Whenever a secondhand opinion is posited as truth, the danger of an intrusive big lie is always lurking in nearby tangled thinking.
Accordingly, the biases of newspeople in the mass media these days are obvious to much of the public. We cannot unquestionably trust any of the mass media mavens to deliver unalloyed news absent interjections of their personal values, worldviews, opinions and navel-gazing selfism.
The July 10 Sunday Denver Post (owned by the publicly traded but billionaire-dominated, overtly liberal New York Times Company), for example, carried overly long criticisms of the Supreme Court’s “obvious miscarriage” of justice in the Roe v. Wade revival of our nation’s abortion battles.
A female-dominated editorial board angrily unfurled feminist flags of protest arguing that America’s (actually the world’s) prodigious slaughter of innocents was none of the court’s business. The Post’s inside news columns were heavily laced with invectives issuing from reporters who might need better training in the art of unbiased, objective news gathering.
In the days when we newspaper folk composed our stories on turgid Underwood typewriters, one arduous stroke at a time, we were sworn to write the truth and nothing but the truth. And newspaper editors were generally committed to enforcing ideals of truthfulness and objectivity in all that their staff wrote.
A politician, for example, could lie, and a reporter might then repeat that lie in print (or on the air), faithfully repeating all that was said in naive innocence. But that did not make the reporter a liar … simply negligent for not following up with keener research. All “good” reporters do background research of anything they’re told, and thus accurately brand the liars as liars.
In those early days of our news-gathering vocation (the 1950s and ’60s), newspapers were viewed with suspicion … but also were generally accepted as good sources of information. There were occasional rotten apples in the journalistic ink barrel, but most students graduating from the nation’s small handful of certified journalism schools at least heralded truthful and balanced reportage.
In today’s environment of gobbling up and consolidating news organizations by 15 prominent mega-billionaires and other elite financial conglomerates, the emphasis is on hoarding almighty dollars while using the mass media to promote their personal political, behavioral and moral values. The most recent heavy investment of Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu in the New York Times Company is particularly puzzling. How does such an investment benefit an already unimaginably powerful individual from another country? Think about that.
Rather than strengthening the ethical concept of merely mirroring daily activities of the general populace, the current crop of so-called “Fourth Estate” truth-tellers exploit and disgrace their profession by selective manipulation focused primarily on promoting beliefs and value systems drawn from their distinctive particular yet purposeful soulish desires and leanings.
It’s Not Just the Newspapers and TV
The internet as a “news” source is a far deeper tar pit of nonsensical falsehood. Whereas Hollywood’s carnal value systems now fully enervate and saturate the mass media, hysterical nonsense drives an internet which at no point ever required honest discipline of its reporters and commentators.
Twitter is perhaps the most instructive example of the internet truth/opinion/falsehoods mishmash. The veracity of anything published on that channel is suspect because there is no undergirding of sophisticated professional journalism. Proof of this can be found in the resignation of Evan Williams, a partner in the formation of that unhappy company.
To counteract the “evils” of Twitter, Williams subsequently left the firm and launched a company named Medium, which he hoped to turn into an ethical communications outlet via internet. His team succeeded in many respects but never became profitable enough to effectively take center stage in the publishing industry.
Williams resigned from Medium a few days ago indicating they were unsuccessful in trying to “pioneer a healthier model for content that doesn’t hijack or sell people’s attention or data.” What’s disappointingly implicit in this decision isn’t the fact they couldn’t inject honorable journalism into a corrupt system … it was merely a marketing issue. They couldn’t make enough money to build their brand and justify their existence.
The internet is a fool’s paradise because it lacks even the scent of a journalism school’s attempts at instilling truth and objectivity into the news-gathering colostrum. Internet lies can be even more deadly than those of the formal media.
For example, one of our closest and dearest friends recently died unnecessarily of COVID-19. We earlier pleaded with him to accept vaccination, explaining that his age and physical condition made him particularly vulnerable to the virus. But he cited “facts” he had garnered on the internet and declined the shots.
My wife and I agreed to and endured all three recommended vaccinations because of our own aging and physical vulnerability. But this treasured and very talented friend (along with many other Christian associates) refused the vaccinations because of internet declarations, maintaining the shots are a key element of a global conspiracy to subvert mankind. Somehow this virus, unlike the polio or pneumonia pathogens for example, had now become a tool of Satan necessary to his one-world ride to global dominance.
Another big lie spread via the internet was that the inoculations actually caused people to become infected by the virus. There may have been a few such consequences, as also happened with earlier models of vaccine development for the following diseases (all subsequently sparing billions of lives along with preventing their severe crippling aftereffects): Chickenpox, Dengue, Diphtheria, Flu, Hepatitis, Measles, Meningococcal, Mumps, Pneumococcal, Polio, Rotavirus, Rubella (German Measles), Shingles, Smallpox, Tetanus, Whooping Cough and many other lesser-known maladies.
Unfortunately, we also have friends and relatives who believed the internet lies and either died or suffered miserably from extensive and very expensive hospital stays. Of those we know who got the vaccinations, we heard of no deaths. A few became sick but did not require hospitalization. Others, such as my wife, Pat, and I, have had no incidences of illness due to the virus.
Yet, just this week, we received four more “friendly” warnings not to get the second round of boosters this fall because “it’s all part of a massive conspiracy of evil.” How are we to handle this conundrum in which we want to put the lie to internet myths without alienating dear friends?
Perhaps my wife, Pat (we’ve been married 63 years), has the answer: “Why don’t people just do what we did? We jointly talked about it a lot, and then prayed. The Holy Spirit told both of us, separately, that it was OK! Get the shots!”
This article began with intensive reference to “truth.” We now end it with Pat’s unquestioned reminder of wherein lies all truth. It’s a source available to all who require it and desire it. {eoa}
Ronald Dee Mallett of Milliken, Colorado, studied business, journalism, economics and mass communications at Denver, Colorado and Stanford Universities as a Ford Fellow. An Air Force veteran, news reporter, columnist and retired multinational corporate executive, he later served as full-time unpaid director of jail, prison, nursing home and Mexico outreaches, as well as intercession ministries for over 21 years.
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