At some point all of you reading this has either uttered the title of this post or had it said to you. “Consider the source.” There was a time, long before lawyers advertised on television, when this was well meaning advice. It was originally meant to help steer an individual away from some confidence scam. It was meant to instruct an individual to find independent, trustworthy sources to verify some particular piece of information.
Over the years this statement has been perverted by lawyers and others into “discredit the source.” This is why you will hear both lawyers and politicians perpetually attack the credibility of someone to shred their testimony. When they cannot disprove the fact they will so turn the jury, be they in the jury box or the court of public opinion, against the individual so the fact isn’t heard. This didn’t work out so well for Bill Cosby, but has been working for President Trump and his latest Supreme Court nominee. In the era of #MeToo the behavior of the human species has not changed greatly. When they are on a witness stand in a court room we have started to believe them and ignore the character assassination. Not so much when appearing before Congress.
There are some truths humans in general need to consider.
- Even an axe murderer can have a good idea. Just because they do despicable things doesn’t mean they don’t have the correct answer. Sadly the correct answer to a problem can still be shot down by discrediting the source.
- Almost nobody considers the source of Google search results. You do a search, click on something on the first page and take it as the truth without ever trying to prove the truth of it. To manufacture the “truth” on the Internet one just needs about 1,000 sites all saying the same thing or to wedge it into an active Twitter or Facebook feed. If it is what someone wants to believe, they never question it.
Journalism died in America. It really did. Media companies put on entertainment shows and call them news. Each has a target market and they spin or fabricate however many minutes they need to fill so the advertising sells. Anyone who believes such a statement to be a lie need only consider all of the talking heads and “panels” appearing on these shows to fill air time. That’s not journalism, that’s talk radio with a video feed. The second proof journalism is dead are all of the segments preceded by
We haven’t verified this but it is being reported by
To re-purpose a phrase from the “Game of Thrones”
Everything after the phrase “reported by” is shit.
Before regurgitating something from one of your feeds, consider the source and find independent verification it’s actually a fact.
To get an understanding for just how far and how long “consider the source” has been used to shoot down good information you need to rent a very old movie “Devil’s Advocate” with Al Pacino.
Perhaps we will all live long enough to see the time where nobody trusts Google and everybody vets details for themselves?
I agree, that “google it” isn’t the best way to verify anything. Google was the first to “page rank” and feed back to the web surfer exactly what they might be looking for. The unintended consequence resulted in being fed only what they agree with.
On another note, as a retired career senior military officer, I was raised to consider that those in public service are held to a higher standard. One couldn’t survive a military career if they didn’t live by it – even offending sexual assault perpetrators eventually get drummed out (hopefully soon, sexual assault in the military will disappear entirely and those guilty will all be punished). The point is, we have a Commander in Chief who is lowering the standard of moral behavior to unprecedented levels. One only needs to question why there is such a high turnover in this administrations cabinet to gain a shred of awareness as to what has been going on these past 4 years.
Because it is not a cabinet. They are cast members on a reality television show getting voted off the program. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that this show has only been on the air for two years though, it just feels longer.
You should expand these comments into a few posts. A couple of posts I wrote today which will be up later in the week might spark your interest as well.