A Walk Down the Garden Path

Great news from my online bank: one of their service providers breached security and hacked into my email site used to communicate with the bank. First thought: belies all the hype about how totally secure my online banking service is. Second thought: ah-ha, that's why I'm getting the sudden onslaught of emails with the blank subject line!! Final thought: do I continue my on-line banking or go back to pen 'n paper? That decision, of course, depends on how much I believe my bank's public avowal that my security is still safe-guarded, and I don't much believe my bank because ... its security was breached by a service provider! Kinda the old "believe me when I tell you you can believe me" approach to assurance.

Breaking news from the same neighborhood wherein 2 were killed and 5 injured in November: residents converged on a neighbor's home Saturday for a 50th anniversary party. One uninvited drop-in guest was told to leave, so he did; however, first, he removed his weapon from his pants and shot into the crowd at the party, wounding two. As he exited the area and walked toward his own home, 2 party-goers jumped into a car and followed him. When the car was next to the shooter, the car occupants pulled out their own weapons and fired at the shooter and an innocent bystander just walking home. The shooter was wounded, but the innocent bystander was killed. Aside from the practice of party-goers to carry loaded weapons to a social event, it is nice of the police to assure the public that this was NOT a gang incident in a known gang residential area that is still reeling from the 7 victims of the last NOT a gang incident a block away. Somehow, I don't believe the truth of the current public statements because, in 2007, the police began enforcing a gang injunction that allows known gang members to be arrested and, if applicable, deported. Four years later, the neighborhood is, according to the police, politicians, and public media ... no longer a gang-infested neighborhood ... but in 5 months, there have been 3 very public, seemingly gang-related, drive-by shootings. Perhaps the media strategy is that if I say it often enough, it becomes the truth, regardless of evidence to the contrary??

Code enforcement blocked off the gaping garage next door, but left all the doors and windows of the property unsecured, including the door to the upstairs apartment wherein squatters have taken up residence. I don't follow the logic, but what the hey. This is the same office that told me that if I want access to the utility access behind my property, I have to install a gate because the residents who have literally blocked off access to the utility poles behind my property line are within their rights to do so. Really? I asked. Yep: it is MY responsibility to provide access to the utility companies that have installations within my property line. When I reminded the code enforcement officer that the 8-foot wide alleyway is by law not part of my property and has to be kept clear to provide access to public utility companies, he told me that the city has decided to turn a blind eye to people who include that extra footage within their fences and block walls because too many residents use it for dumping trash (including the 2 families behind my property!). What a concept: when people fail to obey the law, reword the law to what the people will obey, and then tell residents that it is the law and force compliance?

Finally, it is interesting to read about the new generation of journalists, the young people who are on the scene with their electronic devices to post breaking news on You Tube and other instant media outlets. While these young people indeed may be on the scene filming what's happening, what they are doing is not journalism. News needs to stand a test of time that begins in an event that is then researched without bias, not reported as gossip gospel. Sometimes, what happens depends on who sees it, the geographical proximity to the event, and the point of view from which the event is witnessed. People become caught up in what they want to see and what they feel compelled to say based on why they are there. It is only after the fact, after the in-depth research, after the perspective of time, that a journalist can present the truth of the story.

I teach my students that there are always three sides to every coin: don't forget the edge that bands the two very different sides to the coin, the edge upon which a coin sometimes stands independent of the two sides. News is what happens now, at this time and in this place; journalism is not just what happens/when, but why it happened and what it means in a larger context. In the recent events in Japan, the "news" told us what could be seen on the surface, including smoke emanating from a nuclear power plant. Reporters told us what they were told to tell us: no problem; we have everything under control. Rather than digging deeper, the news readers read the copy provided on the teleprompter as if it were the truth. A week after the fact, research began to show the truth: the world is at jeopardy because of what was first described as a "minor explosion" at the power plant. People are dead; the ocean is radiated; the nuclear plant is at melt-down. NO ONE knows what will actually happen because the result of a nuclear melt-down is hypotheses based on the best guess, not first-hand knowledge, of the best scientists about a worst-case scenario. It will take decades, if not centuries, for journalists to do the research, to gather the evidence from every source and put forth the report of not just what we all saw then, but what it means now, and for the next generation.

Just as the police continue to tell the citizens in a local neighborhood that drive-by shootings and unprovoked killings are not gang-related, the reporters continue to tell the world that the Japanese have the reactor under control. People tell lies, especially if/when they are well-paid, public liars, such as news readers, politicians, and CEO's of huge(nuclear) corporations. Believe what you will -- and live with what you must -- but don't accept what people are paid to tell you via the media unless you know it is truth based on your own in-depth research, knowledge, and insight.

People can only walk you down the garden path if that's where you are willing to go.