Don't Believe It...

I'm beginning to believe that no matter how much good the Internet can offer, the bad is beginning to outweigh the good. The amount of technology we use on a daily basis is out of control. I left the area I grew up in 17 years ago. I had a cell phone with a 30 minute plan, and never used all of those 30 minutes. The Internet was still pretty new. Netscape was a browser option. Google was 7 years away from beginning as a research project. And you could never call anyone at home with a computer because the phone line was tied up "online". Remember that sound?

Encyclopedias and dictionaries would soon become outdated, not because there was new information to update and include, but because they were becoming relics. Just go online to look something up. Phone books are no longer needed. People no longer bury their heads in a book. They are too busy staring at their phones! 

Yes, I know, texting is not "the Intenet", but you get the point. We've become a society preoccupied with our phones. And, we've become a society preoccupied with ourselves. I don't believe the "Me" generation had anything on the world we've become today.

The Internet was touted as "The Information Super Highway." It truly, in free countries, takes you anywhere you want to go, and maybe a few places you don't. Growing up, if we wanted to know the news, we read either the morning or evening newspaper. Or watched the news on ABC, NBC or CBS, and we had no worry that the reporter would try to make themselves part of the story. If you wanted to learn about something, there was the library, where mythical librarians who were the only living souls to master the Dewey Decimal System worked, and could instantly point you to ANY book under their stead. I can't find peanut butter in a grocery store. They were/are amazing. But, like encyclopedias, dictionaries, newspapers and magazines, even librarians and their wonderful collections of books are becoming obsolete. Today, we just "Google" what we want to know.  And therein lies the problem.

Our once beloved Internet has become the "Super Highway of Crapola." How much "crapola"? Regardless of what the State Farm commercial says, you really can't believe much of what you find on the Internet. Lots of folks turn to Wikipedia for information. That's a source that ANYONE can edit and update. You don't need credentials or proof, just access to the web. You'll find that all of the major broadcast networks and cable news networks have Internet presence. Remember when you were a kid watching your favorite television show and suddenly, the screen would change and "Breaking News" would come on. Maybe it the latest Apollo mission was preparing to splashdown into the ocean. Or someone of note had been shot. Or a celebrity had died. Today's "Breaking News" isn't really as much of a newscast as it is a story. An ongoing and evolving story that changes as facts become available. I'm not sure if "Breaking News" reports shouldn't start with "Here's an update to the string of lies and guesses and speculation we reported earlier" or "Once upon a time". Never mind the facts. You don't need facts to report a story. You need two or three people who can sit in front of a camera and talk ad nausea telling you what might have happened, usually prefaced with, "In my opinion..."

Don Henley and Danny Kortchmar nailed it back in 1982

Not that it can be all bad. Remember when the US Airways plane went into the Hudson River? Currently, the new movie, "Sully", is about the pilot. That crash was originally reported on Twitter!

In the not too distant past, the media, or "Press", was referred to as the Fourth Estate. This was a time when being a reporter was an honorable profession. Full of intrigue, mystery, and if you like the movies, maybe a bit of romance. You've always had the local reporters that sat in for the town council meetings. School board meetings. Maybe even covered the local high school sporting events. Or like my home town, the local fishing tournament.  But there were also the big time reporters. Network guys. "Investigative Journalists". Wonder if they ever had a business card that said that? Edward R. Murrow was one of those guys. Trench coats and fedoras. Cigarettes, bottles of beer, glasses of whiskey, glaring desk lamps sitting beside old Royal, Olympia or Underwood manual typewriters. None of this IBM Selectric stuff. The old style with carbons. No copiers then. This was before everybody had a "Xerox" machine. Any fool with a color printer and a laminating machine can create a "Press Pass" to gain entry to an event or put on the facade of being a credentialed reporter.

A good carpenter measures twice, cuts once. That's how a good reporter/journalist should be. Get the facts. Verify the facts.  One source. Two sources. When I was working as DJ and had to read the news, we used several different national news sources. AP, the Associated Press and UPI, United Press International, were a couple of good sources. As far as we knew. With news time approaching, I would just go to the teletype machines and "rip" off the news. We called it "Rip and Read". Overall, they were credible. And newspapers may have had an "op-ed" page, the one page that was truly devoted to opinions and editorials, but overall, the newspaper was filled with news. Credible news. I believe today they just go to Google, type in a topic, and read or use whatever comes up.

Today, we just don't know. Hundreds, thousands of websites proclaiming to be news sources. Mostly just electronic versions of a 1970s National Enquirer. Cut and paste, along with "Like" and "Share" make everyone a reporter. People write blogs and become an instant authority. Like this one. And unlike yesterday's newspaper, web pages are forever, so the regurgitating of old, false and half-truths is also forever. I'm tired of reading news stories from 2009, paraded as new because someone clicked "Share". Don't believe it? Mickey Rooney died in 2014. Really. And, he has died 3 times this year. It's bad enough that you can't trust what should be "trusted" news sources. But all of these other sources. It's too bad you can't line the bird cage with them.

And now we've hit the downhill slope for the presidential election. Not only do we have too many people sharing made up stories, we have too many people with editing capabilities modifying pictures and video to promote their own slant and truth. The crap just keeps getting deeper.

So having said that, just keep this in mind. This political season, if you spend all of your time running down a candidate, all you are doing is proving that you don't have a candidate you support. Cowboys fans don't spend all of their time running down the Eagles or Redskins, they spend their time cheering for the Cowboys. And hating Jerry Jones. If you want to support your candidate, support your candidate. Support them in a way that convinces others to like them. Running down the opposition just makes the oppositions supporters that much more steadfast. And keep it legitimate. We have too many liars and "spinners" already. And they get paid for it.

In the end, don't believe everything you read. Or everything you hear. Let the candidates run each other down. Let them expose their own character. They seem to be professionals at that. And in reality, if all they can do is run down their opposition, it just tells me that they don't have anything good to say about themselves. In spite of all of that, do your homework. Research. Listen. Read and make your own decision. And vote. Apathy wins nothing.

"There is no such thing as a vote that doesn't matter." -Barack Obama

We live in a time of "safe zones," excess litigation and "hurt feelings." Rodney King said:

 "Please, we can get along here. We all can get along. I mean, we’re all stuck here for a while. Let’s try to work it out. Let’s try to beat it. Let’s try to beat it. Let’s try to work it out." 

Let's work towards that. Let's get along. It might not always be easy, but it will be worthwhile.
What say you?