To Believe, Or Not To Believe What You Read?

I stopped watching the news a long time ago. I determined the negativity and inaccuracies in reporting were too much for me to handle. In a prior career life, I was a County Agricultural Extension Agent. It was during my tenure with the Minnesota Extension Service that I learned about how media bias and mistakes impact the quality of a given story or article. I used to type a regular column for the local newspaper, and I was always assured of the content of that article. However, when I was quoted in another story or piece, it was almost routine that I found errors in numbers, words, or statements. It bothered me, because I started to question how many other stories were a victim of this same consequence.

I try to view the news headings on Yahoo each day while completing Internet searches for work, or checking e-mail. But as I start to read the stories, I find myself going back to the days as an Extension Agent, wondering how much is really true. During the floods in the Fargo area in March, we were inundated not only with water, but also regional and even national camera crews and reporters. After long days of sandbagging, I would go home and log-on to find out what they were writing about us. It was laughable to read some of the sensationalized and overly-dramatic tones to the stories. According to the media, "30,000 people were evacuated" from the Fargo-Moorhead area one day during the flooding. Completely false!

One afternoon I was sandbagging with a crew right along the Red River, behind a row of homes. A camera crew came along, and I overheard the reporter say, "this doesn't look bad enough...we need to find a different position to film from." It's apparently all about creating a story that is SO "over the top" that people will want to flock to a computer or newspaper to read about the devastation and loss. What a shame that reporting has come to this.

Enough negativity.

I have really enjoyed reading the comments that are posted at the end of many online articles. I find the truth to reside in these "comments" areas, rather than in the story itself. The comments seem to help "fill in the blanks" and provide legitimacy to each story, as they are from the perspective of people who are not in the business of selling newspapers or creating a following.

We are witnessing a time when many major newspapers are failing. The 146-year-old "Seattle Post-Intelligencer" recently shut down. And ironically enough, Nancy Pelosi's response was that, "the primary role of newspapers for the past 50 years or so has been to control the tree population." Wow. Probably not the endorsement the newspaper association was looking for! The other irony regarding this long-time newspaper shutting down was a concern among Nancy Pelosi that, "failing papers could spark catastrophic overpopulation among trees." This comment comes from the same individual who in 2008 received a National Leadership Award from the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation for being "a leader in environmental issues at home and abroad." Simply incredible.

Don't believe what you read people. Seek out the facts. Hold people accountable. Demand the truth. Don't buy into the media jargon and hype.

And by the way, don't believe what I typed here either. Check it out yourself. Here are my sources:

http://www.scrappleface.com/?p=3379

http://nmsfocean.org/chow2008/pr_pelosi_bio.pdf