Much of the news we receive today comes from pundits. A pundit is defined as “an expert in a particular subject or field who is frequently called on to give opinions about it to the public.” In our past most “news” came from reporters. A reporter is defined as “a person who reports, especially one employed to report news or conduct interviews for newspapers or broadcasts.” There were famous reporters and unknown reporters, but their job was to report the news, not comment on it or analyze it. “Just the facts, ma’am.”
The reporter’s job was to answer the 5 W’s—Who, What, When, Where and Why. In a crazy twist of logic most people now trust pundits more than reporters to convey the news because the reporters are biased in some way; while pundits are trustworthy; because the pundits you listen to or read believe what you believe. In the simplest of terms pundits are biased because they are delivering opinions while reporters are not, so to trust the opinion people over reporters turns everything upside down.
Not sure when reporters became untrustworthy to deliver facts and opinion spouters became trusted sources of the truth, but it changed the world in many ugly ways. The definition of pundit says it is an “expert in a particular subject or field”, but the reality is that most pundits are personalities who work as entertainers. People pretending (or acting) as experts are not experts. They are hucksters.
Almost since I could read, I’ve been an avid newspaper reader. During that time, I can’t recall very many reporter’s names. I remember names of some news broadcasters but that is a different story—thank you, Walter Cronkite. What mattered was the story and the reputation of the organization. Because I trusted the structure of the newspaper, I trusted the reporter. That structure included review, often by many people, a set of standards and professional ethics. Now, of course, some organizations were better at adhering to those standards than others. All newspapers had some bias based on the publisher’s bias or the editor or maybe the pressmen. The important job was to keep the bias out of the news reporting.
I’m not real sure that failed, but somewhere along our path many people decided the people running the show were slanting the news. Exactly why they would do that is not clear. It could have been political motivations, but most of the largest media companies who owned the top papers were controlled by people leaning to the right and the charge was that the papers were leaning to the left. Maybe the owner of the paper hadn’t noticed. Now there were exceptions where the paper leaned in the “bosses” way, but I think those were mostly exceptions.
One big change was cable news. Cable news was designed to do one thing –sell ads. Rake in big dollars on a national scale by making the “news” exciting. What had been ethical, professional standards at newspapers was now only a distant memory, only ratings mattered. Slanting the news became the norm because you had a target audience that wanted to hear Mister Top Dog was really a sex starved fiend—so here is breaking news showing Mister Top Dog’s –well we’ll stop there; somethings are still off limits.
Newspapers got caught up in the ratings wars and lost some of their stodginess so they could be “popular” too. Everybody lost something to pursue the bucks.
Soon the only truth about anything is my truth. Whatever I believe is the truth, and I can quote you hundreds of pundits, you know experts, who agree with me. Personal truths are more like beliefs than facts and contra facts do not persuade someone from “their” beliefs.
It was once standard motherly advice to not discuss politics or religion in social activities. Mom knew the quickest way to discord was to question someone’s beliefs. Beliefs are not facts. They represent our feelings, our experiences, our traditions, but seldom are they based on empirical truths.
Not that long ago one of the stated goals of many educational institutions was to teach critical thinking. Critical thinking is defined as “the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment.” Objective means to not be influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts. In only a short number of years we have gone from an educational goal of critical thinking to a societal insistence on subjective reasoning. That is an amazing transformation.
We have replaced the truth standard with a belief standard. And if you or your news organization spouts “news” that does not adhere to my beliefs (truths), then you are a liar. Once liar (or enemy) becomes someone who states things that disagree with my beliefs, we lose all ability to discuss, debate, compromise or even talk about issues. Our beliefs become fixed.
When your feelings are more important than the facts, you will almost never know the truth.
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