I guess it comes with maturity. You begin to see things differently. A friend told me it was like looking at things from 100 feet, or 1000 feet, or 10,000 feet. At 100 feet, they look like something you can affect, or that affects you. At 1000 feet you see a more something that is perhaps not quite so serious. At 10,000 feet, well perhaps its something that you should just leave alone.
In today’s media intense world, we see everything from 100 feet. We have no time to think, no time to consider, it is thrust in our face and we are required to react. People yell and scream. Names are called. Perpetrators convicted. And we feel righteous. We know all the facts we need to know.
Unfortunately this is seldom the case. We get swept up the moment. We are rightly horrified by what we see.
In the days before instant news, editors did their jobs. A reporter would bring in a story and the editor would ask for two sources. If he or she didn’t get them, the story didn’t run. Period. Today, in the age of cell phones and instant messaging, there are no editors. No one questions anything. The “who, what, where, when, why, and how” of a news story have gone by the wayside. ‘Too good to check’ is the watchword.
If only there was some way to insure that nothing could be posted on the ‘net for 24 hours after the event. Give it time to cool down. Time for questions to be asked. But that’s not going to happen.
My personal rule is that I don’t watch TV news, ever. I cruise the ‘net but even then I try to take everything I read with a bit of salt. I’m sure that in most cases what is written is false, or strained through the writer’s prejudices. I can’t count the number of times I have heard “It must be true. They couldn’t print/write/post it if it wasn’t.”
JVH
