Suppose you’re being fed a line of bullshit. How would you know? An easy start would be to:
- See if they contradict themselves.
- See if they contradict what you see in the real world.
Ace of Spades just posted an example of CNN contradicting themselves:
It goes from “baseless claim” and “flat out lie“, to “the government really did wiretap the campaign“. You can’t get more internally inconsistent. This is not a multi-year evolution of opinion as careful thinkers muddle through difficult concepts; it’s an 180 degree u-turn between “flat out lie” and “exclusive report” in 13 days.
If what CNN said on one day is called bullshit by CNN itself 13 days later, what it’s saying today may be called bullshit by CNN itself in a couple of weeks. They’re demonstrably untrustworthy. Regardless of your political affiliation, CNN doesn’t even agree with itself.
I’m too lazy to make screenshots of headlines. I prefer an old fashioned “reality check”.
In 2016 the press insisted all sentient beings would vote for Hillary. Reticent people like me were called rare, stupid, misinformed, racist, sexist, troglodyte, rubes. (Usually several times a day.) We ought to be either re-educated or lined up against the wall. (If the loathing wasn’t quite so explicit it wasn’t far below the surface.)
Was I really part of a teeny weeny tiny insignificant group of morons? As a reality check I started counting campaign signs:
In October 2016 I counted Hillary and Trump road signs along a 400 mile blue state road trip. Total count for Hillary? 3. Total count for Trump? Many dozens (I lost count). I posted that “Trump signs are outnumbering Hillary maybe 40 or 50 to 1”.
In November (just before the election) I tried it again. Total count for a 550 mile road trip in two “very blue” states was 27 Trump signs, 5 Hillary signs.
Of course this wasn’t a scientific survey, but I had an inkling that the press did not. What’s amazing is that a nitwit blogger who looks out of the dash of his Dodge at reality saw something totally invisible to what once were called journalists:
It didn’t have to be like that. If “journalists” had gotten in a minivan, drove beyond their neighborhood, counted signs, and maybe even talked to people… they might have had a warning. They didn’t (or wouldn’t). That mistake led to what has become almost a full year of painful cognitive dissonance.
Of course, nothing is new under the sun:
