The Truth about What is True

When I was a kid, my friends and I loved to watch professional wrestling. Some of my favorite wrestlers included the Macho Man Randy Savage, the Ultimate Warrior, and Hulk Hogan. There were wrestlers like Jake the Snake that didn’t fight fair, lied, was mean and insulting, and, well, carried a snake. Hulk Hogan on the other hand was charismatic, honest, funny, and stood up to bullies. When wrestlers like them met in the ring, it wasn’t just a battle between two muscle men. It was a battle of good versus evil.

So, it was pretty exciting when a group of these professional wrestlers decided to perform - uh, I mean fight - in the high school gym in my hometown. The men that came weren’t the biggest-named wrestlers, but still, it was guys battling over good versus evil, so it wasn’t something I wanted to miss. Truthfully, I don’t remember much about the matches, but I’m pretty sure the good guy won because that was the way the world worked then; good triumphed over evil. What I do remember most is what I saw when leaving. All the wrestlers, the same guys that were screaming into mics about each other and breaking boards over each other’s heads, all climb into a Greyhound bus laughing and talking together. So, it was at that moment when I thought to myself, “Maybe, just maybe, everything that I just heard and saw wasn’t all real.”

We live in a world that is surrounded with misinformation, biased reporting, and 24/7 news cycles. And, like professional wrestling, maybe, just maybe, not all of it is true. A lot of the blame has been placed on the media, or what has been coined “fake news.” However, it’s important that we dissect that further and not put all news organizations, journalists, commenters, and political analysts in the same basket.

I put the so called “news” into these categories:

Insane - This is the garbage that often finds its way into social media. When Obama was president, I was horrified to see a few of my friends posted several doctored/fake photos that claimed Obama was a Muslim or terribly misleading or disingenuous photos that tried to make him look like he disrespected the flag or our military. I dismissed it mostly - thinking surely few people would believe the photos, but I was wrong; nearly 30% of the country believed he was a Muslim. Still today, I see those types of photos in my feeds from people that seem to take the bait because someone else they know (and trust) shared it.

Satirical - Sites like The Onion or Daily Squat or shows like The Daily Show or Last Week Tonight with John Oliver try to make a serious point by satirically pointing out the inaccuracies, hypocrisy, or just bad policies of politicians in a comedic way. As an example, the Daily Squat has a “newspaper edition” with the main headline: “Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin enjoy riding bareback together” with a photo as “proof.” I normally find this satirical outlet quite humorous, but a sad irony is that some of the very photos or stories that have been used to blatantly poke fun at some of the fake news end up being believed by a good share of people as real stories to stoke more fear.

Slanted - Because we live in a 24/7 news cycle, I see more and more supposed news organizations fill their hours and draw tons of viewers, not by reporting the news, but by providing “insight and analysis” through commenters that clearly have a political agenda to peddle. Examples include: The Sean Hannity Show on Fox News, The Rush Limbaugh Show on Talk Radio, The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, or Don Lemon on CNN. Although what these shows report at times may be based on facts, they dominate most of their time providing editorials and talking points that strictly benefit their political positions.

Sloppy - In a world where everyone has a phone and can create a Twitter account and everyone can claim to be reporting the news, a lot of information is simply unreliable because it doesn’t follow traditional journalism standards. A good example of this is that a guy with about 40 followers on Twitter posted a message claiming paid protestors were being bused to demonstrations against Trump shortly after election day. His post ended up on the Reddit site, and was then shared 16,000 times on Twitter, 350,000 times on Facebook and then was repeated as either theory or truth by several news organizations and ultimately repeated by Trump himself as fact. In reality, none of it was true, a fact that the original poster now concedes.

Serious - Despite all this noise, real journalism and real news does still live. There are journalists that risk their lives to bring us the truth from around the world. The standards and processes that serious news organizations go through to ensure the accuracy of their reporting is nothing short of amazing. So, although I think it is appropriate and necessary to call out “fake news” - whether it’s the insane, the satirical, the slanted, or the sloppy, we must not dismiss all information or all news that doesn’t support our position as fake. This very idea of a free, independent news is one of the precious freedoms of our country that we promote around the world. Calling all news fake news or labeling the news media as the enemy of the state should trouble all Americans.

