TRUST YOURSELF TO FIND THE TRUTH

Trust but verify. That’s the Russian proverb often quoted by Ronald Reagan. It’s a good credo to live by. And, it seems to be more important than ever to rely on yourself to critically listen to, and evaluate, what is being said and written, as people intolerantly declare their opinions as gospel and mainstream media, social media and digital media are mostly aligned in a single point of view. How can you verify things when you don’t have access to the information on all sides of an issue or are afraid to question for fear of being labeled an “ist” of some kind?  This univision world is stacked against our ability to gather accurate information on things like safety in our neighborhoods, the high cost of living, the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, protests and safety on college campuses and more. Every topic has become a political battlefield with people afraid to express their opinions or even to ask questions.  

But is anyone really winning this battle of the filtered messages and flaming verbal darts?

Answer: No. We are all losing. Not just the information war but the freedom of speech and the very vital right and responsibility to self advocate.  It is critical to understand that you, me, we, are all being manipulated by the messaging and the media. This isn’t new… it’s simply gotten worse.  

In 1976 the film Network was released.  In 2019, the film was produced as a Broadway show. I‘ve seen a lot of theater in my life but rarely a performance as powerful as that of Bryan Cranston as news anchor, Howard Beale, who famously “goes crazy” after he is fired for poor ratings and becomes a zealot for exposing the dirty underbelly of the broadcast industry.

The show’s messages of the destructive power of television over society and the self-serving nature of the media business are as relevant today as they were nearly 50 years ago when the film was released. Perhaps even more so in today’s digital age of sound bites and “virtual life.” Truly frightening.

Midway through the show, Beale rants about the power of the “tube”…

“Less than 3% of you people read books…less than 15% of you read newspapers…The only truth you know is what you get over this tube…There is…an entire generation that never knew anything that didn’t come out of this tube…This tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime ministers.”

And this was before cell phones…before the Internet…and before social media. Amazing, right?

We talk now about the dangerous influences of the Internet and social media and the loss of attention span in the digital age. People get their news by scrolling and from push notifications that typically are between five and 15 words long.  Little or no knowledge of the truth behind or beyond those 15 words. We are in a land of headlines and sound bites with little to know fact checking.  And, on more than one occasion, things that the networks deemed “misinformation” were later proven to be true!   We are being systematically lied to yet with everything being spoon-fed to us, people have lost the patience and desire to understand the what and the why of things—they just want the “bottom line.” Short and sweet.

Since the days of JFK, we have watched television make and break presidents. From Nixon’s sweat-filled performance during the 1960 presidential debates…to Reagan’s smooth mastery of communication…Obama’s rousing oratory of “hope and change”… the vilification of President Trump...and now the “firing” of President Biden once his mental lapses were publicly on display at the June debate. There is no question that the directors and producers choose what they want to show us in terms of both content and camera angles. For any given 30- or 60-minute news cast, there is a multitude of possible stories to cover. The news director decides what’s in and what’s out…how long each segment is…and what the angle on the piece is. MSNBC presents a very different version of the immigrants at the southern border than Fox News does. Neither version is entirely right or wrong, but they are different and the viewer is being manipulated by the producers.

Worse yet, while the media is filtering messages for us, we are complicit in not only accepting the messages without question but also in selecting our own filters. In general, people have their points of view, and they want to hear from others who think similarly, aka, “support” them. So we select who we follow on Twitter, the podcasts we download, the websites we visit, the news broadcasts we watch,and the sources of our news feeds. Filtration. One-sided. As Beale says, “You’ll do whatever the tube tells you.”

Then what? Howard Beale tells people to “turn off your television sets!” in order to protect themselves from the mind-numbing impact of the manipulation and the heartlessness that goes along with it. 

How prescient the scriptwriters for Network were when they placed the warnings of television’s dangers into Howard Beale’s mouth. Powerful then, life or death now. We are in a death spiral of biased messaging in virtually every information channel. Watch MSNBC or CNN or ABC and get an entirely different world view from that of Fox or Newsmax. There are items reported on each station that never see the light of day on the other. Facebook and Twitter (under Jack Dorsey) have been called to task for their biased filtering—dare I say suppression—of information. There have been multiple demonstrations of the bias in Google’s AI responses to political questions. The public is at their whim, which means that our society is increasingly run by giant propaganda machines and we are all the unwitting participants in the social exercise.

The way out? Get off the sound-bite train…or at least understand that you’re on it and open your mind to input from all places and angles. The pattern of my way or the highway is dangerous. Our country was founded on diversity of thought and beliefs. That diversity made us stronger and provided checks and balances to ensure that no single faction gained too much power. A single message…a single voice…a single point of view…with opposing views being shouted down— is frightening, to say the least, and destructive, to say the most.

Beale tells the audience that if they want the truth, they should look inside themselves. Use their own compass. Trust their eyes and their ears and their hearts. Understand that things happen in real life, not through filters or on screens.

I’m focused on the news, but frankly personal responsibility and self advocacy are for all areas of your life. Setting boundaries in relationships.  Speaking up for your value at work. Asking questions and speaking your preferences at the doctor’s offices.  I know a number of people who have simply turned off the television and shut out the news as a way to protect themselves from the biased messaging and vitriol that is so prominent.  That’s an option and it works to some extent. But it also leaves you uninformed.   

Protect yourself, yes.  But don’t abdicate the power of knowledge nor the privilege of self advocacy. It is vital to your success and even survival.