Hi, how’s it going? Great, great to hear. Here—here’s a stack of reported, factual information. Just plopped it down on your desk. Go through it, please. Take your time, but be sure to go through all of it.
Okay, fast forward ten, fifteen minutes. Need an hour? Sure. Take your time.
Did you get through it? Good. You just did better than about 89%* of the entire world.
So, what wasn’t in it? What what? No, you heard me. I don’t care what was in it, I can read that for myself. I want to know what wasn’t. That’s what we’re after here. It’s what will stand out most from person to person, and will be the most important bits of anything (non-information, really) anyone takes home from what they’ve been presented.
You don’t remember the content for the content—you remember it for what it means. And oftentimes, what it means is what you take it to mean, after filling in the holes. Sometimes the meaning is clear, and the evidence points to beyond-a-reasonable-doubt amount of guilt, or a preponderance of evidence which will likely bring about guilt, or a plea deal or apology, if it’s a person or a company or a government or government leader. But more on that later.
Usually, what isn’t there isn’t there for a reason; the holes are left for you to fill in yourself. With your own prejudices and variably limited view of the world—cognitive bias, mainly. That’s why it’s so important. And that’s why so much is left out of what you’re told by the news.
Sometimes, what’s left out is just good, old-fashioned stuff the speaker or writer (or editor or executive or board or administration) doesn’t want you to know. But, much of the time, it’s meant to foster perpetual discord and/or a choosing up of sides. Based on this. Or that. Or more of this. Or that over there. Or remember that? How about this, remember this?
The most gaping holes appear consistently in the nations with the worst press freedoms on Earth. (Reporters Without Borders compiled a list on that; you can peruse it here.) But it happens in America, too.
You saw it with the start of the Israel-Hamas War, in the editorializations and publishing of certain headlines, and not others. Or maybe you didn’t. Holes are pretty hard to see sometimes. Unless you can see the entirety of the woodwork through which they appear. And by woodwork, I mean context and history—immediate, vaguely antecedent or far-reaching.
The Russo-Ukrainian War was different, to give a similar example. Coverage tended to sympathize more with the lesser of the two powers. But just as there’s a reason for everything…well, I guess I finished that thought there.
There’s a reason for everything.
One thing you learn as an adult, because hopefully you’ve been taught it as a child, is that there are two sides to every story. Meaning: if one person describes what transpired during an event or incident or imbroglio or dust-up or whatever, and it exclusively favors one side—painting it in a better light—or just omits the motivations of the other, then you should really go and hear the other side’s side. Because you’re perhaps being told something that’s not even close to being true. More information/data = a far greater likelihood of what really happened.
Any scientist in the world will tell you that. If they’re any good at being a scientist.
But you don’t have to be a scientist to get the data, in this case. You just have to have the internet. Or read books by objectively-minded, highly informed individuals who don’t stand to profit greatly from talking about what really didn’t happen while simultaneously saying how bad one side is, sometimes mentioning maybe (maybe) how misguided that first side can sometimes be, but always mentioning it within the context of that side needing to protect itself against the bad one, first and foremost. (These people do actually exist).
You need to recognize that there are two sides to every story. And also: Who profits from what?
So, what’s left to trust? What, then, do the trustworthy use to make them trustworthy? Court records. De-classified documents. Eye-witness testimony. Statistical trends, accompanied by an explanation. Recorded conversations. First-hand conversations. All the data. None of which is ever fully brought to you by the mega-conglomeration daily news. Or Twitter. Or Facebook. Or anywhere but the sources.
The trustworthy leave nothing relevant out of the discussion. Like any good scientist would. Not. Leave something out, yes.
But sometimes, even the best sources do leave holes. Mainly because like 93%* of people don’t go through it all. And, sometimes, by dint of the volume of information, the best sources might not be fully juiced with all the data. Or have the space or time or wherewithal to provide it to you.
In the end, historical context frames the issue in the most elucidating of lights. If you lack it, you’re basically reading things in the dark. Figuratively speaking.
* – I just made these numbers up, because I didn’t think I’d ever be able to get a proper answer. Then I dug a little, and found out I was more or less right—about not getting answers and about the percentages. I sourced this article from 10 years ago, which gave some data on how long some readers, on average, stay engaged on a moderately informative web page. And then this, which says even less.
