Reading Between the News

I read the news everyday. I want to know what's going on in the world. I like to be informed. But I'm also a skeptical person. I don't just accept the news at face value. Being a savvy news consumer is tricky. Here are some tips I've learned.

• First off, I read a wide variety of news sources. I read the left-wing press, the right-wing press, the business press, the local press, the foreign press, the moderate press, the lunatic fringe press, the establishment press, the academic press, whatever I can get my hands on. Information comes from many places. Of course, this takes time. Hours daily.
  

• I check sources carefully. This is where online news is superior, because sources can be linked to and investigated. If the source for a story is some shady politically-connected think-tank, you know it's slanted. Thorough and accurate sourcing is the essence of credible journalism. My biggest pet peeve, especially when I'm reading about the war, is seeing 40 or 50 variations of the line "...US sources said...", "American officials said...", "...according to U.S. officials...". This indicates that whoever wrote the story is practically retyping a government press release. I always assume anything the government says is at best a half-truth. Now, when it comes to the war, it's understandable that journalists sit in their hotel rooms in Baghdad and make cell phone calls to US officials in the Green Zone, rather than actually venturing outside into the warzone. Only Robert Fisk has the balls to do that (Robert Fisk is a god).

• I read the same story several times throughout the day to see if it changes. This is another interesting feature of online news. If it's coming off a newswire like AP or Reuters, they may change the headline or take out a sentence. What they take out can say more than what they left in. More on this later.
  

• I think critically about what I'm being told and what the potential implications are. Let me show you what I mean, using two of today's stories as examples.

This story is from Reuters. The point of the story, the "scoop", if you will, is a claim. That's the story. The American and Mexican governments are claiming a major success in a "war on drugs". Reuters isn't saying that this is an actual success, or even that is a "war on drugs" (there isn't, it's law enforcement, not war, although military forces of nation-states are involved), only that "official" sources say so. This is a crucial feature of "news". If it's not describing a fact that the reporter witnessed, if instead it's an analysis of the situation, the reporter isn't allowed to analyze, they are only allowed to qoute someone else's analysis. In addition to the "official" quotes, this story also quotes "a source close to the Gulf Cartel" and "local police".

Now, let's pay close attention to the specific data that these "official" sources use to claim "success in the war on drugs". Paragraphs two and three proclaim that prices are rising and purity of the drug is falling. Paragraph four quotes an official saying "this is real progress". Let's think about that. Number one, prices are rising. That tells me the stakes in the drug game are rising. More money in the game means more gang members willing to slang. Number two, purity is falling. That means more people are going to be snorting impure shit, which means deaths from snorting nasty shit will soon rise. So much for progress. My personal opinion is that people will always use drugs, and that laws which prohibit drugs create a "war on drugs" which causes more problems (and government paychecks) than it solves.

Also, I noticed that the reporter (and this is true of every story about the "war on drugs") refers to the Director of the Office of Drug Control Policy as the "drug czar". I don't know why news reporters insist on using 19th century Russian imperial terminology to describe a 21st century American beaurocrat, other than sheer laziness. After all, it takes ten or fifteen seconds to type out the words Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

I was just about to link to a story I read on the Yahoo news portal, which was a Yahoo explanation of a news report from NBC which explained the results of a study done in Chicago regarding Alzheimers. However, it's gone now. And good riddance. It was a dumbed-down version of someone else's news report, which was a dumbed down version of the results of a study done *I assume* by a university. However I don't know for sure who conducted the study, because the NBS story doesn't bother mentioning who conducted the study. Geez. My community college journalism teacher wouldn't let me get away with that shit when I was writing for the school newspaper. When it comes to science reporting, I am almost always disappointed. I find that the conclusions of a particular study are often misunderstood by the journalist.

Well, that's it for now. Remember, read between the news.