Thankfully, I Encountered Media Liars Early
Wednesday, February 14th, 2024
This may seem like a strange topic, on Valentine’s Day. I should probably share how wonderful my last three days were…so, okay, I will.
On Monday, my younger son (22) and his good friend and I went frisbee golfing! I grew up playing frisbee with my Dad, and in his later years, he discovered frisbee golf in the Arizona desert. We loved it! So, when he passed away, of course I brought home all of his special “frisbee golf” frisbees. They are smaller and differently shaped than the typical frisbee, which we have one of, and we call it Big Bertha!
We had a wonderful time! Unlike the desert, which has its challenges, our local frisbee golf course has — trees. Duh. We do live in the Pacific Northwest. It was hilarious trying to figure out how to navigate through branches, around wooded corners, and half the time we couldn’t even see the metal goal we were aiming for! Meanwhile, Dobby came with us (our ever-faithful and beautiful Boston Terrier) and with no one else around, he wandered freely with us, clearly enjoying “guy time.”
Then, yesterday, I went to Seattle to meet up with my older son’s girlfriend, and our awesome day turned into a sleepover! She’s dealing with some tendinitis issues, so we bought ingredients for a delicious dinner (including two Korean side dishes), and I shooed them into the living room to relax and study, while I cleaned the kitchen and cooked up enough food for a couple days. Then, I spent the night (which worked really well, thanks to a couch she and I picked up from someone a few months ago) and visited my son’s college for the first time today (and that was so much fun, meeting all of his friends at an afternoon “tea time” hang out spot. He’s attending Digipen, a school focused on skills needed to work in the gaming industry, so I got to play some games and, well — I had a ton of fun!
While out and about, my husband texted to say, “Bring home chocolate! It’s Valentine’s Day!” A few minutes later, I saw a See’s Candy store, for the first time in years — synchronicity, he would say. Yes, we all binged on a box of “nuts and chews,” LOL!
And now, I’d like to share my seventeen year old experiences with the California environmental movement. They were crucial to the development of my thought process, when it comes to evaluating bias, truth, trustworthiness, and my commitment to personal research on any and all topics I choose to have an opinion on.
In 1990, I had graduated high school but was still seventeen years old. I moved to Sacramento to live with my Mom, in preparation for college (for which I would still be only seventeen years old), and she was working on her own (and third) degree in Environmental Sciences. Being her daughter, I had grown up wearing T-shirts made by Greenpeace and the health of our natural environment, and our fellow Earthlings (other animals) was of paramount importance to me.
That year, there were two Propositions on the Ballot. Then there were four. Long story short, Big Ag and Big Forestry interests decided to combat two decisive environmental propositions by creating their own, with industry friendly verbiage, and then confuse voters by running ads that were so similar to the original two that you couldn’t tell one from the other. In the end, it worked. Californians were seriously confused and, at this point I can’t recall exactly, but either all four failed or the more serious environmental propositions failed and the faux bills passed.
But, that’s not what I care about.
Here’s what happened to me. I was a straight A student for my Junior and Senior year in high school, and that meant something. The first school I attended for 9th and 10th grade had the lowest graduation requirements in the state of CA. The second school I attended (Morro Bay) had the highest graduation requirements in the state. I walked in and was told I’d have to take a full load of core classes in order to graduate. This was the 1980’s, and they took the rules seriously back then. There was no wiggle room, but I’d decided that preceding summer that I wanted to attend college and that means, I needed good grades. So, overnight, I went from a C-D student (since kindergarten) to a straight A student with six core classes and one PE class (I also played tennis, ran track and field, worked at a local horse stable on the weekends, got my first job at Thrifty’s, and read 2-3 novels a week). Damn, I had a lot of energy back then!
The point being, I knew how to study, and I cared about details. So, when I convinced my Mom to let me help her collect signatures in grocery store parking lots on the weekends (at 17 this was technically illegal), I also decided I had better read the four pages of extremely small print. After all, CA voters signing our petition to put the propositions on the ballot might have questions!
