Knowing what not to believe

Man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe.
                                                                                                         - Euripides

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.
                                                                                                          - Joseph Heller

The conspiracy theorists on both the left and the right are having a heyday this election season - as they have for the past few. Never accept the obvious, especially if it something you don't like, if there is any chance of behind the scene manipulation, dirty tricks, space aliens, black helicopters, or Fox News to blame.

In my previous position, the custodian who took care of our office space felt the need to always keep me apprised of the latest dirty trick the Democrats were trying to pull. My response was always a great deal of feigned horror that once again we (I am an admitted Democrat) were found out yet once again and promised to be a good deal sneakier the next time.

Teaching kids to evaluate the information they find need to have two skill sets;

• answering a question with reliable information
• evaluating a statement provided by others to determine its reliability

Snopes and political fact checking sites should be know and used by every digitally literate student. Who will one day grow up to be digitally literate adults.

Provided whatever is Area 51 with the help of Bill and Hillary isn't actually behind Snopes.

Comments

[Anonymous]

"especially if it something you don't like, if there is any chance of behind the scene manipulation, dirty tricks, space aliens, black helicopters, or Fox News to blame."

Or CNN, MSNBC, etc.

I realize it's "cool" to make Fox News the whipping boy of the news media, but in fact, their ratings are so much higher than the others because people were tired of all the other news outlets having a liberal bias for decades. So, even though it may seem radical to some, it's actually more objective than the others - or at least balances out the news, since ALL of the other outlets are liberally biased. It feels radical to Democrat viewers because it's not showing the liberal bias that you're so used to with the other networks. The media can't help but to be so unbalanced on the other networks because only 7% of journalists are Republicans. Here's my source for that statistic.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/nov/8/republicans-media-bias-claims-boosted-by-scarcity-/

P.S. I wrote this anonymously, because the one group where it's still okay (or politically correct) to marginalize, discriminate against, and make fun of are conservatives. And I work in a field where it's not okay to be conservative.

Still love your blog!

[Doug Johnson]

Thanks, Anon. We obviously come from different POV on the credible sources for new. Personally, my main source of news is the Mankato Free Press and NPR! I threw Fox News in this post to try to be balanced in that liberals have their own personal biases as well.