By Louise R. Shaw
I no
longer fall for it when anybody within 10 feet of me says something like, “It’s
impossible to find news that’s fair.”
Now that
I think about it, I never really fell for it. But I used to let it go.
I no
longer let it go.
You can
find news that’s fair.
And you
need to.
You’ll
find it in the news section of a newspaper or on a news broadcast of any network
channel and most streaming channels.
And
you’ll be better off for finding it. For finding just a straight up news
broadcast or newspaper with straight up news.
Because
you’ll know what’s happening in the world, in the nation, in your community,
depending on the scope of your media.
And then,
if you want some color, some righteous indignation, some reinforcement of your
own opinions, you can read the opinion sections or watch the cable pundits or
scroll Facebook according to your tastes.
As long as you note the difference.
There is news and there are views
and they might be just a page or a channel apart, but the way you read or hear them should
be miles different.
Thanks to the day and time we
live in, if you still aren’t sure you’re getting it straight, there’s another
option.
Now that
we all have Internet and now that Google can find anything we want to know and
YouTube can show us anything we want to see, we can get our news unfiltered.
We often
can go right to the source and see the event for ourselves.
City
council meetings. Presidential speeches. Awards ceremonies. U.N. talks. Press
conferences.
It’s one
of the amazing positives of the time we live in and one we can take advantage of
when we want to make sure we are getting things straight.
You can’t
watch everything, even on delay. That’s why news in newspapers and on
broadcasts is so valuable. But only so much fits in a headline.
And only so much even fits in an
article and it’s what the writer deems most important.
I can say
that because I used to write headlines and I used to write articles and I
couldn’t include everything all the time.
There is so much that comes from observing
the body language and hearing the words first-hand, much of it that can’t fit
in a story.
Pres.
Biden’s speech about the nation’s efforts to thwart the newest strain of
coronavirus is an example. The headline read, “President says it’s not like
March 2020,” but I wanted to know more than that and more than what was
included in the article that followed.
A quick
search on YouTube took me to the 22-minute speech, where I could hear the
pleading in Pres. Biden’s voice one minute and the anger another, and feel the passion
in his conclusion:
“I want to sincerely thank you for
your perseverance, your courage, your countless acts of kindness, love and
sacrifice during these last two years,” he said, after acknowledging we were
tired and frustrated.
“Throughout our history we’ve been
tested as a people and as a nation,” he said. “Through war and turmoil, when
asked whether we’d be safe, whether it would be OK, whether we’d get back to
who we are, we’ve always endured because remember there’s no challenge too big
for America. I mean this -- from the bottom of my heart – no challenge. We’ve
come through better and stronger because we stay together as the United States
of America. That’s what we have to keep doing today. We can do this together, I
guarantee you.”
Maybe the place you get your news
didn’t include that. Maybe it wasn’t as important as the parts of the speech
that outlined the latest steps being taken.
But it was important to me to hear
that.
Yes, we
have news. Lots of it. And when it comes from the right source it is fair. And we need it.
And then, when we choose, we can get
every last word and every small nuance by going to the source. We can read it,
watch it, relive it.
Because news matters. Learning for
ourselves matters.
And getting it straight matters.
First published in the Davis Journal, December 2021
