Seeking Truths from Facts

I was recently in the US for my summer vacation and one of my small pleasures is to read the title stories of magazines such as the National Enquirer just to see what weird ideas their editors come up with to sell their magazine.

In addition to the usual "I was abducted by aliens" stories there were any number of bizarre claims about the lives of the rich and famous running from what some fourth rate soap star is doing to what's going on in the White House.

I found it hard to believe that anyone actually takes anything of what they read in such publications to be true, but then as I tried to watch the news and flipped through various news websites I begin to think that I might just be demonstrating my naivety couched in a blanked of intellectual snobbism.

Now some people might maintain that I have been outside the US too long and have not lived through the decline of the media to the point that it is difficult to know what to believe regardless of the source.

But watching the reporting on the Ebola epidemic and the amount of scare mongering in the press it is clear to me that there is no interest in reporting constructively but rather every possible opening for sensationalism is mined to provide headlines a la National Enquirer even from what I had previously held to be respectable publications. 

One of my more disappointing realisations was that the Huffington Post, once a viable provider of alternative views on significant news items has essentially morphed into a Fox National Enquirer mishmash. 

I am not sure who is feeding whom but the focus of the news and the polarisation of American society seem to be woven together in such an unhealthy symbiotic relationship that it is impossible to know what facts can I trust in analysing a situation to try and distill some acceptable version of the truth.