Oh! Why, hello there reader. I didn't see you come in! Please, make yourself comfortable. I know it's been a while since we've spoken to one another, but I can never stay away from you for long, ha ha!
Jokes aside though, it's great to be writing again. Life has been full and busy lately, and while what I've been doing has been incredibly rewarding it still feels good to take time and exercise my writing muscles when I can.
Jokes aside though, it's great to be writing again. Life has been full and busy lately, and while what I've been doing has been incredibly rewarding it still feels good to take time and exercise my writing muscles when I can.
I wanted to talk for a moment today about the dangers of reading just the headline to a story and allowing it to shape our worldview and guide our emotions without us really delving into the story and finding out the truth. There has been a lot of talk in the last year about "fake news", and while we do have a problem with purported "news" outlets that literally make up stories and report on events that never occurred I have often found that the more insidious problem is sensationalist organizations - looking to increase their viewer count and create ad revenue - that take a nugget of truth out of a story and twist it to get clicks. These organizations are not concerned with informing their audience, but merely with engaging them, and I have seen many careless viewers allow themselves to become outraged merely by reading the headline of a story without regard for the actual facts.
One really excellent example of this problem that I like to use to demonstrate my point comes from a story several years ago out of Portland. The headline and information that was shared on social media told readers that Portland police had dragged a 12-year-old girl off of a MAX lite rail train, tackled her to the ground, and shot her at close range with a beanbag shotgun! Oh, and the 12-year-old girl was black. People were immediately outraged; there were protests, accusations of racism, brutality, and child abuse, and the officer involved was placed on administrative leave just to satisfy the crowd.
I decided that it might be a good idea when seeing such an unbelievable headline like that to look into the facts of the case, and after digging around and finding an actual story from a real journalistic source everything made much more sense. What the folks frothing at the mouth on Facebook had left out was that the "12-year-old girl" in question was a 6'2" 240lb. behemoth with a criminal record the length of my arm. The incident occurred around 2:00am, after this "12-year-old girl" was seen leaving a party with many prominent gang members and violent drug dealers in attendance. She had already received a lifetime ban from riding Trimet for purse snatching on the train, which is why she was removed, and when officers attempted to arrest her she assaulted them and thrashed violently resisting arrest.
There was security footage of the whole event, by the way, showing this enormous criminal fighting with a police officer who is struggling to subdue her. A 2nd police officer, our suspended friend from before, comes on camera with his beanbag shotgun. He can clearly be seen giving her verbal warnings about the force he is about to use (as he noted in his report) and when she fails to comply he fires a single beanbag into her thigh. The best part of the whole story, at least to me, is that it worked! After the beanbag impacts she ceases her resistance and allows the officers to cuff her, get her on her feet, and take her in. Any reasonable person watching and knowing the fact would say "well yeah, that looks like a pretty reasonable and effective use of force to me", but because sensationalism was allowed to take over there were hearings, accusations, statements from the police department, and a whole lot of other nonsense.
It's perfectly acceptable to be outraged by the news; I'm outraged by a lot of the news I see these days. But it is also critically important to make sure we have all the facts available to us. Once we have all the facts, only then we can make a calm, reasoned decision to be outraged if the situation warrants it.
I decided that it might be a good idea when seeing such an unbelievable headline like that to look into the facts of the case, and after digging around and finding an actual story from a real journalistic source everything made much more sense. What the folks frothing at the mouth on Facebook had left out was that the "12-year-old girl" in question was a 6'2" 240lb. behemoth with a criminal record the length of my arm. The incident occurred around 2:00am, after this "12-year-old girl" was seen leaving a party with many prominent gang members and violent drug dealers in attendance. She had already received a lifetime ban from riding Trimet for purse snatching on the train, which is why she was removed, and when officers attempted to arrest her she assaulted them and thrashed violently resisting arrest.
There was security footage of the whole event, by the way, showing this enormous criminal fighting with a police officer who is struggling to subdue her. A 2nd police officer, our suspended friend from before, comes on camera with his beanbag shotgun. He can clearly be seen giving her verbal warnings about the force he is about to use (as he noted in his report) and when she fails to comply he fires a single beanbag into her thigh. The best part of the whole story, at least to me, is that it worked! After the beanbag impacts she ceases her resistance and allows the officers to cuff her, get her on her feet, and take her in. Any reasonable person watching and knowing the fact would say "well yeah, that looks like a pretty reasonable and effective use of force to me", but because sensationalism was allowed to take over there were hearings, accusations, statements from the police department, and a whole lot of other nonsense.
It's perfectly acceptable to be outraged by the news; I'm outraged by a lot of the news I see these days. But it is also critically important to make sure we have all the facts available to us. Once we have all the facts, only then we can make a calm, reasoned decision to be outraged if the situation warrants it.
