Welcome to my new personal blog. I am a graduate students working on my childhood education/special education degree. I will be writing about a variety of topics, especially education and the news. It seems that many conflicts today could be eliminated if we could just think in practical terms.
One example presented itself this morning as I watched CNN . The show hosts were discussing the unreliability of digital news. They spoke to anchors from TMZ, a celebrity news/gossip/entertainment website/news show. http://www.tmz.com/ The CNN host pointed out that digital news is criticized for being unreliable because their sources are not verifiable. Apparently, TMZ uses blogs, twitter and other digital information to gain information for their reports. (Hey, didn't CNN do that with the election riots in Iran?) . TMZ retaliated with the valid point that some major networks have used "anonymous sources" and have reported false information in the past. They also stated they do not report information that comes from only one source and they do verify what others see/hear.
Here's the practical part. The news and the world has changed with the onset of digital information and communication. It used to be that when Walter Cronkite said something, it was taken as fact. Now, everyone is a reporter but not everyone is a reliable source. Now, whether the news comes from a neighbor talking over the back fence, a major network news show, a respected newspaper or a website, one has to evaluate that information. We have to think about various aspects:
1. The source, do they have a motive for reporting the way they did.?
2. Where did they get their information?
3. Is the same information similarly reported elsewhere.
4. Don't believe everything you see or hear.
The world is different and so is the way we get and evaluate our news. We have to be practical. No one is a reliable source of information anymore. Really critically think about what you see and hear.
No comments:
Post a Comment