Over the years I have written several articles exposing the incongruity of positions taken by certain political parties and individuals, but the field is so enormous today that I could not begin to identify the players in one article. It continues to be inconceivable to me that our citizens could elect people with so little concern for the country as long as the result benefits them individually.
What I would like to continue to dwell on is how media coverage of certain subjects falsifies the truth without regret. I come from the generation that could rely on the reports of news by hosts like Walter Cronkite. In contrast, today we don’t really know whether the reports we are viewing are alive, recorded in the traditional manner, or produced through AI and may have no basis in fact. I was listening to a news report recently during which the hosts referred to President Trump’s “latest lie.” The host had no personal knowledge of the truth and, a few days later, there was an admission that in fact there was no such lie. Similarly, follow-up stories regarding military losses have corrected the initial reported information in a way that was not favorable to the administration. But the later reports are normally sufficiently after the fact that they are rarely given much air-time or published space.
In the case of the conflict in Iran, only Heaven knows the real truth about the results of dozens of encounters to date. In fact, we may never know the honest truth. And, speaking of truth and honesty, when you have an opportunity, compare the headlines of articles about military activities with the content of the article itself. If you only read headlines, you will have a vastly different view of the subject matter than if you read the entire item.
The lesson to be derived from our current media situation is that what we are watching or listening to may or may not have any foundation in the truth so we cannot afford to adopt a position about anything without researching independent sources to attempt to arrive at an honest evaluation of every important event discussed by the general media.