually television achieved even more believability when it added sound and movement.
Then came the Internet, when anyone with a keyboard could perpetrate the most outlandish nonsense, and people believed it even more.
There was a time when reporters and editors filtered what people said, and sought to verify it. Today they're called "fact checkers." Many, however, have agendas.
There was a time when people had some confidence in newspapers -- at least those with good reputations -- and either believed what was printed or disagreed with the treatment or felt that the publication was biased (based on their own past experience) or charged that newspapers were not to be believed no matter what.
But at least they considered their options and took a position.
Today, however, we are besieged with opinion masquerading as fact with no supporting evidence. Moreover, there are even examples of forgeries -- emailers "borrowing" the names, photos and reputations of others and using that as a base for their own wild rantings.
It's time for readers to turn the same jaundiced eye to what they see on the Web as they have previously turned on traditional print and other media.
Beware of allegations that masquerade as truth, especially those that have just enough "truthiness" to be believable but offer little or no or questionable supporting evidence.
As the old-time city editor said, "If your mother says she loves you, check it out."
Therein lies the key: Choose your "fact checkers" carefully, and question everything.
That includes this commentary.
We offer opinion, supported by evidence, and ask you to consider the issues.
I have to object to your seeming suggestion here that the rise of a million voices "perpetrating nonsense" via the Internet was a net negative. It just meant that the moneyed media no longer had a monopoly on soapboxes. If the end result of that is increased confusion among information consumers, blame the dearth of critical thinking skills, not the proliferation of publicly accessible opinions.
ReplyDeleteAs an editor with a publication that doesn't issue any endorsements for subsequent use in campaign ads, it seems to me that the chief difference between a blogger and the chief of a newspaper's editorial board is the latter's inflated, outdated sense of his own importance.
Points well made, especially on "the death of critical thinking skills" and the "inflated, outdated sense of (an editor's) own importance" And that can refer not only to editors but to bloggers as well.
DeleteAs for the loss of soapbox monopolies and the "proliferation of publicly accessible opinions," I'm in full favor, snce I'm using the opportunity.
The point and strategy is to increase thinking, critical or otherwise.