LOOKING FOR TOM HANKS ?

Politics always includes references to the ‘liberal media’ as an entity impeding fairness in reporting. It is my contention that a ‘liberal’ (free to report) media is the last bastion of checks and balances remaining in our country. If we do not have the fourth estate to perform investigative reporting in order to uncover the facts and truth, we will be nothing but a world exchanging tweets of selective propaganda. I find it absolutely amazing that educated people believe everything they hear on television, particularly if it affirms what they choose to believe. The issue surrounding today’s media concerns differentiating between what is journalism and what are entertaining opinions uttered by self-appointed pundits. First reminder, opinions are not factual truths.

Where did these experts come from? When did national media personalities become credible sources of information? According to Webster’s dictionary a pundit is “a person who knows a lot about a subject and expresses his opinions about that subject publicly (usually on the TV or on the radio).” Please remember, a pundit appoints and markets himself as an expert. There is no licensing or schooling required for being Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs or Megyn Kelly on T.V., although their opinions greatly impact much of the voting public. These celebrity opinion pushers, along with many others, pop-up, stir-up, titillate and become the sole source of information for much of the public. These over-paid personalities are charged by the networks to attract like-minded followers however they can. One step away are ‘the talking heads’ – those trustworthy, supposedly neutral people delivering the news headlines every morning and night. Another reminder, these people are merely reciting the news written for them by others and were hired simply for their abilities to enunciate effectively and look like someone who is believable and relatable. Tom Brokaw is a lovely man, but NBC’s news department wrote the words he delivered every evening. Appearing trustworthy is such an important factor of credibility in TV and cable news, that I have no doubt that if our beloved actor, Tom Hanks, was reading the news every night the entire country would tune in and digest every word as the gospel truth.

Uncovering the facts and the truth has become important to me during this election cycle. I believe many people are accepting undocumented opinion as facts, because it makes drawing conclusions so much easier. If we can align our opinions with those of a TV personality, we can count on his show to mirror our thoughts in the future. Listening to what another side has to say will only confuse us more and challenge us when forming our own opinions. But suppose I don’t want only T.V. personalities’ opinions in regard to the truth about my water, earthquakes, global warming, oil pipelines, immigration, food, medicine, banking, and world affairs. Where do I go for the facts? Just the facts….., even though the actual facts are often boring. Although none of us wants another government agency and most of us believe there is already too much information to absorb, maybe we need an independent fact source. But the question would always be can there be anything independent from self-aggrandizement, corporate greed or politics?

A student of mine was reading a required graphic novel (basically, a cartoon book) about a Muslim girl named Persepolis, who grows up during the 1979 Iran Revolution and recounts her personal experiences during the change in regimes. This high school sophomore was amazed to learn that there were ‘nice’ Muslims who were just like her, because after what she had seen and heard on T.V., she had learned to be afraid of all Muslim people. The lesson? Media cannot continue to be the only message guiding our opinions in today’s world.