For example, I recall a news article about an American soldier. The article said he was a first sergeant. Then it referred to his platoon. Wait a minute. An infantry company has four platoons. But the first sergeant is not attached to a platoon. He is part of the company headquarters. A follow-up article referred to the man as a sergeant first class. Sergeant first class is a military rank. First sergeant is a position in a military company.
Another example that comes to mind is the presidential election of 2004. Two months before the election Sixty Minutes aired a story that made a false statement about George W Bush’s service in the Texas Nation Guard. The story was based on documents to Sixty Minutes had received. It turned out that the documents were forged. When the forgery was discovered, Dan Rather said that if he had known that, he would not have gone ahead with the story.
So journalists, like the rest of us, are imperfect human beings. They make mistakes sometimes. But that is not the end of it. They have means in place to minimize errors. News writers work with editors so that some of these mistakes can be caught and corrected before the story goes to print or on the air or online. Some mistakes still get through. When errors are caught after the item has been released to the public, responsible journalists make corrections. The news item about the man they identified as first sergeant was really a sergeant first class. Sixty Minutes admitted that they had been conned and corrected itself.
Sure we might sometimes get an incorrect story from the mainstream media, but we know that the media makes an effort to minimize false stories. And if they sometimes fail, the media will make an effort to correct their errors. With false media, on the other hand, we know that they are deliberately trying to sell stories that they know to be false. At the very least we have to be skeptical of any “news” put forth by known disseminators of untrue stories.
Donald Trump, for example, lied as often as he told the truth. The Washington Post kept track of the false or misleading statements he made while he was in office. In four years he told 30,537 lies.
30,537 lies!
The President of the United States!
After that performance, why would anyone believe anything he said? Another notorious prevaricator is Alex Jones. At Sandy Hook Elementary School Adam Lanza murdered twenty children and one teacher. The worst thing a parent can face is the loss of a child at any age. (Believe me, I know.) How much worse it must have been for these people to lose their innocent children in such a senseless event. Yet Jones claimed the whole thing was a hoax, staged to motivate limitations on the ownership of fire arms. For adding more pain to the pain of their loss, Jones has been ordered to pay $473 million to the families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims.
These are only two of the most notorious fabricators. There are many more, including several “new” commentator qt Fox News, QAnon, and many of the MAGA promoters.
Sure, the Mainstream news is not perfect. They sometimes get things wrong. But the most egregious of the con artists are so often false that it would be a mistake to believe any of the garbage they spew unless it is confirmed by a reliable source.
I don’t know what motivates some people to make these false statements. Much of it seems to be greed. They tell these lies for political or financial advantage. That seems to be the in the two men we have cited. Others may be deluded themselves. Still others might be suffering from psychological problems that makes them see the world upside down. Whatever their moral, intellectual or psychological weakness, we need to avoid seeing the world through their flawed vision.
We rely on information we get to make decisions about our lives. We owe it to ourselves to make decisions based reliable information.
