1. Facts vs Reality
After I sent out the below tweet I realized it may inadvertently come across as cute but unhelpful, so I thought I would share my fuller thoughts on the subject.
After I sent out the below tweet I realized it may inadvertently come across as cute but unhelpful, so I thought I would share my fuller thoughts on the subject.
2. You will notice I titled this thread "Facts vs Reality," not "Lies vs Reality." There is a good reason for that. I have no intention of addressing the content that appears on the internet and some media outlets that is materially and factually complete garbage and made up.
3. I trust most of you can tell outright lies and potential outright lies because it simply offends all common sense and reason. So throw all of that away. I wish to address what mostly appears on mainstream media outlets, both of the left and the right.
4. Believe it or not, the vast majority of what appears in mainstream media outlets is factually correct, if you know how to separate facts from opinion.
5. If you need a rule of thumb on how to separate fact from opinion, use this: "Just discard all the adjectives and adverbs in a headline and the content of a story, what remains is mostly facts." Example:
Headline: "XXX Gave a Fiery Speech"
Fact: "XXX Gave a Speech"
Headline: "XXX Gave a Fiery Speech"
Fact: "XXX Gave a Speech"
6. Okay, so if I contend that MSM mostly presents facts, bathed in opinion, why can't we get a sense of what is really going on by just homing in on the facts presented by the media?
7. Because MSM does not present all the facts, and even worse, MSM rarely presents the most relevant facts that have an important bearing on what's going on.
8. For legal liability reasons, MSM makes sure it does not lie outright, but MSM has no legal obligation to present all the facts or even the relevant facts. It can pick and choose which facts to present, and leave out whatever doesn't comport with its narrative.
9. Far more insidious than presenting opinion dressed up as fact, MSM is guilty of ignoring and imposing blackouts on stories injurious to its preconceived narratives.
10. There is infinitely more happening in the world at every moment in time than what MSM can ever cover. So presenting selective slices of reality that suit MSM's narrative is the easiest thing in the world. There is always ample supply of data and facts to further any agenda.
11. So we come full circle to the proposition I started this thread with. If to get a better sense of what's actually happening in the world necessitates knowing what people are actually doing versus what MSM presents, what is one to do?
12. Here's a partial but very useful solution that ordinary folks, without access to extensive resources to run their own news gathering operations, can implement for their own use. It only requires analytical capabilities, logic, and patience. The rest is easy.
13. It's a 3-step process that anyone and everyone can and should practice:
a) Gather facts (i.e. MSM news stories minus adjectives and adverbs)
b) Make a logical prediction about imminent events based on those facts (quite often MSM itself will tell you)
c) Watch results
a) Gather facts (i.e. MSM news stories minus adjectives and adverbs)
b) Make a logical prediction about imminent events based on those facts (quite often MSM itself will tell you)
c) Watch results
14. If the results do not comport with what you would have reasonably expected, chances are there is nothing wrong with your logic, it is just that MSM never gave you all the facts, highlighted irrelevant facts, or likely exaggerated enormously some minuscule facts.
15. The important underlying principle to this bit of sleuthing comes from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [creator of Sherlock Holmes], who illustrated it in a short story by solving a mystery based on "the dog that didn't bark" when you would expect it to do so.
16. Let me close by illustrating with a recent media story about thousands of 'armed terrorists' [as one prominent politician dubbed them] showing up in Michigan Capitol to protest Gov. Whitmer's stay-at-home order, thereby clearly implying the possibility of bloody violence.
17. Forget about bloody violence, was there any violence whatsoever that day, or the day before, or the following day, or the day following that? Did you read any MSM stories about violence erupting in Michigan? So, what gives? The usual hyperventilation against #2A supporters!
18. Always look for 'the dog that didn't bark' to understand what people are actually doing, even when MSM never tells you. If state after state reopens without any appreciable increase in infections, assume people are observing safety measures, regardless of what the media says.
19. Converse will also be true. Political reality is often far removed from the reality on the ground. Unfortunately, MSM only cares about political reality and is always trying to manipulate it.
20. People's lives, OTOH, are far more impacted by the often unreported reality on the ground that you have to infer. Political reality (often reflected in polls) can scream at you that a candidate will win with 98% probability. People's behavior reveals something else.
The End
The End
