Mark Stoller moved to Falcon in 2007.†He and his wife, Andra, both U.S. Air Force veterans, enjoy life with their daughters, extended family and adopted rescue dogs in Latigo. Mark savors the privilege of his wife and daughters being his muse for topics, people to meet and places to investigate.
†Jack Webbís Joe Friday character, from the popular 1950s ìDragnetî show, typically used the phrase, ìAll we want are the facts, maíam,î when questioning women in the course of police investigations.Truthfully, that is what I want, too.Finding a neutral source of news is incredibly difficult today! By reading headlines, it is easy to infer the story content is slanted with the journalistís political beliefs.For factual reporting, the intelligence community grades its received information before it becomes actionable intelligence.The first evaluation is source credibility: is it reliable, unsubstantiated, unreliable?Is the information known directly to the source; known indirectly to the source but corroborated; known indirectly to the source; not known; suspected to be false?When we could form the who, what, when, where, why, and how with information we could trust, we conducted operations or sought further investigation.Todayís 24-hour news cycle is more about the court of opinion as opposed to telling the truth and/or facts.In middle school, I remember learning about the pillars of our government: executive, legislative and judicial. A fourth pillar was noted as the media ñ- one for transparency and truth.From the Ethical Journalism Network website, the idea of ethical journalism goes back to the 1800s. ìJohn Thaddeus Delane Ö articulated a complete philosophy and body of principle for the guidance of journalism.î In 1852, he underlined the cardinal principle of truth-telling: ìThe duty of the journalist is the same as that of the historian ó to seek out the truth, above all things, and to present to his readers the truth as he can attain it.îDelane underscored the duty of journalism to be independent from government: ìTo perform its duties with entire independence, the press can enter into no close or binding relations with the statesmen of the day, nor can it surrender its permanent interest to the convenience of the power of any government.îMy daughter, Alex, shared this diagram from Ad Fontes Media that demonstrates where current news outlets fall in the factual reporting and political spectrum. The diagram link is https://www.adfontesmedia.com/static-mbc/Ava introduced me to John Greenís new 10-episode series, each lasting 13 to 15 minutes, called Crash Course on Navigating Digital Information on YouTube.ìJohn Green has partnered with MediaWise, The Poynter Institute, and The Stanford History Education Group to teach a course in hands-on skills to evaluate the information you read online. The internet is full of information, a lot of it notably wrong. We’re here to arm you with the skills to separate the good stuff from the inaccurate stuff and browse the internet with confidence.îIn the third episode, John talks about reading internet material both vertically and horizontally.When reading vertically, we see only the prepared content the providers want you to internalize.To read horizontally, open a new tab next to the one you were viewing. There, you research points and assertions from what you just read to gain further understanding or verification by other sources.The University of Michigan library offers students a thorough discussion on evaluating news sources with ìFake News: Lies, and Propaganda ó How to sort Fact from Fiction.î Students are also taught how to recognize bias in the media and themselves.Two respectable sources to which I just subscribed are ìThe Cipher Briefî ó news collected/analyzed by security analysts; and the ìFlip Sideî ó commentary containing right and left opinions on todayís issue (highly recommended by NFH reporter Leslie Sheley).To quote the 1990s show, ìX-Files,î ìThe truth is out there.îWe just need to know how to find it and trust the source.
