Walking in the Valley A weekly column for those who live and walk in Silicon Valley by Barbara Dahlgren

My mother always said, "You can't believe anything you read or hear and only half of what you see." Expressions like that don't become popular without elements of truth. It's certainly been true from the beginning of the terrorist attack on September 11. The media uses headlines to sell newspapers. Headlines only give you an inkling of what the story may be about and are sometimes misleading. Unfortunately, many only read the headlines and that's what stays in their mind.

I ran into an old friend recently that I hadn't seen since high school, when he left to fight in Viet Nam. Since I'd moved, I never knew if he lived or died. I was thrilled to find him very much alive after all these years. I asked about his experiences and he mentioned that his mom had sent him a local newspaper everyday. I said, "How wonderful!" "Not really," he replied. It seems that the stories reported in the newspaper about the war were so vastly different than what was really happening that to this day he doesn't even read a newspaper.

Journalism has changed over the years. Years ago, you could read the first paragraph of a news story and know the actually who, what, where, why and when. Not so anymore! Now you're lucky if you know the answer to any of those questions even after you've read the article. I'm not talking about opinion articles or personal experience articles. I'm talking NEWS.

TV media coverage isn't much better. While we watched national news coverage of the aftermath of the terrorist attack on September 11 a news commentator said, "We have a late breaking story and this is confirmed. Yes, it's confirmed!" Evidently a vanload of explosives had been stopped on one of the bridges going out of New York City. Two hours later we saw New York Mayor Giuliani being interviewed. When he and his assistants were asked about this, they said, "Yes, a van had been detained." However there were NO explosives in it. One reporter asked, "Can you tell us how the report of a van loaded with explosives came to be reported?" The answer was simply, "No, not really. We don't know." The problem of course is how many people do you think saw the first "confirmed" report? I would venture to say a far cry more than the ones who saw the second one. All night long while reporters kept us updated, words were trailing across the bottom of the T.V. screen giving "confirmed" numbers of those dead, those missing, and other information they couldn't have possibly been totally accurate about. But people want to know. They think they have a right to know! And the media will make sure we have "numbers" even if they are inaccurate.

Does the media have the courage to say, "I don't know," when they don't know? Is there some sort of inferiority stigma connected with not having the answer to every question? Exodus 23:1 says, "Thou shalt not raise a false report." It's referring to being an "unrighteous" witness against someone but I think the same can apply to the media. Of course not all media can be lumped into the "false report" category but if we want accurate information perhaps we need to learn to read the fine print, get all the facts, and not rely on just one source.

So can we believe the newspapers, commentators, and journalists of today? Well, all I have to say is my mother was a mighty smart woman!

©October 2001

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