Who Do You Trust?

An essay about the news and the people who deliver it...

Back in the Good Old Days, which weren’t all that good unless you were a White Male Christian, we used to have just three TV channels (if you don’t count that weird UHF one with a kiddie show hosted by a guy who liked to dress up like a cowboy or an astronaut or a sea captain and would later turn out to be a pedophile) and if we were really really lucky maybe two newspapers per town.

But now we have hundreds if not thousands of sources of news, many of which are willing to provide you with the latest inaccurate information that conforms to your political positions.

With that many sources of news and so many of them willing to provide misinformation, who do you trust?

(My computer just suggested it should be “which do you trust” which might be technically correct, but sounds really weird, so now I don’t trust my computer.)

Assuming you want to know what news source to believe (and I’m not 100% certain I should be on that list…that’s up to you) here are some questions you might want to ask before you believe something some weird-ass stranger with a murky agenda and personal problems posted on Facebook, a description which may or may not include me.

Now here’s the first question you ought to ask before trusting a news source:

Do they make corrections?

There’s a big difference between intentionally providing misinformation and making unintentional mistakes and in my experience eventually everybody screws up and makes mistakes – even Francis Ford Coppola made a third Godfather movie – and when that happens does your news source make corrections?

If your news source doesn’t make corrections maybe that ought to tell you something.

And now to make a point, a semi-sorta-maybe correction from me:

When the Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, a lot of the stories were vague and incomplete, possibly because the reporters writing the stories knew jackshit about banking regulations, a position I sympathize with because I didn’t either.

In any case…

The first story I read about President Biden assuring depositors they would get all their money back, either failed to mention (or I failed to notice) that the money would come from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, not taxpayers.

The short version – and it’s beginning to look like there isn’t one – is the FDIC insures deposits up to $250,000 and it appears (like I said, the stories I read were vague and incomplete) that some of the Silicon Valley Tech Bros are also Financial Blockheads and didn’t spread their money around in a variety of accounts to make sure it was all insured.

(Although I’m still not sure if that’s possible or feasible when you have so much money it’s delivered in C-17 cargo planes.)

In any case, Biden promised the Possibly Blockhead Depositors would get all their money back – insured or not – and I assumed (and you know what they say about assuming; it makes your ass look big) that taxpayers would foot the bill, but after I drew the cartoon below and sent it to my syndicate, I read an article in which Joe Biden promised it wouldn’t cost taxpayers a dime.

Which made me think the above cartoon was inaccurate.

But then I read yet another article in which the Associated Press said maybe taxpayers would wind up paying for the bailout because even though banks were supposed to do it through fees imposed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, banks would just raise their rates and get the money back from customers and I’m guessing those customers pay taxes unless they have really good accountants and are fulltime residents of the Mar-a-Lago Country Club and Deposed Demagogue Hideout.

Although…

I’ve got mixed feelings about that argument because that’s what corporations say if you try to raise their taxes: we’ll just increase the price of our products or services and get the money back from our customers.

To which I say; then why are you whining about it?

So I still don’t know if the cartoon is completely accurate and it sounds like maybe Joe Biden doesn’t either. In any case, here’s the AP article about who’s going to eventually pay for the SVB bailout:

https://apnews.com/article/silicon-valley-banks-taxpayers-bailout

The Above-Link-No-Longer-Works Alert

So I clicked on the link to the AP article to read it one more time before posting it and was connected to the Associated Press website, but it said PAGE NOT FOUND and “The page you’re looking for has moved or no longer exists” which brings up an interesting issue, if by “interesting” you actually mean: “Sorta fucked up.”

Newspapers used to be obsessive about avoiding mistakes because we were going to print those mistakes in ink on paper and distribute them around the city and someone might point at the mistake we made and have proof we made it.  

So before anything went into the paper it was read by an editor and maybe re-read by a copy editor and once in a while someone who was putting the paper together in composing would notice a mistake and we really wanted to make sure everything was 100% correct before we printed several hundred thousands of newspapers that made us look like idiots.

But once the newspaper industry started putting news online and firing everyone that could possibly be fired, I was told I could skip showing my stuff to an editor (maybe because they’d fired quite a few of them) and put it directly online myself and if I made a mistake and some reader noticed, we’d change it and since it was the internet the evidence of my mistake would cease to exist which is not an editing system that inspires confidence.

And now back to questions you might want to ask about news sources.

Do they ever criticize their own side?

