Biased Schizo Media: And why you should like care

North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Domestic terrorism, Prop 8, GM motors, more bailouts, and economic woes, any of these sound familiar; if not, then you’ve lived under a rock for the past year. All these keywords and phrases, for me, represent some of the flood of information that seems to permeate every crevice of our culture. If you log onto any blog or web site, AOL, yahoo, MSN, Huffington post, the Drudge Report, etc… you are presented with a litany of news worthy, albeit questionable news worthy items, with up to the minute feeds, to keep you inundated with the latest information. Now, I ask, how do you process so much information at a given time? You pick what you’re interested in and toss everything else. Makes sense, you do it all time. At home, if you’re talking to your spouse, 9 times out of 10 you’re only going to process about a ¼ or what he or she said. You’ll pick out the most interesting piece of information and focus on it. I’m not really questioning our cognitive process, not much we can do to change it. But, more specifically, the way we receive information, from our “trusted” news sources. Some of the media outlets that we’ve come to trust are not very trustworthy at all it’s all filtered second, or even third hand information. In the back corners of our mind, we know it. But, it’s so easy to take it all as the gospel.

I remember watching an episode of the view a few weeks ago. The women interviewed Fox news commentator, Glenn Beck. In the interview he claimed he never checked facts. “It’s not my job.” He claimed. So, for any of you watching his show, which I cringe at the thought, remember you’re just getting his opinion, a rather uninformed one. And, like assholes, we all have one. Or a more recent story would have you believe Supreme Court nominee Sonya Sotormayor is a racist. Hmmm… but a little inspection reveals quite the opposite, in terms of her case rulings. Check out this case, Pappas v. Giuliani, in which she dissented from the lower court’s opinion ruling summary judgment to the police department. Basically, it was a case about free speech. She could have very easily sided with the lower court’s opinion, favoring the police department’s firing of an officer whom spread hate speech pamphlets on his off duty hours. If she were a racist, she’d have been salivating over a case about blatant racist speech. You know, her chance to stick it to "whitey." But, she didn’t. I report all this to make a point crystal clear. Do your homework. There is so much information being passed your way these days that you can’t rely on its factual accuracy. Even this blog, especially this blog, question, question, question, it’s the best advice I can give.