It has to be true it's on the news or in the paper

In a school group exercise many years ago, we were asked to see how accurate our memory of a story could be. The results of that event left all of us a bit ashamed of our inability to accurately retell the chronology of the tale. Today's 24-hour news media, and the unrestricted world of cyberspace, is just as unreliable.

Our class was divided into two groups of about a dozen each. The first person in each group was asked to go to the front of the class to the teacher's desk.

Each student was then given a short story to read from a printed a piece of paper. The teacher instructed them to read the note slowly and carefully, and then try to memorize the series of actions exactly as written.

The rest of the two sections of students were seated in chairs, in single lines, about 3 to 4 feet apart. The students who had read what was on the note was asked to whisper, in their own words, exactly what was written on the paper, in the ear of the first person in line.

The instructor advised all of us to listen very carefully, and to try and remember exactly what we were told. As soon as the person in the first chair heard the story, they were to then turn to the person in the next chair and repeat the same process again.

This chain of words was to continue in the same manner until the story reached the very last person in each line. That student was asked to write down on a second piece of note paper exactly what they had been told by the next to last person in line.

Now, none of us expected the story to be retold by the last student in each line without some errors or omissions, but were we ever surprised at how degraded and faulty the facts had become by the time they reached the end of the line.

To this day, I still think about that session. Each of us had gone into the exercise with the admonition from our teacher, to try our best to be accurate. It just goes to show you how very corrupted the relating of facts and events can be, when they pass from one human being to another.

Our news media has not always been pristine in its nobility of factualness. The news has always been used as a tool by governments, businesses, and politicians.

There are countless examples in history. Perhaps the single most famous propagandist was Joseph Goebbels, the German Reich Minister of Propaganda. Many who have studied the Third Reich feel that Goebbels had as much to do with the Nazi fanaticism as did Hitler himself.

America is far from untarnished by the brush of radical and unfair journalism. In fact there is a term "Yellow Journalism," that is commonly used to describe this misuse of the press.

Wikipedia lists the following definition for Yellow Journalism ... "is a type of journalism that presents little or no legitimate well-researched

news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers. Techniques may include exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, or sensationalism."

The newspaper business in the late 19th century was very cutthroat. Radio and television were decades in the future. Most every home in America received at least one large newspaper everyday.

Two of America's legendary newspaper owners, Joseph Pulitzer and William Hearst, are credited through their journalistic style of the time, with ramping up Spanish American War fever.

They used every one of the propaganda techniques. Frederic Remington, the famous newspaper artist, telegrammed Hearst with this report, "all was quiet in Cuba there will be no war!"

In response Hearst telegrammed back, "Please remain, you furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war!" Between Hearst and Pulitzer, the news was so distorted, that America rushed into the Spanish American War.

In our modern world you might think that this type of news reporting could not exist. Nothing could be further from the actual truth. The 24-hour news networks are in such fierce competition, that they routinely report information that has often not been thoroughly investigated.

During my own lifetime, there have been two news reports that, in hindsight, seem less than accurate. The first of these was the Gulf of Tonkin affair. The second was the assumption by most world governments and the majority of news media, that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

But it's not just the regular news media that is hampering our access to the real facts in news. We now live in a world that has almost instant access by anyone with a smartphone or a computer, to all manner of information.

The problem with this cyber world relating so called facts, is that the authors have even less vetting of their information and stories, than that of the news media.

In emails and on sites like Facebook, there are stories and accusations everyday, that are read by millions in just an instant. The problem with this system is that it is a lot like the school exercise in which I once participated.

Anyone can hear something about the president, an actor, a professional sports person, or even just someone we know. There are no levels of society that are exempt.

Once the story hits the Internet, it is "out there," whether there is any truth to it or not. It gets passed along at lightening speed, to anyone that is connected.

What are we to do? No matter whether you read, see, or hear the news, never, never, never, assume anything to be the gospel truth. Like I learned in that game so many years ago, the real story you hear can be very different from what was on that original note.