After I wrote a piece about what a jerk Tucker Carlson appears to be, some Conservative Reader challenged me to criticize MSNBC and said I wouldn’t do it because I was in a “bubble.” I wrote a response to his comment, but never posted it for a variety of reasons (mostly because after a while I didn’t care what some poorly-informed reader thought) but here it is now and I’m glad I saved it so I don’t have to write it all over again:

Like a number of other Conservatives who didn’t do their homework, you tried to paint me as a tool of the Left and Liberals which ignores the fact (and facts don’t seem to be your strong point) that in cartoons or commentary I’ve been critical of:

• CNN

• Don Lemon

• Joe Biden

• Hillary Clinton

• Democrats

• Biden Administration policies

• Political correctness

• Cancel culture

• Hunter Biden

• Annnnnd me.

And that’s just since the first of the year.

I’m a Liberal and make no apologies for that because I’m dealing in opinion and don’t believe I’m required to draw as many cartoons opposing my beliefs as cartoons expressing them, but nevertheless, I am not reluctant to criticize people on my side of the Political Grand Canyon when they screw up.

All of which makes me wonder just how often you leave comments for Conservative cartoonists demanding that they draw cartoons critical of Republicans.

(Man…I sound like kind of a dick, don’t I? Maybe that’s part of why I didn’t post it.)

And now that I have that off my chest, back to the questions you ought to ask before trusting a news source.

Do they lose their jobs for making stuff up?

After Janet Cooke won a Pulitzer Prize for what turned out to be a completely fabricated story about an 8-year-old heroin addict, she “resigned” from the Washington Post and I put quote marks around the word “resigned” because when I got fired at the San Diego Union they tried to get me to “resign” and acted like they were doing me a huge favor. Like I woke up one morning and thought:

“I’d really like to be unemployed and have no money or benefits and see what that’s like.”

It seemed to me they actually wanted to fire me and then have me cover for them by “resigning” because they’d fired a number of cartoonists before me and firing yet another cartoonist made them look like they couldn’t get along with any cartoonist – we tend to be outspoken – and you know what they say:

“If you meet an asshole in the morning, you met an asshole; if you meet assholes all day, you’re the asshole.”

(BTW: I totally stole that from Justified, which I’m re-watching because it’s one of the best TV series ever and if you’ve never seen it, you need to rectify that mistake as soon as possible.)

Anyway…

If you’re unfamiliar with the Janet Cooke story, here you go:

https://www.cjr.org/the_feature/the_fabulist_who_changed_journalism.php

Now contrast what happened to Janet Cooke with Tucker Carlson.

Tucker did a report on the Jan. 6^th insurrections that was so inaccurate he even had Republicans calling it “bullshit” but when he provides inaccurate information Tucker doesn’t lose his job; he gets good ratings and a bigger paycheck. Once again that ought to tell you something.

Do they have access?

If you ever get to visit a Major League Baseball press box, the first thing you might notice is how many people aren’t there.

Turns out there are a whole bunch of media members who pose as insiders and sports experts, but never actually attend games or talk to the people who play them or only attend games occasionally and if you do that, players will talk to you because they have to, but all you’ll get are a bunch of meaningless clichés because if players don’t know you they definitely don’t trust you.

If a media member doesn’t go to the trouble to attend games or cover legislative sessions or personally talk to the cops or whomever or whatever they’re supposedly covering, there’s a decent chance they don’t know what they’re talking about. 

Speaking of which…right about here I should point out that I haven’t been to a baseball game since the pandemic started and all my opinions about pretty much everything are based on the work of reporters who actually go out in the world and gather the news, so take that into account when you look at a cartoon or read an essay and I’ll also be the first to admit I’m biased.

Which brings us to my final point…

Everybody’s biased

In his latest standup special, Chris Rock said Republicans lie and Democrats leave out important parts of the truth, which, in my experience, is a pretty good analysis.

I think Fox News shows bias by providing inaccurate information and CNN shows bias by not reporting certain stories or failing to provide both sides of a story or allowing some of the people who deliver the news to also express opinions about the news they deliver. I also read the Kansas City Star and look at the Associated Press which tend to be more even-handed, but the most even-handed news source reveals their bias by the stories they choose to cover and the stories they ignore.

Bottom line:

Just because someone says something, it doesn’t make it true so before you believe the COVID pandemic wasn’t real or getting vaccinated will turn you into a magnet (which would actually be pretty handy because you’d never lose your car keys) or a Nigerian Prince wants to share some of his fortune if you’ll just supply him with your bank account number, ask yourself:

Who do you trust?

http://kingfeatures.com/comics/editorial-cartoons-a-z/