iSavvy
While it may be true that Truth is as elusive as a Zen Koan, the Internet makes revisionist history so easy to spin doctor that it is a small wonder why so many people have stopped seeking. If its on Facebook it must be true. If its written as a striking jpg image it resonates as bonafide. If it “looks” like a NEWS article .. well then by golly it must be authentic. Because after all .. its NEWS and no one lies to us in the press. Reporters stand for justice. Its the politicians we need to be afraid of. Well wait no .. its the OPPOSING PARTY’s politicians we need to fear .. because FOX NEWS tells us so. And NEWS that broadcasts during prime time .. has to be legitimate. Right?
In the post racially motivated mass shooting at a Charleston Church our attention — media manipulation — has been drawn to single out the confederate flag as the scape goat for modern day racism. I say scapegoat.. not because it is not a perfect example of modern racism, because it is and it needs to go away, but rather because it is only the tip of the iceberg when we look at the longer now since Trayvon Martin’s murder in 2012 and the plea that Black Lives Matter. I dare say that if it was NOT for the battle over the Dixie Flag that presses on we might as a selective-amnesia-nation dismiss the massacre at Mother Emanuel as a random act of violence and not a litmus test of our racial disease.
What causes me to stand on my soap box, weak in the knees as it may be from standing at all, is the amount of misinformation or “partial” truths … which I prefer to call them as they are … Lies of Omission (LOO). We cringe at the thought of moving monuments (and the caskets there under) until we learn the general happened to be the Klan’s first grande wizard. Lest I indulge myself in the LOO, some accounts do indicate that the general may have changed his mind and renounced the Klan in the last years of his life.
But the media knows how to bait our attention and toy with our sympathies. For instance if we say … Sons of Confederate Veterans which have been in existence since 1896 … how could we take away the flag from their hundred+ year history …. until we dig a bit deeper and realize that the organization was not involved with issue-centric concerns and “fight[ing] for the right to display Confederate symbols everywhere from schools to statehouses” until there was “new leadership” in 1990.
But these are just the headlines of the day. We are entering the 58th presidential election race and with it there will be even more LOO to look for. So how do we know which tidbits to trust? How do we find reliable sources on the internet? Patricia Hobbs taught her middle school students to look for Author, Dates, Purpose, Sources and Professionalism. Ask yourself who wrote this? Did they have a personal bias? Do they use words charged with emotion or do they seem impartial and present different sides of an issue? In 2014 The Business Insider reviewed the data from a Pew Study on the most and least trusted news sources. 
The chart shows various ideology groups and how trustworthy they ranked various news sources. It would seem no matter who you are, The Wallstreet Journal was seen as a trustworthy site by most.
It may sound like a daunting task to fact check, but really it doesn’t take more than a few extra google searches to dig a bit deeper and find the out the truth. But be warned … Knowing the Truth may cause you to change your mind. Are you willing to give up long standing beliefs if they were based on misinformation? If you realize you were a pawn in someone else’s subversive agenda? Are you willing to stand up and go back and tell your kids that … you were wrong? I know one southern man who did just that recently. He was a long proponent of the stars and bars and talked the talk of heritage not hate. But when he did some research and learned the facts and followed the chronology and the coincidence of its resurrection during the civil rights movement … he realized that things needed to change and as a proud man of southern grace he admitted he was wrong.
