If you take any particular news story on the internet and compare across the different sources, what you will find is likely surprising and amazing at the same time. Of course there are going to be similarities over facts presented, but with most cases in journalism, there is going to be the taint of bias. Even the emphasis in the story can create a completely different sort of picture if it is represented across different media sources. So, what does one make of this?
One thing that occurs to me is that when we consider different ways of wording a story, we can tell that there are multiple stakeholders. I imagine that if I were a journalist (and I never could be one, I argue), I would have such a hard time, knowing that what I say can upset some parties in the story while elevating others. It's humbling to know that a story can never truly and fully represent the entire range of possible perceptions and experiences. Yet, at the same time, I suggest that this also hints at potentially freeing possibilities, since we are less drawn into the wording or the invective of one of the particular versions of the story.
The tricky part is that I don't think anyone can ever really know for certain what actually 'happens' from one moment to the next. There are so many antecedent causes, I argue, that what we see arising is often the result of a complex interplay of forces, many of which aren't fully known to the human eye or mind. Given that actions and events lie within this complex matrix of causes and conditions, all we can really do is approximate a deep understanding of some of these intertwining forces, thus demonstrating their interdependence. With humility (or experience), one can begin to appreciate how one story is just one perspective on the complicated interplay, and it only looks at it from a limited perspective. I can have the creativity to potentially change the narrative a bit and experiment with how a story and people can be told, without attaching to one of the stories or another.
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