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“One of the effects is the need to be first, not even to be true anymore. So what a responsibility you all have; to tell the truth, not to just be first, but to tell the truth. We live in a society now where it’s just first. Who cares? Get it out there. We don’t care who it hurts, we don’t care who we destroy, we don’t care if it’s true. Just say it, sell it.” ~ Denzel Washington

As we've talked about communication and culture in our class and we came upon a chapter and some readings regarding media or the presentation of information. I'm a little bit sensitive to this subject as I've seen media change for some time now. I've noticed that media, information, has become more of a drug than a tool. Information is really just content that is derived from truth. Now I've seen that truth doesn't matter hypocrisy doesn't matter and convincing someone of truth is a wasted effort. These three concepts have really sucked the life out of communication because now it just seems like a waste of time.

Have you ever been on a playground and heard a rumor? When you were younger, as evil little kids, we just took what we heard and ran with it. A lot of times it was to be sure you were in with the cool crowd the other was to just get in on the rumor. Face, everyone wants to hear rumors, secrets, anything that we can invest in to take us away from our monotonous lives. Well in 2017 that's what the world has turned into, a giant rumor/secret playground and most of everyone is getting in on the scoop. We've got sponsored media, who align with a particular view and they put out information only to have another source counter the claims. Just like on the playground, children arguing over whats true and whats not. This is a disservice to us. One, it takes away any value as to what information actually is, a derivative of truth, and turns into hearsay. Most information can be said is to lead to problem solving but with sides taking place, it just leads to more problems stacking up like Jenga. Well, we as a civilization are Jenga. To many problems and it's going to crash. The media's disservice to us is negating truth. Rumor's should never be taken as fact. If they're false, then lives and in some cases livelihood is jeopardized. A good example of this is the vaccination panic we're in. A story of a completely false medical journal was ran about a medical official who declared that vaccinations lead to autism. People panicked and the anti-vaxxer movement took place. Well it was later deemed that this medical official made the whole thing up. The sad thing that happened was that people still continued to site this medical journal as proof of vaccinations. My problem with this situation was it's portrayal in media. As soon as a side said it was a false claim, another would counter their claim. The side countering the claim still used the false document as it's fact checking even when the publisher of the document said they made it up. How can providers of information ignore the source of the information? This is why truth doesn't matter anymore. Truth isn't trendy and if its not trendy then it isn't entertainment.

Hypocrisy is a term that's meaning has come to nothing. Which is sad as it used to keep people in check. I want to disclose I do not affiliate myself with any political party. I think it's naive to only align with a side and completely agree with everything they stand for. As for a small example of how hypocrisy doesn't mean anything anymore; Nancy Pelosi while endorsing the Affordable Health Care act stated that, “We have to pass the bill to see what's in it.” Speed up to 2017 and when the Senate (majority republican) wanted to pass their proposed bill, Nancy Pelosi stated, “We can't pass this until we've reviewed what's in it.” -Crickets- Not a word was said about this hypocritical move. Media that aligned with the democrats never once mentioned how this is the opposite of what her party spoke of when trying to pass their bill. What stuck out to me the most was how the story died and we all just moved on. It seemed to be just accepted. Celebrities, politicians and media figures are called out daily on hypocrisy and they continue to push on and its just swept away. So, what was once a powerful word that people avoided to be has now become a meaningless word that holds no baring.

So I used Denzel's quote as I think it's important to communication as a whole. The race to get information out first without any regard if it's true causes a discord in communication. It start conversation that is misguided and can potentially be dangerous. This can be essentially called miss-communication. And we all know what happens when we miss-communicate, we fight. A thing I've noticed is that as media takes stances they get people to take sides. It's like a team mentality. My team is going to beat your team, regardless if what I'm defending is true or not, we are going to win. This isn't good for anybody. We have to go back to media being a tool and giving us information so we can adapt and be better as a society. Hopefully we get there sooner than later.