We’ve all seen and heard the headlines that tell us of some unbelievable event that’s occurred.
Yet again, someone’s said something completely outrageous, committed an unspeakable act, or acted completely negligent. It’s amazing how a fragmented headline can evoke such strong responses in people. People who read those headlines have never had any contact with or have any knowledge of whatever or whoever the story is about. However, that doesn’t stop people from making snap judgments.
People become obsessed and infatuated with their opinion on a person or an event that they know almost nothing about. In fact, they focus on one documented segment of a person’s life and place it under one generic label.
When we turn on the news in the evening, do we realize that the people featured in these stories have lived entire lives before that moment? Not usually, because more often than not, the focus of these pieces is one that provokes violence and anger. In fact, there is a whole other side to the story that we don’t have such easy access to. Usually at the end of our news programs, we’re left with more questions than answers.
When breaking news events occur, there tends to be a rather large fall out. We can browse our TV channels, radio stations, and search engines to find similar stories. Too often, we see the subjects of these stories releasing statements, trying to clarify what was originally written of them (shockingly, these are harder to find).
Some people have to defend entire interviews because their words were taken entirely out of context. Witnesses to certain events become confused at seeing and hearing so many different versions of what they saw, and suddenly they aren’t so confident. Readers who read these segmented interviews pieced together are taken aback by what they are reading.
Now we’re faced with a question: why does this happen? Why does the media, who are supposed to be responsible for giving us the facts, try to do so in the most unconventional way possible? Maybe it’s because “nice” doesn’t draw people in. If getting our news was as easy as reading a headline, then newspapers and magazines would be in a lot of trouble.
A lot of media outlets give us all of the facts, but in a biased way. They lead us to a conclusion, but won’t tell us exactly what we’re supposed to think, so we draw our own. These are the things that draw more readers in and give newspapers and magazines a larger consumer base.
It’s possible that, as much as we might want to disagree, people react very strongly to bad news. Many people can attest that one good comment and one bad comment are not equal in the way they affect us.
People are drawn in by horrific events.
When people come across bad news, they may find it so unbelievable that they have to share it with others, versus when people read something nice and heartwarming, they just feel good and go about their day-- it’s enough for them to see it and they don’t feel the need to share it.
On top of everything else, the media makes these stories hard to relate to. We read these stories and search over and over again for a justification for this person's choices or actions and can’t find one, because none is given. These stories are made to seem as bad as possible.
When we hear tales of people who have had unspeakable things happen in their life, remember that they are at their lowest point, and that is how we are seeing them for the first time.
When we’re looking into someone’s life through the lens of someone else’s words, it’s important to remember that it could’ve easily been us on the other side of that news print. In fact, terrible things happen to a lot, if not most, of us at some point in our lives. We forget that when we blame parents for not looking after their kids, that our kids have done some risky things when we were busy doing something else. The only difference is, someone was there to document those parents’ slip ups.
Always keep in mind that hindsight is 20/20. We will never actually know what we would’ve done in the situation of another because we will never be able to exactly simulate that situation in our minds.
It’s also worth noting that the English Language among others is very complex. Words are not always said how we mean them and sometimes there’s a lot of guess work involved in interpreting a sentence, let alone a story.
People’s words can be taken out of context as well. Contextual clues are something we’re taught at a young age. Maybe that’s why we leave those out when we’re trying to manipulate someone’s words.
No matter who we are and where we come from, we all deal with difficult situations differently. Some of us could handle almost any situation with grace and ease, while others crack under pressure. That doesn’t mean anyone is wrong; it only means we all have different strong suits.
Contrary to how careful we are, accidents do happen. At the risk of sounding cliche: everybody makes mistakes. Everyone gets a little too comfortable playing with fire if they do it enough. Sometimes, life just happens and even though we know better, we do something we shouldn’t and there is a consequence for that.
Sometimes little mistakes can lead to awful consequences. Imagine if all of our mistakes were broadcasted as a summary of our lives.
So how do we see the bigger picture? How do we really dig deep to understand not just what we can see, but the root of the situation? We need to gather all of the information we can.
If an article catches our attention, we should find others like it that either support, add onto, or subtract from the original. Watching the news doesn’t hurt either, but we should be sure to collect Fox’s version, CNN’s version, our local news station’s version, and the BBC version too while we’re at it. We could even look into the situation ourselves. We could go out and ask around and see what we come up with. After doing this, hopefully we’ll have a better sense of the factual core of our topic.
Try not to contribute to the spread of false information. We should make sure that what we share with others about a topic is not up for debate if we’re trying to present the facts. When we share news articles online, we can add our own twist telling friends what we know is true, what is contradicting, etc.
It also doesn’t hurt to write to local news stations asking them where they got their info and seeing if they’ll say any more about the story.
Above everything else, we should always remember to give the whole story. Then, we’ll be able to say what we want to hear when nobody else will. We can be voices for our communities. Let’s give each other some credit and try to take interest in what is truly happening, not just what someone tells us.
