When facts are partially fiction, in the media

The thing about trifle details which is part of our everyday doings, and that you see, read or hear on a regular basis (and never really pay attention to); is that once you notice them they overshadow the general main impression, experience or impact it has on you.

Like… the ticking of an alarm clock. You don’t hear it, until one night you just can’t sleep and there it is: tic-tac-tic-tac and your entire you gets so absorbed with the sound it really gets on your nerves. You are on the alert and it is impossible to get any sleep at all. You shut out everything except the suddenly really loud sound.

Every morning I try to find time to scan through today’s newspaper. It makes me feel updated on what’s on the agenda for the rest of the day. Headlines, ingress and pictures give me a guideline to what will be the talk of the day.

Or so it used to be.

There is a good chance I am a bit weird (actually I know I in many ways am); I pay attention to words. I believe that words have the power to catalyze action. I believe you can express just about any opinion prevented you choose your words right. Even an insult can be presented so eloquently it is hard to be offended.

Subconsciously I think we all, to some degree, pick up on these nuances and react to the impact the words we are exposed to have.

It goes both ways; how you speak or write affects people… and we all know that what we hear or read makes an impact on our way of thinking.

There has, for as long as I can remember, been an ongoing discussion about the importance of the press being objective. Lately, when I read the news in the morning, I find myself not really paying attention to the news itself. Like the ticking of the alarm-clock; I pay more attention to the language used.

I don’t know if it is a conscious choice, or if journalists of today are taught this is an acceptable angle to a story, but a LOT of what I read in the newspapers (in paper, and even more on online editions), and what I hear on the radio or watch/hear on TV, is not factual information: we get the journalist’s own opinion on a story, case or occurrence.

I started picking up on the choice of words different journalists tend to prefer.

Far too often the weak, and yet exposed, groups of people in society are even further degraded… or we enhance the prejudices they already suffer from, by how we express ourselves.

An example I see a lot is: the suspect is a young man of foreign descent. So; we don’t talk about the crime committed, we talk about all the foreigners who have come to our country causing nothing but trouble. Making it a disadvantage he is even young, and a man…!

The young man may very well have been born and raised here, his grandparents being the ones to immigrate, but that is not of interest: we just generalize and call them all foreigners, regardless of background or situation.

It is a problem how facts are selected, picked and chosen, deliberately leaving important arguments or facts out.

I am old enough to remember when a fight was won when the opponent lay on the ground. Today a fight is about getting your opponent to the ground so you can hit and kick him properly. Words can do that as well.

When we were presented to news before, we used to discuss issues regarding the event or situation in question.

Now I notice we more and more often discuss not the event or situation itself, but social issues the journalist chose to indicate.

We call media, the press, the fourth estate. They set the agenda by what they present to the masses.

Instead of mending our society by addressing what is wrong with our system, we are lured into brand-marking people. Blaming what is wrong on everybody else. Making us believe our community would be so much better if only we stuck to our own kind. Our people (and I think this goes for everyone, regardless of age, colour, religion and/or political stand.

It is a shame we can’t be updated on news without linguistic misguidance, which distracts us.

I can’t help but thinking this is why we tend to engage less in our local community.

Children’s sports lack trainers and coaches.

The Salvation Army is in great need of more/new volunteers as the older generation must step down.

The list is close to endless.

Instead of spending time healing what is wrong, we focus more and more on our own comfort and feel smug about ourselves because we, at least, are decent people.

And while we do so, we criticize what a bad coach our daughter has to deal with, we don’t even think about what an effort he/she does for our daughter; doing the best he/she can with hardly any help from the other parents.

Very seldom we give thanks or show appreciation. Hardly ever do we care to tell what is right or well.

We adopt the lingo from the medias where we hardly hear anything good. (And if we do it usually involves an infant or an animal.) Small children and animals are still pardoned from our negativity.

I know my postings on here are really nothing much to brag about when it comes to credibility. To be honest I don’t really spend much time on thinking them through… but then again: I never set out to be objective or informative. I just ramble on about what’s on my mind, and it is very subjective.

In many ways news is presented the same way: The press often takes side, choose to tell the part of the story which serves their agenda or cause the best way.

If we want to understand, if we want to change what is wrong about our system we need to know the full story. We can’t make it a matter about whether we like or dislike individuals. It isn’t ok to base factual info on a journalist’s personal view.

I highly appreciate learning what other people think about different things. That is how we evolve as reflective human beings. But what I would like to see is a stronger marking of what is a fact and what is an opinion, especially in the news

(Schoolbooks suffer from the same problem, as they more and more often are designed to be sellable, but that is a different matter.)

Inaccurate language and facts only inspires aggression and makes it approved of, among the masses, to talk about "us" and "them". Looking at history, that was never a good strategy.