Reality A La Carte...

Hey Everyone!! :-)

I've got a little more of Alyce's adventure to share with you, today! Enjoy! :-)

Excerpt from Answers From Alyce:
"Aren't there any honest actors in your media?"

I nodded. "Of course there are. One of the things the First Amendment to our Constitution guarantees is a free press, so our government and the corporations that back it haven't quite managed to silence all dissenting voices. There are some real journalists out there who are still trying to uphold the ideal of an adversarial relationship between power and press and to seek out and tell the truth, whatever it may be. But they aren't the members of the media who have a lot of money backing them, so it's hard for them to make their voices heard. That's one of the reasons losing Net Neutrality is so bad for our country. One of the main ways independent journalists report what they find is via the internet. And if corporations are allowed to shut down traffic to websites that report things they don't like, such as sites that expose the terrible things those corporations have done, then it becomes much harder for media that isn't owned by large corporations to be heard. But, honestly, even when independent media does manage to make themselves heard, people in power usually try to discredit them by claiming that what they report isn't legitimate news."

"But don't your people realize that's simply a tactic to keep the truth from becoming known?"

I shrugged. "Sure, some people realize that. But, since most people don't have an objective standard to compare what they hear against, they just pick what they most agree with to believe. If they agree with the people in control of our government, they'll choose to believe them. If they disagree with the people in control of our government, they'll choose to believe whoever criticizes them, whether that's their political opponents or the media."

"But if the members of the media you're talking about, those who are honest and are truly trying to inform the public, present evidence to support what they report, why don't your people know that they are telling the truth?"

"Because most people aren't used to evaluating evidence and determining if it can be relied upon. Lots of people claim to have 'evidence', and most people have a hard time figuring out what 'evidence' comes from reliable sources and is real and what 'evidence' is made up by other dishonest or misguided people. And even people who do know how, often don't have the time to devote to doing that kind of research. We live under a constant bombardment of information, and because the pre-vetted sources in the mainstream media aren't doing their job, it's hard to know what part of that information can be trusted."

"And your government is no help because they are focused on assigning blame, not on telling the truth."

I snorted. "The current administration calls anything that makes it look bad or that it doesn't agree with 'Fake News', regardless of how much evidence there is or how reliable that evidence is. So, no, the government is no help at all in sorting fact from fiction. And, frankly, it shouldn't be. The purpose of a free press is to speak truth to power and hold power accountable, and power rarely likes to hear the truth or be held accountable. So, at its roots, it's meant to be an adversarial relationship, which means the government shouldn't be involved in vetting the reliability of the fourth estate. Journalists, themselves, should do a better job of keeping each other honest, but it's hard to get people to do something that they're being paid by multi-billion dollar corporations not to do."

Now Out:
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