28 February 2007
The truth between the li(n)es
Najiba Abdellaoui explains her tried and tested methods for truth-seeking in the media.
I used to enjoy conversations with friends about the state of the world but I don't anymore. This is due to the fact that most of these recent discussions have had the tendency to end with an unsatisfying: 'Well, we probably never find out the whole truth.'
My friends and I were always obsessed with finding out the whole story, but our quest for 'the truth' became more serious after 9/11. After the initial shock, the questions came: Are we being told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth by the media? And if not, why not?
Years and a new war later we can ask ourselves the same questions. What are the hidden goals of this big money and life-absorbing charade? Maybe time will tell. But what if time won't tell? What if time doesn't have a clue? Well, then we have to pick up the visible pieces of the puzzle and shape our own truth.
A former journalist assured me recently that there is no such thing as objectivity. Journalists shape the news they bring with their own standards and values. They make a selection of which news they want to bring and how they want to 'break' it. News channels such as CNN and FOX want to grab the viewer's attention for as long as possible.
During the invasion of Iraq I used to switch channels between FOX, CNN and Al Jazeera. The difference between the last two and FOX was astonishing. If you tuned in to FOX you could experience the war from inside a tanker and you could hear soldiers tell you what kind of rush it was to shoot and kill. This news channel had chosen to break the news of the war as a computer game. What makes this even more disturbing is that there are millions of people who follow this 'computer game' solely from that point of view - they don't watch other Arabic news channels to get a more balanced view.
When I asked the aforementioned journalist how a person could extract the truth from the (un)conscious lies and subjectivity, he told me to learn how to read the truth between the lines.
In order to do this you first need an excellent knowledge of history because this shapes the context of whatever it is that you are trying to find 'the truth' in. Next, you need to make a list of reasonably reliable news sources that you will frequently visit to get an update of the latest news and to get some training in getting at the truth. Examples of news agencies are: www.indymedia.org, english.aljazeera.net/news and www.bbcworld.com and www.cnn.com.
If you check out all four of them or other reasonably reliable news sources it won't be hard to find, read, and interpret the truth between the lines.
Good luck with your quest for truth and let me know if you have any tips of other (more) reliable news sources.
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I am from Moroccan origin but live in the Netherlands. I like to write short stories, poems and plays and to read and discuss interesting subjects in my spare time.
