Senator Daniel Patrick
Moynihan of NY once said, "You are entitled to your own opinions. But you are not entitled to your own facts." Here we are just four weeks away from one of the most hotly contested presidential elections in history, and a lot of us aren't sure which facts are facts and which are not. It can be hard to tell who is actually going to raise taxes and who is really going to move us towards energy independence. Trust is at an all time low and if we're not careful we'll slip from skepticism to cynicism. Thankfully, there are a few places to turn and most of them are just a few clicks away. Check out
Annenberg Public Policy Center’s
FactCheck.org, the St.
Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly’s
PolitiFact and the Washington Post’s
Fact Checker blog. At these non-partisan websites you can find out which claims are legitimate, and which are playing fast and loose with the facts.
If you're serious about getting the straight story, I suggest you pick up a copy of the book,
UnSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation, by Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall
Jamieson. Jackson runs the
FactCheck.org website and
Jamieson is a well respected author and political communication scholar. This fascinating and easy read will help you learn how to find information while avoiding being duped by the people who would like to sell you a bridge to nowhere.
But perhaps the greatest danger is for those who really don't want the facts...they only want others to confirm what they already believe and hold dear. They value being "affirmed" over being "informed." For such individuals, truth will always be elusive.
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6 comments:
I always find it interesting that supposed "facts" can be fed to particular groups of people and that they lack the initiative to gain any sort of true understanding of the issues. Some people are so eager to lap up anything that is shoved their way.
To the contrary, the whole of the American educational system is sadly based upon the teaching and memorization of nearly useless facts. This is because facts are really much easier to teach than ideas –even though ideas are easier to retain. Few will acknowledge that simply memorizing facts actually makes a populace much dumber and easier to manipulate.
Take the meanings of two words: recall and recognition. Most of you will probably need to look these up, but once you have, consider that likely 90 percent of the tests you will take will merely measure your ability to recall a series of facts. And very few of your tests will require you to recognize the ideas which supersede the facts. As an example of the former, notice that your average multiple choice tests (regardless of subject) look very similar to this format:
1.) What color is the sky?
A.)Red
B.)Yellow
C.)Clear
D.)Blue
E.)Partly cloudy with a chance of afternoon showers.
As an example of the later, imagine if 90 percent of your tests questions looked more like these, in essay format:
1.) Why is the sky dark at night?
2.) What is the relationship of mass and speed to stopping distance?
3.) How might have particular acts of legislation signed into law during the Reagan, Clinton and Bush Administrations contributed to the present economic crisis.
4.) Which three monotheistic religions are in present, violent conflict with one another?
Those reading this will at best have only a clue as to how to answer one of those questions. The irony is that recognizing ideas is far, far easier than memorizing hundreds upon thousands of mundane facts. But most of you will opt for the short term benefit of study guides and multiple choice scantron sheets. Most teachers welcome the convenience of running that scantron through a computer rather than grading the time consuming essays. And let’s face it, time is money. The more warm bodies you can quickly shuffle through a fiscal quarter (semester), the more money a university makes. Yes, we all know education is an industry and Cs get degrees.
In point of fact, you will forget most of the inane material you memorized within a very short amount of time, whereas ideas are harder to forget. Your instructors too will suffer from years of repetitive course schedules, and while they'll be able to recite textbook subject matter like it was written on the back of their hand, many of them will struggle with things outside of their immediate "expertise."
Although, I do agree with Sam about knowing how to check facts, especially when you’re trying to decide whether a particular candidate is telling the truth about his or her policies, but those facts are useless if you cannot place them within the larger context of an idea.
Students -- remember that regardless of the degree, title, or so called experience a person has – never assume them to be smart or more capable of figuring stuff out than you are. Also, just because you believe your collection of facts to be better than someone else’s doesn’t mean they are. Any idiot can cherry-pick facts to support a claim, but only geniuses utilize ideas to create new ones and change the world. If you never invent anything useful, or genuinely contribute to the enrichment of society, you will have likely wasted your life collecting obscure facts.
I agree with Daivd. Some people hear one thing and want to believe it because it seems alot worse than the other. Especially people that like one thing and hear something bad about the thing that they dont like, they tend to draw it out and make it alot more intense than it really is. People just need to learn the facts before they go out and start assuming.
~Kyle Morehouse MCCNM 101 9:30
"Facts" are a great danger if we don't get all of the right kind of "facts." Otherwise, what we hear is just stories that people tell to get our attention. These people never really get the true issues behind what they hear.
-Paul Meyer MCCMN 101 11:00
It seems these days that you can say whatever you want and put the word "fact" next to it and people will believe it. Those websites given are great tools especially during an election. Knowing the facts is important, anyone can stand in front of TV and deny how they voted or give a twist to it, because they know very few people will go look it up. Facts these days take on a whole new meaning. During this election you had to do your research and figure out if they were facts or just claims made to get into the White House.
I often find myself not getting involved with the presidential elections for the mere fact that I hate not knowing what the true facts are. It is so frustrating and I never really know who or what to believe. I never know if when someone is speaking of a candidate's politics whether it is their opinion or facts. Obviously most of the time it is their own little twist on the true facts. I guess I'll have to check out those websites so now I will really know the true facts.
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