A news report about an Indiana University student arrested for beating a skunk to death with a shovel went viral in the beginning of November. Naturally, it became a topic of discussion in my Odyssey group message. My Editor-in-Chief posted an article from the Indy Star reporting the arrest and pitched the idea open for anyone passionate about the situation to claim.

Being the extreme animal rights advocate that I am, I hopped on the opportunity and took an angle supporting animal cruelty laws. As luck would have it, I actually knew the guy that got arrested for killing the skunk. Needless to say, I was pissed. According to what I read, my high school prom date beat an innocent skunk, totally unprovoked. All I could think was, "How dare you."

I went on a rampage the next day as I wrote my article supporting animal rights. I searched left and right on the Internet searching for statistics and laws dealing with animal cruelty, and found numerous arrests made from just the previous day before beginning my research.

My anger was curbed when I was hit with some new information. Through some odd grapevine, it was brought to my attention that the media misconstrued what had actually happened in the IU arrest.

I wasn't pissed at my prom date anymore. Quite frankly, I felt like an idiot. I should've known better than to trust gossip and everything the media says. I let my undying passion for animals cloud my judgement before acquiring all the facts. I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes I don’t really use my better judgement. I’m prone to jumping the gun and getting way ahead of myself if the right thing triggers it.

This has been a huge reminder that the media doesn’t exactly portray the truth all the time. It’s honestly incredible how simply throwing together a bunch of words in any way that you want can skew the mindsets of readers dramatically. Because of this, I was reminded just how important it is to be informed on all sides of a situation before passing judgment.

Luckily, I hadn't submitted my article bashing animal cruelty by the time the new information came to light. It really was only a matter of time before I wrote something defending animal cruelty laws, so I scrapped the old article and started from scratch.

I was dealing with two different sides of the same incident that I myself hadn't witness. The media convinced me that the IU student beat a harmless skunk to death, and I set out to staunchly defend animal rights. If that article published, I would feel like a fool.

So, instead of pouring my heart and soul into bringing animal cruelty laws to light, I wrote an article on the perils of the media. Don't believe everything you hear, except for this article of course.