Survey says!

I’ve been what could only be described as a “news junkie” for as long as I can remember. I might watch sitcoms and crime shows if there was nothing else to do, but I rarely missed the evening news. I feel sure that this phenomenon is somewhat generational, but I seemed to have entered that generation in the last few years. The re-distribution of hair growth years!

But how do I act now that news is available twenty four hours a day on the internet? Sometimes I go several days without watching the television news and get my weather and local news updates from the radio. I have discovered that the televised news is somewhat behind the news online, and I often wonder if they get their program ideas from the internet…just like me!

But you have to be careful with your interpretation of all of the available information out there. Turns out most all news is opinion! Who would have thought! 75% of the people reading this will hate me for saying this (see I even have statistics because so far only four people have read this and three didn’t like it), but we all know it’s true. How could it not be? If we all watched an event and later described it in a story the details would vary so widely that the original story would be almost unrecognizable. So what do you do?

The answer is simple but it will drive you further off the deep end…you include a comments section. I know I’m not the only person that lightly skims the actual article and heads for the no-man’s land of the comment section because a typical story will have thousands of responses. Of course there are those that disagree with anything ever written and choose to enlighten you to a thinly veiled government or communist plot the story suggests, but there are also well thought out counters to what is being said. Ramifications and reactions to parts of the story you never thought of! Most of the time I end up feeling a little stupid and naive. So what do I do now? I can’t just stop!

I do my homework. I try not to respond or form my opinion until I get my information from several sources. I understand that this is flawed because buying information by the pound doesn’t make it any more right than simply enjoying a small bite. I can tell myself that I look like Brad Pitt 200 times, but when I look in the mirror…turns out I’m still just regular old Ande. Be sure that you are not the one that wakes up in the middle of your best argument and realizes that everything you just declared is wrong. Abraham Lincoln said it best,” better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt”.