New Literacy - It's Worth Your Time and Sanity
/“You can’t believe everything you read—or hear. Accepting things at face value without the need to question and dig deeper is ignorance at best, stupidity at worst.”
When I wrote the blog that follows about News Literacy back in 2020, there was a great deal of divisiveness and polarity in our country. Nothing much has changed on that front. In fact, it appears to have worsened. Our “experiment” as a constitutional federal democratic republic (yup, these terms actually go together and are not mutually exclusive!) has always had its trials. America is not easy. Fifty states plus territories and a federal district, 340+ million people… all with different opinions, different wants, different needs, different beliefs, different problems. It’s hard to find a consensus. It’s hard to find solutions that suit everyone. Yet we must try.
It’s not my intention to change minds or opinions, but rather to encourage you to take the time to ferret out what’s factual and what’s not. It’s easy to read something that confirms our opinions and consider it to be true. What’s harder is accepting that sometimes what you think is fact has, indeed, been somehow contorted or misrepresented. Maybe a quote was taken out of context. Maybe a generalization was made. Worse, maybe a photo has been deliberately altered, or words were put into someone’s mouth who never spoke them.
I’m asking that before you automatically share a story or a post or what you consider to be ‘fact’, that you take the time to determine if it really is what you think it is. I’m asking that you go to the source for your input. I’m asking that you don’t just rely on Newsmax or CNN or Fox News or MSNBC or social media for your facts, but that you actually try to read or listen to ‘news’, not political or biased pundits… not just the opinions of talking heads. And do all this before you opt to share with others.
My blog from 2020 remains pertinent, perhaps more than ever. It provides ways to confirm that what you read or heard is really what was said or done. Take a minute or two to read it. Just click the link below.