By ROBERT JUMPER
Tutiyi (Snowbird) and Clyde, N.C.
In a world where the only things needed to publish an article, or what passes for an article, are a smartphone and a social media account, it is no wonder that many of us sit at home dazed and confused. Everyone publishes, and everyone purports truth.
The problem with purporting truth is that, like beauty, truth is in the eye of the beholder. Modern truth is very much about perspective, sometimes in defiance of reality. Many times, we see the world with blinders on, taking a set of facts and applying our passions to them, twisting those facts into something a logically thinking person might not recognize.
We are all put in a position of judgment every day. And many perceive judging as a negative thing. After all, if you ever attended Sunday School in your life, you may have gotten an earful of “judge not, lest you be judged”. For the most part, people take that old Bible admonition out of context and misrepresent its meaning. Clear understanding of that slice of biblical advice requires a more thorough reading, and, as Paul Harvey used to say, to get “the rest of the story”.
For the Bible in Matthew 7:1 did not ban judging as a practice of discernment, but only as a practice of condemnation. I mention this as an example of how allowing someone to provide you with information without context can lead to misguided conclusions. If you are a student of the Bible, you quite clearly see even leaders of churches take snippets of Bible truth and twist them into a new meaning. If you want to truly know the meaning behind a verse, I really urge you to take the time to read the entire message, the entire book, the Old and New Testaments. As one friend and Bible scholar said to me, “The best commentary on the Bible is the Bible itself”. This advice is not to convict you or convince you of anything except to say that when making judgment calls in your life, to the best of your ability, judge considering all facts as you determine “your truth”.
And for many of us, that is hard to do. Generations of us have grown up in a time when entitlement is the golden rule. We believe that we should get and we should get it now, whatever “it” is. And we don’t think we should have to do the math. Whether it is a good thing or not is something we will decide after we get it. Our attention spans seem to be shorter with each generation that emerges. The younger we are, the less patient we seem to be. And, logically, it should be the other way around. As an elder now, I can tell you from experience that I have much more patience today than when I was in my twenties, even though I know I have much less time on earth to devote to waiting.
It is an ongoing joke, maybe rule, in journalism that if you can’t engage a reader in the first paragraph, many times with the headline, you may as well not write the rest of the article, because if the reader doesn’t find something of interest early on, their attention will drift to something else. Have you ever seen a squirrel run in front of you to the safety of the other side of the road, only to run back in front of your car at the last moment? That’s the mentality I am talking about. And I see many squirrel pancakes on the roads on my daily commute. We are squirrely people.
Speaking of roads, how many of you know that traffic is supposed to stop in both directions when a school bus is stopped with its lights flashing? Driver’s ed 101, right? You are doing the right thing by stopping if you are part of the opposing traffic, right? Well, some folks have never taken the time to read the rest of the law that states that if there is a median or a turn lane that separates a four-lane road, you are not required to stop. As a result, near-collisions and road rage have grown because people don’t pay attention to the law. In this case, those who look like they are creating safety for children are actually creating greater risk.
In this election, we are seeing influence peddling on a grand scale. Hard left-wing activists are pushing their truths in our faces. Hard right-wing activists are pushing their truths in our faces. Special interest groups are pounding on our cars, shouting obscenities, and publicly beating people (I guess they are literally trying to “beat some sense into us”), all to get us to see things their way so that they can have it their way. And apparently, we no longer worry about the merits of a candidate so much as we keep a scorecard of a candidate’s negatives. And the candidates, their special interest groups, and their marketers are using the 80/20 rule when it comes to advertising. They use 20 percent of their messaging to give us the reasons why we should vote for their candidate, and then they spend the other 80 percent trying to convince us how bad their opponent is.
Over the past 40+ years, I have been involved in many hiring processes. I have had the privilege of hiring some motivated, productive employees. I have had the sad duty of telling candidates that they were not selected and even had to engage in disciplinary processes, including termination, for those who did not meet job performance standards. In those four decades of managing people, I never once had a job candidate send me a resume or job application that spent 20 percent of their words on their education and experience and then took the remaining 80 percent to belittle the other applicants. Had they done so, it would have made the decision so much easier for me as a hiring agent. A person who did that wouldn’t make it to the table for an interview.
As I have stated many times, getting facts instead of someone’s opinion (what I call situational truth) can be very difficult in society today. From 1962 to 1981, Walter Cronkite was the anchor of the CBS Evening News. His famous tagline at the end of the broadcast was “And that is the way it is,” followed by the date. He had a broad reputation as being “The Most Trusted Man in America”. He was known for being a straightforward, objective reporter. For most of his career, he worked in an environment where the news divisions and entertainment divisions were primarily kept separate because early media owners understood the influence of news media and how its reporting could easily be used to manipulate public opinion. And in today’s culture, media owners and publishers seem to have no limit to what they will do or say in an alleged news article to either sensationalize for increased audience or push their personal political agendas. We have gone from journalists who say “that’s the way it is” to “that’s the way I see it”. There is a big difference. And the more aware we are of that, the better equipped we are to seek the facts and the truth of a matter, or a candidate.
North Carolina voters are in election season as we speak. In addition to the selection of candidates to positions of political power in all branches of government and at federal, state, and local levels, there are three referendum questions to consider that will affect you if you live in the state of North Carolina, and particularly if you have off-Qualla Boundary property. In most states, their boards of election have websites. North Carolina has www.ncboe.gov. In North Carolina, you can even put in your zip code, and they will show you a sample ballot specifically for your district.
Wisdom is a dish best served slowly and deliberately. Some of my most costly mistakes in life were made because I rushed decisions and didn’t do my due diligence. So, let’s all try to restrain our squirrel nature and make sound choices for our futures.
And here is a quick note to my colleagues. Not the ones who hold to the Cronkite philosophy of journalism, but to those who have been educated and indoctrinated into the modern take on journalism. As a reporter, you hold a public trust. Your articles are not yours. You are a public servant, and the articles you write belong to the communities you serve. Do not throw away your integrity by chasing a buck, someone’s approval, or trying to satisfy your vision of what you think the world should be. The world will be a better place if you simply stick to the facts.
