What to Do When Inundated by Questionable Information

 

It’s another reminder—and a creepy one—about the need to consider your sources and to ingest all information with that proverbial grain of salt.

Check out the above video. It’s a clip from the TV show Conan that strings together the introductions to several news stories about Conan O’Brien’s performing a same-sex marriage on the show, introductions that echo one another to the point of absurdity. Conan O’Brien may be about to push the envelope of late-night television. Conan O’Brien may be about to push the envelope on late-night television. Conan O’Brien may be about to push the envelope on his late-night television show….

That all of these reports emanate from the same source is incontrovertible—and in and of itself, unremarkable. What’s chilling is how robotically each and every one of these television stations—not all of which are controlled by the same parent company—simply spoon-feed to viewers the information that was spoon-fed to them, right down to the form of expression. Conan O’Brien may be about to push the envelope on late-night television….

It’s enough to turn anyone cynical. And it only gets worse when you get a whiff of the media consolidation that’s taken place over the last quarter century, as an ever greater percentage of Americans falls under the informational sway of ever fewer companies. We almost shouldn’t be surprised by the Conan clip.

Almost. Because even in this milieu of media conglomerates gobbling up whatever they can, we can’t forget that ultimately what gets transmitted to page or screen are the words of people, individuals with their own minds and wills. And so what shocks in the video is how clearly it displays the truth of how people whose job—literally—is to inform the public will imbibe whatever information comes their way and disgorge the contents with no more thought than that in which their stomachs partake when vomiting. Garbage in, garbage out, with no filter in between.

Cynicism is not essential here—though who could blame ya?—but skepticism is. Skepticism is about remaining open to possibilities other than the ones being offered as fact or that seems obvious and are taken for granted.

Skepticism 101 ought to be mandatory for college freshman or even high-school seniors. There ought to be a course that teaches us: Everything that is fed to you—including by parents, schools, churches, and media—might be crap. That doesn’t mean that everything is crap, but if you’re always keeping your nose open, you’ve got a better chance of sniffing out what you’re better off not stepping in.

Among those possibilities is that a lot of what you read online and what you see on TV is pabulum, peddled by God knows whom with God knows what agenda and/or little to no individual thought. Local news coverage may be outsourced—and Long Beach is no exception.

Last year I wrote a story about a shoddy news story compiled by City News Service[1] that was published, unedited, by the Press-Telegram.[2] Read it here and you’ll see that a mere few days later the Associated Press, one of the most relied-upon news-gathering organizations on the planet, did some iffy reporting on a local story—including one easily verifiable factual error. But AP’s reportage was Pulitzer material compared to television station KCAL 9’s coverage, which included blatant fabrications.

Then there’s the issue of promotional material being passed off as journalism. If you’re not familiar with the term “advertorial,” you should be. It’s a portmanteau of “advertising” and “editorial,” and it means that the subject of the piece paid the writer or publisher to get some good press. Perhaps you’ve seen a “Best Food & Drink Guide” quite resembling the one that used to appear in The District Weekly (such a coincidence that they’re so much alike!) that floats around from time to time. I’m not in on its creation, but I think you’d be naïve to believe it’s anything but advertising. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s false—I was a contributor to The District‘s version, and I never wrote an insincere word[3]—but if it’s bought and paid for, it’s a lot less likely to reach for the whole truth. Caveat lector.

Another side of the problem is that sometimes perfectly earnest folks simply have no real idea how to research or differentiate their beliefs from what we might call evidentially supportable fact. Take, for example, this cute little picture of Albert Einstein on a sailboat that’s been floating around online for a while, the one with the following quote attributed to that great genius:

Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.

Not only is there no evidence that Einstein said this, but beyond the “everything is energy” bit (a colloquial translation of the import of E = mc²), whoever did say it apparently has little to no understanding of physics (for example, what “frequency” means when talking about energy in a physics context). It’s not Einstein, it’s not physics, but it’s a great example of how little thought people may put into the information they pass along.

If you’re not a skeptic, you run a much higher risk of being a dupe than you might otherwise. Question everything—TV news, the Press-Telegram, the Long Beach Post, Greggory Moore, everything. Take my word for it.

Or better yet: don’t.