Where Do You Get Your News?

  

Remember the good old days when the local daily showed up on your front porch in time to have it with your first cup of coffee? My Grandpa would glance at the front page then read the funny papers. My Daddy would look at the front page then turn to the want ads. My Momma just drank her coffee.

Then we got the evening news in black and white on television. The TV stations went to color in 1966, but the televisions we had didn't.

Known as "the most trusted man in America," Walter Cronkite gave us the news. He didn't comment on the stories. He just reported them. He covered much of the Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R with its Cuban Missile Crisis. He covered President Kennedy's assassination with its follow-on murder of a suspect in custody. The assassin was killed not by police, but by a nightclub owner on live TV amid the chaos of reporters and police and justice officials. 

Cronkite covered the Civil Rights Movement with film of its peaceful protesters being brutalized by their local and state law enforcement officers. We watched film of the Vietnam War and its world-wide anti-war demonstrations. We got the official daily body count -- ours and theirs. Theirs were always many times higher than ours. I began to wonder how there could be any North Vietnamese left, but we didn't question it. There was no way for the average person to research those figures. No internet. No Google.

    

Now the news is available anytime, anywhere on our smart TVs or our smart phones, from Siri and Alexa or the Amazon Echo Dot. Sometimes I have nightmares about getting it on my dental implants!

Twitter and TikTok and Facebook. The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. PBS News Hour, BBC America, Al Jazeera, Deutsche Welle. The Onion, Saturday Night Live, Facebook.

Okay, the technology is here. And it is available to most of us whether we know how to use it or not. But there are some very old rules about how we should use all this information, be it true or be it false. And those old rules rightly should continue to inform our use of all this information. Just because something we read, hear, or see seems believable doesn't make it true. Like, for instance -- I don't have dental implants.

One of those old rules is as old as the Ten Commandments, the Ninth one, to be precise. Thou shalt not bear false witness. This includes repeating, retweeting, and/or sharing something that is not true. How can you tell if something is true or not? Do your own research. 

I like Snopes.com. Just type in your question. In fact you can just Google your question. Google will give you several options to check out. Got a question about an organization that is saying something you agree with or don't agree with, but you don't know anything about that organization. Google it. 

The Washington Post is a reputable newspaper. The New York Post is a tabloid. The Philidelphia Inquirer is a reputable newspaper. The National Enquirer is a tabloid. What's the difference between a reputable newspaper and a tabloid? Google it.

Want to know if a particular newspaper is generally considered "conservative" or "liberal"? Google it.

Want to know how many species of rabbit and hares are native to North America? This is what Google said, "North America is home to 15 species of rabbits and hares. All of these are rather abundant within their range."

Google's source:  https://science.jrank.org/pages/3785/Lagomorphs-Rabbits-hares-North-America.html