We Suffer From Information Overload, and the Cure Is Critical Thinking

Some of you won't believe this, but in journalism school, students are drilled on always presenting both sides of an argument. I know this because I am a journalism school graduate and worked two decades as a print journalist before becoming a pastor.Trained journalists (like those employed by this newspaper) always seek balance in news reporting. Opinion pieces are different, by the way, because few people hold such mixed opinions. And the proliferation of online opinion blogs being read as straight news these days only confuses the matter.There are two problems with the "both sides" demand today. The first problem is that a lot of people don't want to hear more than one side. Anyone who presents "both sides" gets labeled as being unfair or unbalanced — another way of saying you don't want to consider possibilities that differ from your own. "Education" is suspected to be indoctrination.The second problem with reporting on "both sides" was illustrated in a recent interview on KERA radio with Matt Richardson, director of Denton County Public Health. The good doctor was explaining why Denton County has one of the highest rates of parents opting out of vaccinations for their kids and thereby putting the rest of the population at risk. In addition to the viral nature of social media, he spoke of the journalistic need always to show "the other side of the argument" when, in some cases, "there is no other side to the argument" from a scientific perspective.The scientific data on the safety and success of vaccinations is clear. It is not up for debate among the medical and scientific community. Yet well-meaning journalists — trained always to present balance — sometimes end up giving equal weight to the "other side" and thereby validate the anti-scientific claims of anti-vaxxers.The same is true for climate change: The scientific community is settled on the human causes that permanently threaten seasonal temperatures, melting polar ice caps, rising sea levels and violent tropical storms. Scientifically speaking, there are not two equal sides to this story.The same is true for immigration and crime: Undocumented immigrants are far less likely to commit violent crimes than U.S. citizens, there is no evidence of terrorists coming across the southern border, and almost all drugs enter the country through legal ports of entry. The data say there are not two equal sides to this story.The same is true for the Confederate monuments: Historically, they were erected as part of a campaign to rewrite the history of the Civil War on grounds other than the defense of slavery and were placed by groups committed to the ideology of white supremacy. History says there are not two equal sides to this story, even though the "states' rights" narrative has been perpetuated for 150 years.What to do?  Continue reading...

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