I once had a very good teacher who taught me something very important.
"News is reported in the following way. Half of it is true with a fair amount of salt. The rest is just the personal opinion of the reporter."
It's probably because of him that I never react to news stories. I read exactly what it says and ONLY what it says nothing more.
I see plenty of people react exactly how the reporter wanted them to react when he/she wrote the article be it anger, or whatever, usually anger though. It makes me laugh at just how easily people react to news stories and articles.
My advise do NOT react to a news article with any emotion until you get the whole story. Half the time you don't. It seems silly to me to get all upset about something when you don't know the whole story, dont you?
Comments
My grandfather
apparently used to say, 'Only believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.'
To me, the word truth is a political or emotional statement, it's about beliefs; whereas fact is more objective and although it too can be corrupted, it's easier to challenge.
Angharad
It is, I believe, a quote
It is, I believe, a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin.
I've also seen it as
Believe only half of what you see, some of what you read, and none of what you hear.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
One of my favorite games
One of my favorite games is to read tabloid headlines and guess what the story is REALLY about. While they use sensationalistic headlines to get people to buy the paper, the actual story can't be knowingly wrong, and the title can't contradict the story. They can however make a statement that skirts the truth.
One headline I read was something like "Jackie Chan refuses to visit illegitimate daughter", the story said he didn't find out about her until she was already a young child, and at the request of the mother hasn't visited her, but has left it open for her to visit him.
Of course it's true, I read it in the newspaper.
I remember that from the 50's when I was growing up. "They can't put it in the paper if it isn't true," went right along with that quote.
If only that was true. :o( But we believed it in the 50's. However then, reporters were required to verify their sources and if ever a paper had to print a retraction, the reporter felt the brunt of the editor-in-chief's wrath. These days it seems the more outrageous it is the better the editor likes it. It'll sell papers and the lawyers will keep them from paying off in a libel suit.
I heard a couple of years ago that the chief reason students studied journalism was because they wanted to affect the way the world thinks. And here I grew up believing that journalists had a sacred trust to report the facts as best the could and to keep their opinions to themselves unless they put it in the editorials.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin ein femininer Mann
But this snippet, printed in
But this snippet, printed in the Sun of all places, was absolutely true.
Blame reprobates like these two
"There is no such thing as truth ...
.... there is only human opinion."
This is a quote from a Swiss acquaintance of mine - whether he coined it or not, I do not know. (He is an English teacher to a High School here)
I can find a gazillion examples of where this is "true".
Just one that comes from my experience, and early physics and chemistry lessons.
We were taught that the make-up of an atom is like a mini-solar system - particles (planets) whizzing round the nucleus (sun).
Nowadays that "truth" has been firmly knocked on its head.
But take the word 'Atom' itself. This derives from Greek. It means 'indivisible', so the original concept was that an atom had no constituent parts, that it was the smallest possible particle..... That was a 'truth' back then.
So I question most everything.
Cheers
J
It is difficult to prefilter what our senses tell us
But our brains filter the input through a life-time of experiences to fit the input into our view of the world.
The OUTPUT from ANY person is ALWAYS filtered through that persons life experiences. (Sometimes the filter is the coercion of monetary gain or threat of punishment.) What I am saying is that there is ABSOLUTELY NO such a thing as unbiased news reporting! Always try to get reports from several sources.
with love,
HER
Once in a while I bare my soul, more often my soles bear me.
"T" Truth only exists in completely controlled environments
In simple integer arithmetic where the rules are closed and as rigid as can be, there is "T" Truth. 1+1 = 2 there is NO ambiguity. There are however types of mathematics that are outside the rules of simple arithmetic. In simple arithmetic division by zero leads to an answer of infinity, something that can not be used in further calculations. In the arena of Calculus however division by (nominally) zero constitutes the core formula of the discipline.
"T" Truth can only be defined within the rules of the game. The real world is too diverse to define ALL the rules.
with love,
HER
Once in a while I bare my soul, more often my soles bear me.