Bias, Facts and Lies

I've been a news junkie since I was ten or eleven years old. Like anything, the more experience one has the better one can evaluate what is good and what is bad about the subject of their passion. For most of my adult life, though I realized the mainstream press had a liberal bias in the stories they chose to cover and how they covered them, I also knew that they were careful in being factual. Still, I found comfort in conservative media (print, radio and TV) because they discussed those same facts through a conservative lens. Following in the tradition of William F. Buckley, their conservatism was based upon intellect and ideas, which permeated the discussion of the day's issues.

About ten years ago, however, something began to change. Instead of viewing issues through an intellectually conservative lens, conservative media began viewing and reporting everything through angry, often irrational eyes. In the process, finding something to be angry about took precedence over reason and fact. It wasn't long before it became an endless feedback loop, where a lie or distortion would be stated, callers and listeners would obsess on it, and the lie or distortion would take on a life of its own. A perfect example was the report that an Obama trip was costing $200 million per day. That originally appeared on an obscure website, but once Rush Limbaugh picked it up, it gained credibility even though it was flat out false. But the audience ate it up. Soon, such falsehoods became routine fodder for agitating and engaging conservative audiences.

That was the point when my lifelong attachment to the news made it apparent that conservative media was no longer trustworthy. Worse, as those lies and distortions gained a greater foothold, conservatism itself was no longer what it once was. Instead of being based upon ideas of personal liberty, responsibility and optimism, it became based upon emotions of anger and fear. I could no longer associate with conservatism or the Republican party. As Reagan had famously said of the Democratic Party, I now said of the GOP, "I didn't leave the party, the party left me."

Unfortunately, too many people never noticed the change, never realized they were being fed lies. Conservative media was no longer about discussing what was best for the country, but what was best for ratings - which they did cynically by pretending what they were doing was for the good of the country. Like passengers on a cruise ship with a derelict captain, a not insignificant segment of society are reveling in a journey they are blissfully unaware is charting a course for disaster.

All one need do is peruse social media to find how one can fall for that cynical, sad deception and argue that lies are fact. And now we find that Russia is helping sow some of those lies, making those who help propagate them complicit in aiding a sworn enemy. Fortunately, fifty years of following the news helps identify those lies as lies. I'll take the mainstream media's biased fact over conservative media's biased lies every day of the week, especially when those lies aid and abet our adversaries.