Learn What Good Writing Looks Like, And You’ll Never Look At Mainstream Media The Same Way Again
When you write a lot, and when you put that writing in front of a lot of people’s eyes, you start to take a real critical look at what it is you’re writing, because you want to make sure people don’t read something you didn’t intend. You try to look at your writing in ways you imagine other people would look at it, try to imagine how liberals and conservatives, believers and atheists, men AND women might perceive it. It is hard to write honestly without expanding one’s perspective, since one is always trying to understand other people’s perspectives.
When it finally dawns on you people are actually reading your writing and judging it, you ask yourself before you hit publish whether or not the argument is convincing and whether it is built upon solid facts or merely on conjecture, flimsy evidence, and hearsay.
I’m okay publishing an article that is not firmly built upon facts so long as I make it clear that I am merely laying out a theory that can either be bolstered or weakened by new facts coming to light. And I feel it is useful to occasionally write an article that points out the holes in establishment opinion without being able to prove that it is wrong, just so long as I make clear that is what I am doing. I live quite well with ambiguity and others should be able to do so as well. Not everything is known, but drawing in the knowns will eventually lead to a better understanding. I believe it is quite useful to draw a sketch of what might be the truth using logic and a basic understanding of history and human behavior. Just so I don’t try and pass it off as fact.
This is what writing a lot has taught me. And in learning to question whether I am following my own simple rules of writing before publishing, I naturally look at the writing of others in the same fashion. What I find in establishment media is shocking.
When I write, the only facts I present are those that have solid evidence that I can share with others. Not evidence that’s secret, not evidence that someone showed me but I can’t show others. Not evidence based on anonymous informers. I would never expect people to believe me if I were to do such a thing. I respect my readers way too much. More than that, I respect myself and the idea that sifting and winnowing will lead to the most honest and most likely explanations for what is going on in the world.
More than anything, I am quick to apologize for anything I may have gotten wrong. Nobody is perfect and everybody gets the facts wrong or engages in faulty reasoning occasionally. I welcome feedback and the opportunity to correct my mistakes, because it is my reputation that is on the line and nobody cares about my reputation more than I do.
I remember after the Iraq War began when no weapons of mass destruction were found, how the New York Times admitted they were wrong to say with almost absolute authority that they existed and we needed to go to war to prevent them from being used. They said that they had failed their readers and that they would try harder in the future. They never did. In fact, they’ve gotten much worse in the ensuing decades.
It is my vow to you that should I ever get a story as wrong as the NYT and many other publications did that I will retreat into obscurity and never bother you with my thoughts again. I can’t imagine the kind of atonement I might do that would allow me to live with myself for such a failure.
I have written a lot that not only questions the establishment narrative but quite boldly refutes much of what the establishment media says. One of us is wrong. If it can be proven that it is me, prove it and I will slink away. If it cannot be proven that anything of substance I have said is wrong, then you should start heavily tempering what you see in establishment media with what you hear from me and other independent writers, reporters, and journalists who critique official sources. And if we are able to prove to you how the corporate establishment media is not merely wrong on an occasional issue but shows a pattern of being wrong without feeling the need for serious mea culpas and substantive changes, you seriously need to question your relationship with establishment media.
Seriously, it should have been done decades ago. It should have been done when every mainstream media outlet led us into a war based on a faulty premise. As Jimmy Dore said, after the Iraq War, your immediate response when they tell you something should be “They’re lying”. That’s all they deserve. That’s all anybody deserves when they tell you something of such import that is so far from reality. You need to demand tangible proof, not the unproven allegations of anonymous sources. They lied and people died. That has consequences and you are complicit in that lie so long as you continue to follow them. And if it wasn’t a lie, it sure was a massive, MASSIVE, failure.
They don’t deserve your trust. They should be working as hard as they can to show you that they are worthy of regaining your trust. They’re not. They’re giving you unsubstantiated reporting and DARING you not to believe them. You deserve better from them, and the world deserves better from you.
I don’t deserve your trust, either. I’m working as hard as I can to earn it, by speaking as honestly and digging as deeply into the evidence available to me as I can. Don’t trust me, read what I write critically, but do not dismiss me or others like me simply because the establishment media has you afraid of those who do not uncritically agree with what it is they are feeding you. It is they, and no one else, that have the blood of millions on their hands. It is they, not we, who live rich on money they receive from the corporations that profit at the expense of the people.
Establishment media will never tell you anything that will cost the arms manufacturers, the big banks, Blackrock, Monsanto, Exxon Mobil, Comcast, and other transnational corporations a penny.
Go ahead, prove me wrong.