By David Himmel

 News is important. Knowledge is Power and all that.

I was a journalist. Never a hard news type, but a writer and radio personality with a journalism degree who focused on opinion and feature pieces. But I always approached my stories with the impartial merits a gonzo journalist ought to. Most importantly, I approached every story with the goal of revealing the truth.

The truth has long been difficult to uncover. These days, the truth is harder to define. The rise of the internet and 24-hour cable news television has made room for outlets and individual players to have a voice and fill space with information. That information isn’t always true or even representative of the truth. And instead of being presented to its audience as opinion or skewed versions of actual happenings, it’s presented as news. Like The News. Like the stuff that most of the United States consumed through morning and evening editions of newspapers and on evening news television programs like 60 Minutes and PBS News Hour and CBS Evening News anchored by a journalist considered “the most trusted man in America” for a long stretch during the mid-twentieth century. Most of what’s out there today is not anything even closely resembling Walter Cronkite.

And that’s okay. Let the internet grow, give the intelligent and hacks among us a place to be heard, sure. But with this comes a greater responsibility on the part of the audience. Because there’s more to consume, there’s more work for us to do. We have to work harder to determine what’s true and fair. We have to be on constant alert so that we’re not fooled into thinking an opinion is what actually happened. 

Fifty years ago, people had to trust their media sources because the sources were fewer. The fringe was actually on the fringe, not spread thick along the spectrum. Folks had their favorite news source for any number of reasons: One paper was slanted more to the left or right, which aligned with that person’s personal beliefs. They liked an anchor or a reporter or columnist. It’s what they grew up with. Whatever the reason, the news was always the news and the opinions were always the opinions. And the sectional dividers were much more clear. And now any person with an internet connection, some free software, and an iPhone can build a source for sharing information regardless of how absolutely insane it is. 

There have always been crackpots and hacks and liars and crooks in the media. But Alex Jones is a modern creation. So, too, are Andrew Wakefield and Judy Mikovitz.

It makes sense that many people don’t trust the mainstream media. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the network channels are the establishment. And yeah, it’s always a good thing to question the establishment because the established have power and power corrupts. But that doesn’t mean everything the established, traditional media outlets say is a lie. And it doesn’t mean that the fringe is always correct either. It’s also important to understand the difference between an editorial board having a slant and the reporting being filled with lies. As a rule, the best editorials are formed from fact. Without fact, the editorialist has as much credibility as a turd telling me to kill my son because it will make my penis thirteen inches larger. 

One should not agree with every editorial printed in the Times or the Post. But with almost two hundred Pulitzer Prizes between the two papers, there’s a long history of quality journalism. Still don’t believe their reporting? Okay, fact check their stories against the stories coming from other professional news outlets. But how does none choose their news outlets trust? Consider the following:

• Experience

• Record of institutional credibility

• Sources used and their level of credibility

• The clarity of the line between news and opinion

• The ads and other stories featured at the bottom of online articles

Just because something is mainstream doesn’t mean it can’t be trusted. Similarly, just because something is on the fringe doesn’t mean it doesn’t have merit. But to take one or the other as absolute wrong or right is where we fail.

Not every bit of news is going to be what you want to hear. Because the truth hurts. But get over it because the truth doesn’t care about your feelings. Sometimes the news sucks. It’s called “bad news” for a reason. The hero of the Woke, Barak Obama initiated and supported a drone policy that knowingly killed innocent civilians. Bad news. Joe Biden might be a sexual assailant. Bad news. Donald Trump is a sexual assailant. Bad news. Suck it up. And hey, not every politician is out to get you. There may well be a degree of crookedness in all of them, but purity is a fallacy.

I won’t tell you which sources you should trust. That’s up to you. But I will tell you that the ones you do trust should be sources that are trustworthy. Organizations and individuals that peddle rebuked reports, proven misinformation, and outright lies should not make your list. The internet may be part of the problem, but it’s also the cure. It is easier than ever to fact check and determine the credibility of your news. The thing is, you need to have a little credibility yourself.

 But to not trust any news source, even your own preferred source when it’s revealed to you how wrong that source was, is to be a coward and waste your intelligence. You have to trust something. Trust is a necessary choice. Without it, then nothing has any value, and if that’s the case, then the news you’re sharing doesn’t matter because, well, nothing does. And if nothing matters, then please, stop sharing what is, quite literally fake news.