Connecting the Dots

Truth is the first casualty of war. The irony of this catch-phrase is that both sides (pro and anti) are unabashedly tossing it around to undermine the lying bastards on the other side.

Ordinary citizens are hopelessly un-served by the modern news-as-business mechanism.
The sound bytes, spins, headlines and pictures provide eye candy and mind candy, which leaves us uninformed - but often absolutely certain that we are right. Yet, hardly anyone in the business of news is getting paid for finding out the real facts. People get paid for selling newspapers, ads, magazines and clicks. Editors, reporters, analysts....Everyone is now in the info-tainment business.

Writers of news have always been in competition to break the big story, but I truly believe that the current generation of readers and writers is less bound by traditional constraints when it comes to Truth and Character.

One of the sad casualties of the commercial of news is factual evidence. The favorite game of talking head pundits is called "connect the dots." Invariably, they will cite several seemingly related speculations and then summarize with the connect-the-dots certification.

This plays to an inherent human penchant for filling in the blanks when given insufficient information. More often than not this leads to false speculation. And many folks are predisposed to accept "facts" that support what they already believe. The Shepherds flock: sheep.

We see it all the time in business. Everytime we see a good looking woman with great ta-tas getting the promotion we deserved, we begin to speculate about how she got the job (over coffee and jelly donuts with the other fat losers in the cafeteria). Pretty soon the rumor of her dalliance with Mr Big has taken on all the appearances of fact. The more people who repeat it the more likely it is to be perceived as true. Truth is, we are more attracted to the seamy explanations than to the more factual yet un-titillating details. She probably got her MBA sleeping with the profs, anyhow.

Those of us who want to know the facts are generally presented with some random dots and not much pith. Stay tuned for my next blog - which contains the cure for Your Disease!