Friday, April 06, 2018

Political Fallacies: Don't Trust Anyone

There is an old axiom amongst journalists:  "Follow the money."  There is another old saying from Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."  And, of course, there is the old scriptural chesnut:  "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil." - 1 Timothy 6:10a (ESV)

Money is a useful thing and not evil in and of itself.  It allows us to trade and exchange for goods and services without having to barter for each and every transaction.  Money allows us to live.  And because of that, money becomes an easy lever to manipulate people.  Whether we realize it or not, any threat to our source of income is a threat to ourselves.  And we will act to protect it.

The problem is, this normal human reaction is not restricted to "bad people" or "corrupt politicians".  It happens every day in the news that you read.  Every news organization has to be sensitive to the people paying the bills.  PBS is dependent on donors and government funding.  CNN and FoxNews are dependent on their big corporate advertisers.  Facebook is dependent on its network of both big corporate and small-scale advertisers.  And because of this, all of these news sources have to ensure their reporting never offends their supporters to the point where funding is withdrawn.

This was most recently and dramatically seen in the case of Laura Ingraham and David Hogg where a casual insult by the conservative host against the Parkland, FL teen caused her advertisers to pull their funding.

This means that every news source you value is inherently biased.  It is not that the journalists there intend to deceive, but they and their editors consciously or subconsciously slant their reporting to keep the money flowing.  It is well known that CNN tends to liberal views and FoxNews tends towards conservative views.  But even your local paper will inevitably be biased by its own local sources of revenue.

What is the problem with this?

  1. No source of information can be trusted 100%, no matter how honest or sincere it is.
  2. You'll never have all the facts if you rely on a single source.
  3. Any attempt to "fix" bias will just lead to new biases driven by new funding sources.
Luckily, the solution is relatively simple:  Get your news from a variety of sources.  While any one source is driven by it's internal biases, it is unlikely for two news sources to have exactly the same bias.  And the more diverse your list of news sources, the clearer your picture becomes.

My challenge to you:  CREATE A LIST OF DIVERSE NEWS SOURCES THAT YOU CHECK ON A REGULAR BASIS, INCLUDING SOME YOU DISAGREE WITH.  It doesn't have to be an everyday thing.  But try to stop by every site at least once a week.

Here are a few sources offering different viewpoints:
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