I used to be more trusting. I trusted judges, doctors, teachers, and police officers, excluding only lawyers and used car salesmen. I also trusted journalists and the media, never considering that Walter Cronkite (“and that’s the way it is …”), Chet Huntley and David Brinkley would lie to the American public. I agreed with the nine points of journalism as outlined in John Kovach’s The Elements of Journalism. The first point reads, “Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth.” The New York Times masthead promises “All the news that’s fit to print.” I assumed that news would also be true.
I know better these days.
By recent journalism policy, when an arrest is reported, (and not to defend the one arrested), the article is usually full of comical twists on the facts, sensational vocabulary, and includes a mug shot that would make the famous Nick Nolte picture look handsome. Online readers can even click on a link to a row of mug shots with hashtags like “wife beater,” “porn pervert,” or “child molester.” It matters very little if the accused offender is innocent or guilty. Forget evidence or an actual trial. The poor sap has already been judged in the media.
May as well trust Jerry Springer to represent what’s real. Or maybe an article in the National Enquirer (“Quadruplets born to 99 year old woman”).
After I decried insane government spending on a research project involving shrimp and the cost of muffins served at a DOJ conference, a reader commented “Mary was wrong about the shrimp, and she’s wrong about the muffins.” My answer to him was gracious, but basically raised the universal question, “Who really knows?”
Both stories were reported by supposedly reliable news agencies. Muffin-gate was exposed by Fox, CBS, and PBS. MSNBC says it’s a “bogus” story. Huffington Post says it’s an urban myth and posted a recipe for the $16 muffins which includes decorating them in gourmet chocolate icing and edible gold leaf. The Inspector General of the Department of Justice maintains the report is basically true, but explains that the snacks served at the Hilton Hotel at $16.80 apiece for the 250 conference attendees included coffee ($8) and gratuities.
As for the treadmill-walking shrimp, Huffington Post and Washington Times say it’s for real. And so does MSNBC, NBC, and CBC. In a Today Show interview with Professor Louis Burnett at The College of Charleston’s marine sciences department, the researcher justified the extravagant government funding as scientifically significant. You Tube videos of the tiny little crustaceans on their tiny little treadmills went viral. But Science Magazine says Republican complainers have wildly exaggerated such government-funded projects and more important, budget finger-pointers should stay out of things they don’t understand. And leave the National Science Foundation alone in any attempt to cut government waste. The late Senator Proxmire used to give monthly recognition to the stupid things Congress does with his Golden Fleece Award. IF the shrimp story is actually true, I’m sure the NSF would have been so awarded.
OK. So, was Obama born in Kenya? Is JFK’s “other” assassin still on the loose in spite of the Warren Commission report? Are Elvis and Osama Bin Laden alive out there somewhere? (Weren’t they recently sighted at a Burger King in Ottumwa, Iowa?) Did the government and the news agencies tell us the truth about what happened in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947? And what about those weapons of mass destruction which so far have cost in the trillions and the lives of 2,234 Americans, that is if we can trust the statistics of USA Today.
Admittedly, I’m a news junkie. I watch several news channels and read online newspapers. But I have no idea who’s telling the truth about national and world events. Each media source has its own slant and its own agenda. I don’t believe for a minute that Fox News is “fair and balanced” or that MSNBC isn’t uber liberal. Each one has been shown to be wrong about some report.
Do you remember that satirical movie Wag the Dog, in which a presidential candidate’s spin doctor distracts the electorate from a budding sex scandal by hiring a Hollywood film producer to create a fake war with Albania? The TV audience at home thought they were seeing actual war footage. Reminds me of the Halloween broadcast of The War of the Worlds in 1938. Listeners believed it was a real alien invasion even with the opening declaration that it was a radio adaptation of the H.G. Wells’ novel.
Documentaries, news reports, photographs, and video can be manipulated to show “evidence” of the “truth.” But TRUTH is the last thing such evidence shows.
Many of us were wisely told by our parents. “Figures can lie, and liars can figure.”
So, to my online reader who swears I was wrong about muffins and shrimp, I say, “Yes, I could very well be wrong, and you could be right.”
Who really knows?
Mary Ready of Destin is a twice-retired English teacher and long-time area resident. Her columns are published on Saturdays.