Guest Column: We must do hard work of thinking for ourselves

Words have power to inform, persuade and influence attitudes, decisions, elections, and destinies. And when they are distributed by mass media, words have a significant impact in shaping public opinion and indirectly controlling and manipulating our actions.

Once upon a time in the United States, if Walter Cronkite said it, you believed it. After him, for over 20 years we trusted our major broadcast network news stations and their anchors, Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather to deliver the most important news of the day in an unbiased and truthful manner. For printed news, the long respected Gray Lady, the New York Times, was our gold standard of objectivity. We considered these individuals and news organizations to be purveyors of truth, far removed from the tabloid news that pandered to sensation and prurient interest.

Network breaking news and national newspaper headlines convinced us what was important and spurred social change consistent with the media’s own sense of morality.

Somewhere along the line these once ostensibly impartial news outlets began leaning so far to the left that they lost touch with the values, beliefs and concerns of most of their moderate and conservative followers, as evidenced by the mainstream media’s collective stunned response to the 2016 election results.

During his campaign, Donald Trump astutely observed and tapped into the growing distrust of these once reliable news sources.

He shrewdly rode that wave of skepticism right into the White House by countering their version of the truth with his own “alternative facts” through social media. Using the imprimatur of the presidency, Mr. Trump has now branded these mainstream media sources as “fake news,” labeling them the “enemy of the people.”

While we should be cognizant of the liberal frame through which the mainstream media filters the news that it reports, we should also be careful not to throw out the baby with the bath water.

We rely on the free press to hold those in authority accountable to the people they represent, and to keep us informed of important world, national and local events.

We do ourselves and our nation a disservice if we discount the credibility of the mainstream press in its entirety or attend only to news outlets and stories that flatter politicians we favor or policies and positions that align with our own. If we undermine the free press by labeling any story that reflects negatively on elected officials that we support as “fake news,” we risk destabilizing one of the pillars of our free society.

We cannot rely on generalizations and name-calling, but must be vigilant in investigating the facts upon which such allegations are based and thus discern for ourselves their truth or falsity, particularly in view of the exponential growth of so-called internet “news” sources that intentionally and unabashedly publish fake news — lies —with the goal of falsely impugning people and positions contrary to their own. (for example, see “From Headline to Photograph, A Fake News Masterpiece,” January 18, 2017, New York Times online article by Scott Shane).

We must do the hard work of thinking for ourselves instead of allowing any person or news media source — real or fake —to manipulate us through unsubstantiated labels or stories, or by controlling our access to information and public discourse.

If we ever hope to be honestly informed and to understand each other, then we need to occasionally listen to the other side and not feast exclusively on news outlets that confirm our own ideas. It just may be that in so doing, we might learn something.

Our opinions and values may not change, but we will surely begin to care more about others, not less.

— Karen Wilson is an attorney and wife of a local pastor.