Life was certainly easier when we weren't asked to use our critical thinking skills. We could simply digest what our friendly newsman told us and we didn't have to think for ourselves. Reading the news is no different than reading anything else, you need to critically evaluate what is put before you. Yellow journalism is nothing new, I don't know why we want to act like it is.
I have been pondering this and agree that yellow journalism is nothing new: "You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war" William Randolph Hearst. Likewise yes, the critical thinking skills bit - always required. However, things are different. Toronto had three dailies growing up (they all still exist) - The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail and The Sun. Each had a very different slant on the news (still do). The Star was the more (small l) liberal, the Globe more (small c) conservative and the Sun was the tabloid. Back then there was a saying that:
If a ship sank
1. The Star would report on the captain letting children take his place in the lifeboat.
2. The Globe would report on the value of the cargo lost and
3. The Sun would report that the crew required the female passengers to have sex with them before they could enter the lifeboats.
What is new is that while we each gravitated to a perspective back then, people did not question the facts of any of the stories. What we didn't have was such a concerted attack on facts and indeed on the press. We didn't have such a polarized - even mainstream media and we especially didn't elevate the far fringe news sources as legitimate. And of course we didn't have an unchecked toxic Social Media presence tainting everything. Finally, with the rise of AI we are indeed in the last year or so where we can know that something was written by a human.
I am concerned, not just in media but in things like election interference (we are in the midst of a national election just now) that those who grew up in the era where those critical skills weren't needed do not have those skills now that they are needed. And, in some ways even worse are those so convinced of their own cleverness that they will not be duped. (I am convinced that the people most likely to be scammed are those who think they are to clever not to be scammed)
In 2017 at the Harold Innis lectures (University of Toronto) Journalist Andrew Coyne said this:
"The crisis of trust in the media is part of a much broader crisis: a crisis of trust in knowledge, in facts, in experts and expertise; a hostility, amongst a certain section of the population, to anyone who knows anything about anything. It is, as some have called it, an "epistemic crisis"; a significant section of the population has simply decided it knows what it knows, unreachable by any amount of evidence."
strange days indeed.
Hi Guest!
Hey - did you know if you click on the title of a thread it will take you to the first unread post since you last visited that thread?
but were afraid to ask: 
STOP!! Never post your email address in open forums. Bots can "harvest" your email! If you must share your email use a Private Message or use the 
smilie in place of the real @
Pretty Please - add it to our Events forum(s) and add to the calendar! >> 
