On the morning of March 3rd I checked Facebook, and for the first time in a good while, there was a post that wasn’t spiteful and full of venom, an ad for something, or a post that was generated by some Facebook algorithm that thinks that it knows what I want to see.
It was refreshing at the beginning, and I saw the potential for good conversation. After watching the post and it’s comments throughout the day I became more disappointed. Hope for something turned to muck once again. The bird was flying up and out of the nest, then falling into the mud at the base of the tree, and finally mud being slung back and forth (at least I hope it’s mud.)
The post started out with:
“I am convinced that those calling themselves news people are beyond clueless. I am so frustrated not being able to get insight around current events without partisan bias.”
After a short time this comment was made:
“Developing a culture of critical thinking is the only solution I see. That’s what Rome and Greece had much more than we do, and I think that’s very much to our detriment.”
And another later:
“Not all news is delivered with bias. Please be more specific.”
The original poster provided one and only one example. That got me thinking, whenever I see posts where it starts out this way it always seems to go along a pattern. It starts with a frustration post, then sometime later that person gets called on the frustration, and then occasionally a post that highlights a possible solution gets passed over for the next comment that continues the descent into the mud.
I had an idea that I wanted to test. What if I asked for three examples of writing or sites that were “biased.” I got the usual suspects as a reply: “CNN, Fox and MSNBC.” I couldn’t get them to post a list of unbiased media. Are they unaware of any unbiased media or is it that they don’t want to admit what they watch? (I am not going to go into the fact that this commenter did not use an Oxford comma and therefore combines Fox and MSNBC.)
It was around the time of the critical thinking comment was posted that I began thinking, and then when the “not all news is delivered with bias” that got me writing.
Bias is what gets attention. Bias is unavoidable unless it is only raw data. Raw data is nothing without humanity, review the raw data and make your interpretation. After you have made your interpretation and are armed with the data a good discussion, conversation, or debate is recommended but rarely followed through.
And by the end of my attention span for the Post, some 8 hours later I pretty much dropped it with this:
“And now we’ve reached the point that all Facebook posts inevitably hit…” where the mud has been hit, and the mud is now being thrown.
At least I hope that was mud.
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