NBC’s journalist Andrea Mitchell summarized some of her thoughts in an interview stating:

“This is something that we first heard from Joseph Stalin. This is very dangerous. It undercuts democracy. And for years and years, I’ve covered the State Department where we’ve tried to teach and help, advocate with new democracies how to train journalists and how we do journalism. Secretaries of State travel all over the world and deliberately, until more recently, deliberately go to Beijing, go to Turkey, go to Moscow, have press conferences, even if the host country will not, to show dictators that this is what the First Amendment means. It’s very, very important. It is our value system, and I do think that, by talking about fake news- fake news is what Russia did to our election, the propaganda that we see from Russia invading our social media — invading our social media, to say nothing to have the hacking. That’s fake news. Propaganda is fake news, not what my colleagues at the White House and covering other beats in Washington do every day, sometimes around the world at great peril to their lives.”

Our country is very divided. The one thing that we do agree on is how divided we’ve become. Whether we are discussing tax cuts, Iran deals, global warming, gun control, immigration, or abortion, emotions quickly flare when we express our opinions and our positions. But, before we fight for our positions, I’d love for us to first fight for facts. As former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “'Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”

So, here are practical questions that I continue to ask myself that I challenge everyone to answer:

1. Where do you get your news?
2. Where do you fact check claims being made by others? 
3. In general, how do you know if anything you read is true?

My answers:

#1 - My go-to news outlet is National Public Radio (NPR). I find it provides information in a fair and balanced way - without attaching their own opinions or emotions. I also like to spot read news from NBC News, Fox News, and CNN news on a daily basis to see how they are covering stories.

#2 - I rely on Politifact, Factcheck.org, Snopes.com, and the Washington Post‘s Fact Checker to check facts.

#3 - I remain open, but critical, to everything I read. I think being a good critical thinker is not the same as being cynical. A good critical thinker doesn’t dismiss everything they read or give equal weight to two sides of an issue. Instead, they recognize that nearly all information is shared from a specific vantage point and that conclusions may often omit contradictory facts or acknowledge certain assumptions. So, rather than being closed-minded to the beliefs, facts, and a position of someone else, a good critical thinker remains open to the beliefs -- testing the thoughts against other evidence and reason.

Which brings me back to professional wrestling. In truth, even as a young kid, I was a bit skeptical that the fighting was real. Some of their punches just didn’t seem to land. But, the characters, the action, the commotion was so much fun, I was willing to let reality slip away for entertainment.

I enjoyed it so much that even as a senior in high school, some friends of mine decided it would be fun to pretend to be WWE wrestlers as a skit in a pep session for our basketball team. I played the character of Macho Man Randy Savage (actually, I wanted to include the mascot name, so I called myself the “Ranger Savage.”) Our act included breakable boards, a chainsaw, and our school’s state-champion wrestler who entered the ring on a cable and pulley that we secretly installed from the top bleachers to the center of the ring. Our little WWE event that started out as a skit during a pep session became “The Main Event” that was opened for public the night before sectional to build enthusiasm for the entire community.

So, stepping away from reality at times can be entertaining, relaxing, and even productive. Afterall, our basketball team ended up winning their first sectional that year! But, the fun in fictional acts, plays, movies, or novels usually lies in knowing that it’s not real - that everything will be OK despite the horror we might see. We are comforted knowing that the world really isn’t filled with guys that fight with a chainsaw and a snake.

At the beginning of our skit, the character Jim the Hacksaw Duggan started an old smoky chainsaw and raced around the ring before the match had even begun. The referee began to instruct him that a chainsaw is not allowed in the ring. Unphased, Duggan charged after the referee and both men disappeared behind the ring. We simulated his body being sawed into pieces and tossed a mannequin's legs, arms, torso (dressed as a referee), and head onto the ring. Two other classmates, playing the role of EMTs, raced out with a stretcher and started picking up the body parts. The crowd cheered, laughed, and cheered some more at the spectacle of what was unfolding before the match was about to begin. But, my own personal favorite memory of that moment - indeed of the entire skit - was what the audience never heard and was a line that wasn’t scripted. Rock Emmert, my English teacher, who played the role of Hulk Hogan approached the EMTs with a look of concern as they are setting the referees body parts on the stretcher. Still in character, he asked with a solemn expression: “He’s going to be OK, right?”

Regardless of whether you like or dislike professional wrestling or your political affiliation, surely we can agree that just because it may be entertaining to see a guy scream into a microphone about the evil competitor they are about to face, can we agree that most of what he is saying isn’t truthful and isn’t real? Can we agree that the truth still matters? Can we agree to a common set of facts? Can we agree that a good critical thinker is not just good at making a case for their own position on an issue. They are thoughtful, experimental, and good at being convinced.

More thoughtful. More experimental. More open-minded. I know that is something that I wish for my kids. If we can agree with some of this, I know we can agree to other things. And, then maybe, just maybe - unlike the moment when the character in our skit was sawed to pieces, we can honestly respond to our kids that everything is going to be OK.