Thanks, Denzel.

We all know that many influential members of the media publish information in order to attract user traffic whether or not it is completely factual. What I want to know is, how do we know what we can believe? I often think about this when scrolling through Twitter and seeing a retweet and reaction to a story or narrative that another user has taken to be the truth. Do I believe them and jump on the bandwagon or do I wait until the story has been verified when it’s too late to comment? In the video included in week 4’s lecture (also below) Denzel Washington says, “if you don’t read the newspaper you’re uniformed, if you do read it you’re misinformed”. As a media consumer my first question is, “well… which one is worse? Uniformed or Misinformed?” Next he says that the the onus lies on the media to tell the truth and not just to be first to publish information. So, what can I do in order to be a more ethical consumer of media? What can we media consumers do as a collective? How are we supposed to choose whether or not to be uniformed or misinformed? Is there a way for us as media consumers to encourage the media to tell the truth? Washington continues and says, “anything you practice you get good at, including BS” in reference to the media’s practice of getting the story published first regardless of its authenticity. However, this theory must go both ways; those who consume the media have also practiced and become good at taking what is given to us and running with it, sharing it and critiquing it. In this case, I’m not sure whether or not the authenticity of the content matters because as soon as we find out the truth and feel sorry for spreading fake news there’s a new story that’s come along, true or not, that needs our attention.