To the editor:
Information: where do we get it? TV is one source of information. There is also the internet, radio, and sometimes we even read the newspaper. The information that we gather from these sources is important. Unfortunately, much of what is reported to us through the media is biased and often misleading.
The people who feed us the news, whatever the source, are adept at getting our attention. One way is through headlines. Make the headline interesting enough and hopefully people, out of curiosity, will want to know the whole story. There are times, though, that the headlines are the only thing that some people read. In these cases, headlines can be misleading. Following is an example.
On Sunday, March 10, Nancy Mase was on George Stephanopoulos’ show. As a teen, Mase was a victim of rape. From the very beginning of the interview, Stephanopoulos asked how as a victim of that crime she could endorse Trump for president when he was guilty of rape himself. Later in the interview he held up a copy of an article, obviously to prove his point, with the headline “Judge clarifies: Yes, Trump was found to have raped E. Jean Carroll.”
Fortunately, he held the article up to the camera for all to see. Here is what was printed in the second paragraph of the article: “Despite Carroll’s claims that Trump had raped her the jury stopped short of saying he committed that particular offense. Instead, jurors opted for a second opinion: sexual abuse.”
The point I’m trying to make here has nothing to do with whether Trump is guilty or not. Simply put, don’t let headlines be your only source of information. Read the whole article or listen to the whole story. Don’t be fooled. As I have said many times before, get both sides of the story.
Walter Crean
Madawaska
