How Informed is Your Opinion?

I first went to work in television in 1980. I have worked in radio, television and even newsprint one-and-off since then.

During the late eighties I was made aware of foreign news coverage of Bishop Desmond Tutu "spitting cotton" and pounding an outdoor pulpit when an African National Congress freedom fighter was killed by the evil of South African apartheid. It was a huge funeral/photo op attended by masses of Xhosa tribespersons, many toting automatic rifles. I saw two of the Big Three networks and two national news magazines (such as Newsweek and TIme, but I don't recall which ones, specifically) cover this event. It was a sunny day and Tutu was shown screeching his spiel in front of some billowing red fabric in the background that set off his complexion and clothing to good effect for the cameras. Big deal? In the foreign video coverage I saw, the producer asked for and received a slightly different angle and the red banner was revealed to have a golden hammer and sickle in the upper left-hand corner. You may recall what an old Soviet flag looked like?

I was stunned. I suddenly realized that I lived in a nation that boasted of a free press, but the freedom of that press was primarily to "withhold evidence," as it were.

And then along comes "Wag the Dog." In my latest media incarnation I was the de facto editor of a small, weekly newspaper in middle America. Part of my job was to take pictures from virtually any source, good bad and ugly, and run them in the paper, even as our dominant, above-the-fold lead shot. I became very conversant with Adobe Photoshop and self-taught our de facto editor how to remove and add reality to pictures, covering this awkward thing and filling in that missed element. The paper was a "community" medium telling feel-good stories of local people and businesses ... in order to angle for new or continuing advertising from those same people and businesses. (Weekly papers cannot report "news" anyway, when you think about it.) My alterations were to refine bad focus, improve amateurish lighting so a face could be seen, etc. I even adjusted larger people so that they appeared only as heavy as they might to the naked eye rather than the broadening effects of the monocular camera lens (which is a real issue, and not an urban legend).

Still, even with the better intentions, a self-taught "graphic artist" was able to bend reality without very much effort. "Wag the Dog" demonstrated how a war could be initiated, justified and fought without any shots being fired, and a nation swayed because of it. (Also see "Capricorn One" which shows a NASA mission to the Moon ... or was it Mars? ... that never happened.)

All of this foundational background is to say that I am deeply troubled by the fact that I cannot find reliable sources of actual information. Every avenue of reporting is tainted with the potential for misdirection, and too much of it is actually so perverted. That is particularly true with the Internet. And so I am left with no legitimate way to find out what is "really" going on around me beyond my ability to go and see for myself. Therefore, how can I accurately and legitimately make decisions on issues more far-flung than my capacity for travel and investigation?

This does not seem like a weighty concern, until one realizes that we make our decisions on who we vote for (or against), what wars we resist or support, based on "news." If I were a "war correspondent" I could only learn of the one conflict I am covering and still be ignorant of other wars and political turmoil at home. And it's a hell of a world when everyone has to be a globe-trotting journalist in order to learn what is actually happening in their state, nation and planet.

During ad hoc debates over the supremacy of PC or Macintosh platforms, I used to question my opponents on whether they had ever owned both platforms. Ever made a living selling both? Ever performed their job on both? Not at the same time, most likely, but ever? The advocates of the other platform would grow very quiet when, after admitting that they had limited or no experience on my platform, I asked them how "informed" their opinion could be.

I put this question to you, the reader, here.

How do you KNOW that Bush and Cheney are at war in Afghanistan and Iraq over oil and juicy contracts to Halliburton? How do you KNOW John Kerry is (or is not) an alien from Mars? How do you KNOW that global warming is about to cause major special effects across the world?

And if you don't know, how informed is your opinion, and are your decisions?

The only "answer" I have found is to ingest as much news as I can manage from a divergent group of sources, and to sort it all out and hope I can distill some sort of amalgam that will indicate the truth. But I have no way of verifying the product of my analysis ... except to join the hand-wringing after electing someone who makes matters worse, or failing to defeat someone who makes things worse.

Sadly, I have no ideas for a remedy. Crushing and monumental litigation against news sources that dissemble? Laws requiring all news organs perform similarly to C-SPAN without editorial intrusion? Government funded journalism that is "immune" from bribery?

If it were possible to investigate a news outlet (or a given reporter, editor, etc.) and amass enough evidence to convict them of fraudulent coverage, and then levy similarly outrageous fines and punitive damages as Big Tobacco and Big Fast Food have tripped over, perhaps news organizations would become terrified of committing their transgressions. Perhaps. Since tort reform seems to be only a fantasy, perhaps it is possible to turn "litigation lotto" to the Good Side and bring those multi-million dollar guns against deceitful journalism?