There was a time in which most people couldn’t write their own truth, because they weren’t good enough typists to produce the exacting standards required for a proper reading by others. Those who did that, were typists and journalists, the modern-day “scribes,” whose major function is not to determine truth but replicate a readable copy, that they eventually co-opted to say what they wanted to say, and not what the original author intended.
But now, because of the miracle of word-processors, many more people are capable of composing their own message (thesis) in the manner uniquely authentic to their understanding — which is not the old mediated message of before, which makes everything uniform and seem the same — losing the most important information of those discoveries and insights, which is the manner in which they came to decide upon the truth. That is the most helpful information in thinking about anything — “how” to think and not “what” to think, which is the mass media style of information transmission — but now there is the possibility of an even higher truth.
In the old media way of seeing the world, truth is just what the authority says it is — which can turn out to be entirely arbitrary unless one can trace the methodology by which one came upon their truth. That is the value of original writing — as is being produced by the countless truth-seekerrs in the world today — and not just by one self-designated group of people claiming to be exclusively “objective.”
That has to be determined by each source on a case by case basis, and not simply as a class, because somebody says, “Trust me, I’m a professional manipulator.”
The question is, do you think a person CAN be an objective observer of an event, and objectively report it?
If not, it doesn’t really matter where the information comes from. If yes, then the question is can anybody do it, or does it require a skill and time and effort which is best obtained by paying someone to do the job?
I believe that if I was sent to an event, I could satisfactorily provide the objective truth of the occurances at that event. But if nobody else would believe me unless “they were there themselves”, it doesn’t matter if I could do so or not.
There was a time that we trusted journalists to faithfully report what happened, and to keep opinion and bias in the analysis pieces. Not any more, and I thik that’s a loss because as an opinion columnist, I am dependent on SOMEONE getting the truth and reporting it.
I have LITTLE trust of the internet “reporters”. They aren’t paid, they aren’t edited, they have no checks and balances. They MIGHT be truthful, but if they aren’t there’s nobody to call them on it or fix it.
There was a time when news couldn’t be too biased because if you learned it you’d drop them. Now we seem to ENJOY bias, so long as it’s for our side. I personally fault ANY reporter, right or left, who can’t give me the facts. I hate writing an opinion and finding out the facts I based the opinion on were not accurate or complete.