What is Your Lens of Perception?

Ah, The News...

We inarguably live in the "information age" and — thanks to podcasts and streaming — said information is as often as not delivered by some grassroots "reporter" as it is delivered by actual news media.

Or whatever you want to call it.

Of course, since the "market" is now saturated by such an enormous number of participants they have to scream louder and louder in order for anybody to even pay attention to them.

And so the only way to get attention often turns out to be to launch into some clickbaity extremist headline mongering that people look at and go "that can't possibly be true!", or something that is designed specifically to annoy a large number of people rather than to simply get attention.

Welcome to the "attention" economy!

The waters of news are increasingly muddied by the practice of editorial cherry picking, typically practiced in such a way that it's not actually representative of the facts.

It seems that somebody will look at a 10 minute speech that perhaps has something of real value to offer, pull out the two sentences that sound like a cautionary tale rather than the 9 minutes and 45 seconds that were filled with actual planning and hope, and then engage in lengthy commentary that focuses entirely on those two warning sentences.

But because we have so much information to sift through, the vast majority of people don't actually put any effort into examining the motivation of the person doing the reporting nor whether they have any personal axes to grind that might skew their opinion.

And that's where the whole "lens of perception" thing comes in.

The part I find most annoying — in terms of uncovering actual information about events around the world — is that I actually spend more time vetting sources than getting actual information.

I might read some headline that says that a situation somewhere has "deteriorated beyond the critical point," and rather than accepting that as a legitimate piece of information I end up spending 30 minutes trying to figure out whether the messenger has a personal axe to grind and is actually just reporting opinion through their cognitive biases.

It's such a waste of time!

Maybe I'm just old, or maybe I'm delusional, because I seem to remember a day where the news was primarily about presenting a bunch of information about a situation and leaving it up to the receiving public to form an opinion about it based simply on facts.

There seems to be a far greater emphasis on using the media and reporting as a way to force opinions on people as opposed to simply to disseminate information. I don't think influence mongering is a new concept by any means, but it has just become so blatant in the way it has replaced presenting facts that people could do with what they want.

Perhaps we might say it opens us up to new viewpoints, but it also wastes a monumental amount of time!

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful week ahead!

How about YOU? Have you done a lot of double checking of stories? Or do you trust most reportingLeave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)

Created at 2026.06.29 01:50PDT
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