Newspapers ask ‘Who are you?’ on your behalf
Who are you?
The essence of the truth in reporting news and information resides in that question. Asking that question is second nature for professional truth-seekers, including the ones that produce the content of this and other legacy newspapers.
(For those readers who might not be familiar with the term “legacy newspapers,” it refers to newspapers that for centuries have published their content on paper using a printing press, but since the advent of the digital medium are now publishing their content in both digital and print media.)
Who are you? This is how journalists vet the sources of news and information. How do you know what I need to know? Where did you get this information? What are your qualifications, experience and expertise?
Of course this is a hypothetical interview. Sources are checked independent of what they claim about their knowledge, expertise and experience. Truth-seekers seek evidence and proof of what their sources say.
All this is done before publishing news to maintain credibility and trust with readers, who can be assured that if they read something in the newspaper, it is true. It comes down to this: Newspapers, because of their record of reporting facts and verified information day in and day out over a long period of time, can be relied upon to tell the truth. That’s not to say they don’t make mistakes, but when they do, they report it and correct the record.
None of this can be said about more than 99 percent of the information sources on the internet, whether they be social media posters, publicity aggregators, bloggers, clickbaiters, meme con-artists, YouTube clowns and any of the other countless garbage purveyors swimming in the cesspool of the internet. Yet by their sheer numbers, and their strategy of creating media that a growing population of information-illiterate users want to consume with little concern about its veracity, these sources now dominate news and information consumption.
This is not just a global or national threat. It leaches all the way down to your community, because these information posers are everywhere spewing waste and passing it off as information. We see it here on a regular basis: A four-car accident with injuries and multiple ambulances in Hancock spreads on Facebook — a reporter is dispatched to the scene, and… nothing. Multiple posts, retweets and shares pop up about Calumet police officers walking off the job because a new chief is hired, a reporter calls a couple of sources, and … nobody knows anything about it.
Blindly believing online content is a dangerous trend that poses multiple threats to a community and society at large, so everybody has a responsibility to consider the source in consuming information. Ask the question, “Who are you?”
Better yet, rely on your legacy newspaper to ask the question for you.