My grandfather once told me to never believe anything written in newspaper or said on TV. Then I asked him why he read newspapers and watched the evening news, and he replied that he was merely keeping an eye on what people were talking about. His aim was not to believe what was said, but to know what was said and to make his own judgement based on that. Then he explained to me how to find truth in propaganda.
The key to finding out what's going on is to pay attention to the facts, and ignore the commentary remarks and opinions. Facts are things like people fighting in the streets, wars, stock markets, words said, etc. Opinion has to do with why people fight, who are the good guys, who are the bad guys and so on.
When we keep track of the facts, we soon find patterns that aren't specifically mentioned. We discover that Boris Johnson wasn't very ill with the plague. We discover that the vaccine can hurt our immune system, making us less able to fight new strains of the virus. We can even discover that Jupiter appears to be hollow!
The facts required to find out these things are often found in the articles themselves. The implications are left out on purpose, but the facts are there. The propaganda is rarely pure fantasy. It's generally true what's being said. But certain aspects are left out or under-communicated. We must do the reasoning ourselves, and we must sometimes connect dots between articles to get the full picture.
Sadly, most people pay more attention to opinions expressed in articles rather than the facts laid out in them. People confuse opinions with facts and end up doing stupid things as a consequence.
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| Guantanamo Bay detention camp |
By Shane T. McCoy, U.S. Navy - (copied from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Camp_x-ray_detainees.jpg so that the image can be used on Wikinews.), Public Domain, Link
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