Of course, they didn’t. Not really. Because I was young, friendly and enthusiastic, a lot of people signed my petitions, but they just read the three or four sentences in large font written on the front of the petition and gave me their John or Dorothy Quincy (she was John Hancock’s wife). Still, I read it. Every single word. And, I interpreted it and found that the “real environmental propositions” had loop holes and other inconsistencies written into their legal verbiage. When I asked about this (in my youthful trusting naivete), I expressed concern that maybe the people who wrote the propositions had gotten confused, because the fine print didn’t match the rhetoric. LOLOLOLOL….Yeah, I’m LMAO right about now.
Anyhoo — my Mom said not to worry, that most voters would never read the fine print, and the writers knew what they were doing (I’m sure they did), and they were good propositions (in CA, residents can propose legislation directly to the voters, if they get enough signatures, giving them a direct route should they be unable to find legislators willing to work on a bill). In truth, they primarily were, so I kept gathering signatures.
But, I remembered — there was a difference between the fine print and the large print. And, as the summer heated up (literally - we were well over 110 for three weeks in a row), I began to see attack ads. Talk about “getting it wrong!” I was flabbergasted and floored and shocked and dismayed. How was it legal to lie on television??????
Did I mention I was only seventeen and naive? But, after this experience, I was no longer. Here’s the GREATEST LESSON I’ve learned in my life. I say this seriously. I had delved in deep. I knew these propositions like the back of my hand. I’d had many intense conversations when I first noticed some discrepancies, and I came from a family of environmentalists, so I had a lot of background experiences to draw from — such as attending Esalon Environmental Symposiums, reading many books on the topic, living close to nature, and personal research I’d done for school papers, etc. I also got a job working for an environmental organization, going door to door, talking about a serious issue localized to the Central Valley. I was young, but I was also well rounded and well read on the subject area.
This means, when the local newspapers and television talking heads began to spew out disenginuous attack ads, when proponants were being depicted, when the “details” were discussed, and when opinion articles chewed up and regurgitated the upcoming election, I SAW THE LIES.
Everything in the media was either intentionally misleading, terribly inaccurate, or manipulative. All of it. So, what was my take-away from this?
Did I become cynical? — NO.
Did I decide farmers and loggers were evil? — NO.
Did I decide to hate corporations and policitians and media talking heads? — NO.
HERE’S THE PART I HOPE YOU READ:
“I realized, if a topic I know extremely well is being depicted inaccurately 95% of the time, and I can see this because I know the topic well — then, what does that mean, for all the topics I don’t know so well?”
Since I was seventeen years old, I have viewed everything that’s published “in the media” as potentially 95% wrong. Therefore, every time I see something that is concerning or intriguing or even good news — I immediately think, “well, it could be completely wrong.”
THEN, I GO DO MY OWN RESEARCH.
I have spent the past 35 years doing my own research sideways, upside down, from myriad sources, and I’m good at it. I know how to dig past the Google Search Engine manipulations. I intentionally seek data from sources that are hostile to one another, guaranteeing I can minimize echo chambers and bias. And I read the fine print.
If we could teach our children one thing, it would be this. Take something they know a lot about — and have them look up related content on various media channels (MSNBC, FOX, Tucker, Joe Rogan, Rachel Maddow, and then ask them, “Who is getting it right or wrong?” Point out that millions of Americans limit themselves to familiar talking heads, living their lives in big echo chambers, and then say, “So, you know enough about this topic to know these articles or tv shows are getting it wrong, but if you didn’t, do you think you’d believe them? Are they convincing?”
Once you realize they get it wrong, on a topic YOU KNOW WELL, then you’ll have proven to yourself, that they’re doing the same on other topics you don’t know well. Which means: you should never trust “the news.”
But, you can trust yourself. So, develop your research skills and learn to dig around. It’ll always be interesting and it might even change your life, depending on what you’re looking into.
I am GRATEFUL for that experience when I was 17 years old.
I am THANKFUL to my Mom for introducing me to environmental concerns.
And I am APPRECIATIVE of my life, lived with the understanding that the media lies (to a degree) about everything.