People lie.

They have a lot of different and VERY effective ways of doing it. It doesn’t matter who it is or who they are to you. They can very easily be lying to you or the world. People in power lie and although a lie here or there isn’t so bad, a lie from a person in power could have dire consequences. It doesn’t matter if you voted for them or if you think they are really good people outside the office. They can very easily lie to you. So please. Vet them.

Recently the Washington Post had a person try to bait them into writing a false story about Roy Moore who has been in the news for several sexual assault claims. The Washington Post doesn’t tend to mess around when it comes to vetting sources so they caught these people.

But this should scare you. Terrify you even. Because it confirms undeniably what we already know. That there are people purposefully trying to misinform people.

Now it’s our job as journalists to step up the plate and make sure these type of people don’t trip us up.

We had a recent staff meeting talking about this very thing. But it’s your job. The people. To stay informed and to make doubly sure of something before you believe it. 

Politicians on both sides could be lying to you. Would you know if they were or not? I don’t mean to say that we can’t trust our government because I believe we can. But I do think that people both in and outside our government understand that people won’t double check anything and that if you control information you control the hearts and minds of the people.

Recently there were talks about rolling back some of the laws of net neutrality and the internet exploded. People were vocal and outspoken and vehemently attacked these rollbacks. Albeit in such an aggressive way that hateful and racist remarks were thrown around towards Ajit Pai who is chairman of the federal communications commision or F.C.C. He got hate mail and death threats towards his wife and children.

I disagree with the guy but that is taking it way too far for the record. This however is another great example of people trying to regulate and control the flow of information. The less you know the more susceptible you are to being fooled.

So am I saying you need to start a militia against the government? Am I saying you need to dig a bunker and hide? No. I’m saying call people out when they lie to you. By vetting them. There some great websites out there dedicated to ensuring you’re getting the truth. You can definitely trust certain newspapers but hey, if you feel like you can’t trust them that’s ok! Vet them. Look up a bunch of stories and see if their true.

RESEARCH. Find out the truth for yourself and decide what is best from there. Snopes.com is a great website for vetting urban myths and rumors that have been found false or true. Politifact.com is another great website more centered around politics. Opensecrets.org is a nonpartisan nonprofit website that shows politicians money contributions. So you can see who’s funding who. There are so many more websites I could go on and on and the beauty of an open and free internet is that you research and vet everything!

Even me. Especially me please by all means fact check me and all your news outlets. So you can know who you can really trust. Just do the research.