Perspectives: Looking for the truth? You’re on your own

January 27, 2019 Utah Channel 3

OPINION — If anyone needed further proof that mass media in America now places a higher value on political activism than it does on credibility, last week’s incident involving a handful of Covington High School students is pretty tough to ignore.

What entered the public consciousness as a short video of teenage school boys being disrespectful to a Native American activist sure looks different upon a closer look. After all, we were told that these teenagers were a tone-deaf, jeering, threatening mob of Trump-hat-wearing monsters.

After watching the full video of what actually transpired at the Lincoln Memorial, it turns out that the young men from Covington Catholic High School were standing on the moral high ground after all. They were the ones peacefully enduring more than an hour of intense, racist heckling from a group of black nationalists who baited them with taunts of “crackers” “faggots” and “pedophiles.”

The boys were accused of being future school shooters and of having incestuous lineage. They took the abuse with aplomb and refused to become confrontational. It’s all there in the video.

Leave it to the Black Hebrew Israelites to act out in ways that make the Westboro Baptist Church look reasonable by comparison.

This same group of antagonistic racial instigators was also the source of repeated taunts and insults hurled at the Native American activist before he mysteriously walked up to the smiling high school students while drumming. Anyone who has watched the complete video can see this for themselves.

We were sold a false version of what took place. And an astonishing number of people took the bait without question.

To their credit, there were a number of media personalities who stepped forward and apologized for their initial knee-jerk reaction to the story. But what about the outlets that originated the story, where is their mea culpa?

Why did so many news media sources choose to run with the original – and false – narrative that the MAGA-hat-wearing high school boys were the aggressors? Why was there no acknowledgement of what was actually being said by the black nationalists?

It’s no secret that much of the mass media in America has an insatiable hatred for the president. How many months of lecturing, warnings and smears did the nation have to endure before it ultimately elected Donald Trump in 2016?

Since then, the press has had the opportunity to reassess how and why it could have misjudged the American voter so decisively and missed the way the election would go. Instead, it has doubled down on its determination that the election was a combination of racist troglodytes and Russian interference that brought Trump to power.

They simply cannot imagine that their own lack of ethics and lust to control others through the information they publish could have damaged their once vaunted credibility. Hubris doesn’t begin to cover the kind of arrogance at play here.

Under such circumstances, it’s almost understandable that so many media outlets would continue to publish false or misleading stories that could be spun to be damaging to Trump or his supporters. How they expected to get away with it, in an information age where fact-checking has never been easier, is another story.

Anger and hatred of the media isn’t the answer. After all, anger and hatred is what has robbed them of their objectivity and allows them to justify spreading disinformation if it has potential to harm their political rivals.

If anything, this incident underscores the importance of making it a habit to fact-check whatever information is before you. The source doesn’t matter as much as your willingness to weigh, compare and analyze whatever information you’re receiving before going off over half-truths or falsehoods.

We live in a time when anyone who wishes to understand the world around them had better get used to dealing with incomplete and sometimes misleading information. That is why it is always preferable to go to the source whenever possible.

Otherwise, we run the risk of becoming unwitting dupes in someone else’s scam. It comes down to whether we place greater value on truth or political advantage.

Case in point, three years ago, LaVoy Finicum was ambushed and killed by law enforcement in Oregon.

To this day, there are a great many men and women who still hate Finicum purely because of what they’ve been told by a media that has given them only certain facts while carefully omitting others. Most of these media outlets are painfully aware of the fact that jurors in Portland acquitted Ammon and Ryan Bundy as well as five other defendants.

They know that, last year, Judge Gloria Navarro dismissed the government’s case against the Bundy family and others because of repeated, severe prosecutorial misconduct.

So why can’t they bring themselves to admit – even in part – that the government was wrong? It’s not like the facts are being hidden from them.

Trust, once broken, is not easily regained. It cannot be insisted upon. It must be earned.

Bryan Hyde is an opinion columnist specializing in current events and liberty viewed through what he calls the lens of common sense. The opinions stated in this article are his own and may not be representative of St. George News.

Email: bryanh@stgnews.com

Twitter: @youcancallmebry