Why Does(n't) Media Equal Truth

As a society, we are inundated with news reports, photos, videos and blogs from all kinds of sources. From television, internet, radio and papers, there are literal millions of media outlets to fill our thirst for knowledge. However, how factual is that knowledge? Would you be as interested in a news story if you knew it was written with the purpose of changing your opinion, and thus the truth was stretched or slanted to gain that goal? Or how about an out and out fabrication; would you be interested in that story, photo, blog if it were posing as truth and turned out to be an out and out lie? I think most of us agree we aren’t interested in being coerced into believing anything. Sure, I’ll read a persuasive piece any day as these news pieces are not masking as news reports…but as one person’s opinion.


The problem is that most people when coming across a “news source” (and I mean that in the loosest sense of the word “news”) immediately believe it to be fact. No further investigation is done to corroborate the story…no independent unbiased reading is conducted. The media is absorbed, either auditory, or visually and it becomes cemented in that reader’s mind and becomes truth. This is such a dangerous habit so many of us have. And I’ll admit I have done this too. After all, it is so much easier to just accept what we hear or see as truth; it is much harder to actually put the work into finding out if it is true.


Take the image above, for instance. Take a look…a real close look. See anything wrong? Many won’t, it takes a trained eye to see many of the flaws, but one is obvious. The building on the left mysteriously disappears on the right side below the tear in the photo. There are other signs that this is a doctored photo as well, but that one is the most obvious. Yes, before you get upset, this is a fake photo. That is not to say that there is not animal abuse in the circus, or that an elephant has never been hoisted with ropes before. All it means is that some creative person cut and pasted this image together and it is FAKE. But looking at it and not knowing that evokes some emotions in you, doesn’t it? I would think that it is safe to say that whomever made this image intended to do just that…evoke emotion. Maybe they hated circuses and wanted to taint their image….maybe they just wanted their photo on the front page of the paper. Who knows; the point is that this picture should not be used to base your opinions of circuses. Like them or hate them is regardless. Base your opinion on facts…not media biased or lies.


Take a moment to read through the comments on this Pin on Pinterest:

http://pinterest.com/pin/2814818486958233/

Yes, you’ll see a few of my comments in there….to no avail. Amazing how angry and passionate people get. How many of those people are really ensuring what they are seeing is real? If you looked you’ll know very few are.


Okay, so I am going somewhere with this. The same frenzy this photo created is not so unlike the frenzy created over the recent Susan G Komen scandal. Thousands and thousands of people blogged, called or emailed their complaints to numerous media outlets in the days to follow Planned Parenthoods media release about the funding changes from SGK. How many people really looked into the facts? How many people rushed to judgment, threated to mail coat hangers in the mail to SGK, called all pro-lifers women haters, cursed the overall mission of SGK? It was flabbergasting. There was the story from SGK, and then there was PP story….and in the middle was the truth. But no one cares about the truth sometimes. Not when the slant helps push their cause forward so much better.


Back to the photo. Are circuses bad? Maybe. But to prove it you must base it in fact. The same needs to be said for the whole abortion issue. Hate abortion? Great? Why, and don’t tell me because it’s wrong. Tell me why it is wrong. Have some meat to your argument. Maybe you support abortion rights. Why? Again…don’t give some lame answer that a woman has the right to do to her body what she wants because we all know, whether we want to admit it or not, that it is not her body that anything is being done to. The suction tube sucks up a fetus, the saline solution burns the fetus inside and out, abortion pills poison the fetus…not the mother…they are separate human beings. The mother is not burned, poisoned, or sucked up into the tube used by abortionists; the unborn baby, often times with a beating heart, little hands, feet, and head, is. So, again, have a valid arguement that supports why you believe it is okay to end the life of a baby in the womb....and (hopefully) don't approve of it outside the womb.

How many people who are on the fence, or even pro-abortion, would change their point of view if they based their opinion on researched facts rather than media slant? And yes, most of your local news stations pose every story to you with a strong liberal slant. Our wealth of knowledge should NOT come from media at all! And everything we read should be supported by other factual pieces or we must question the validity of that piece. So, if you are reading this, know that this is not a news source, but merely my own ranting on frustrations of how gullible otherwise very intelligent people can be. (even me sometimes!).

Addressing the Youth Pro-Life Rally Disrupted In D.C.

Finding Middle Ground; Can it be done?

If it were possible to sit down, both pro-abortion supporters and pro-life supporters, and calmly discuss the many disagreements, both perceived and confirmed, that we have, I believe many, if not most of our perceived differences would be found to be false. I believe with all my heart that there is a middle ground that can be found, and while that middle ground will not please everyone, it will, I believe, bring us closer to behaving as a society that values life…both that of the mother and that of the unborn baby. Isn’t that our goal?



Do pro-aborts really not value the lives of babies? I don’t believe that is true for the majority; though I am sure there are the extremist who have little value for human life in general. Do pro-lifers really not value the life of the mother? Absolutely not! In fact, pro-lifers care so deeply for the mothers that they choose to look at the abortion dilemma from all angles. I’ll explain later. Though, again, there are extremists on both sides of this issue. At the recent Youth Pro-Life Rally in D.C., several pro-abortion supporters chose to interrupt the assembly by shouting pro-abort slogans such as “pro-life, that’s a lie, you don’t care if women die.” I suppress the urge to rise to anger at this statement. Instead, I am bewildered and wonder why pro-aborts believe this. Really…wholeheartedly, they believe this.




I want to dive right into the idea that pro-lifers do not respect or value the life of the pregnant mother. Unlike the pro-abortion supporters, pro-lifers look at the big picture. Though I understand there are extremists who do not believe in abortions even if the life of the mother is in danger. But these are the extremists, and both sides of the table have them…we have to cancel out the extremes views if we are ever to find middle ground. In general, most pro-lifers acknowledge that there will always be the need for abortions if a mother’s life is in danger and do not support the death of the mother to save the unborn child. Though I admire and deeply respect the women who choose to push forward with their pregnancies at the risk of their own lives. This is the part of abortion that is so personal to each woman and her family. It is her choice what she does in these circumstances, just as pro-abortion supporters claim. I don’t know that there is a right or wrong decision and neither choice can be an easy one to make.



However, I do have issue with these knee-jerk reactions to hasty diagnosis made by doctors who are all too ready to recommend abortion. My own mid-wife uttered the word so casually during one of my visits when discussing options for birth control. It’s almost instantaneous as if no second thought is given to the idea of ending the life of a healthy baby. If I were to be in this situation, where my life was in danger, you better believe I would get several medical opinions before making any choice to abort my child…though I have a strong feeling that if put in this position I would be one of the crazy few who chose to go through with the pregnancy at risk of my own life. I just don’t think I could bring myself to end the life of my own child.



Abortion supports will say, “So, what about all the girls and women who are victims of rape and incest? Do you expect them to have those babies?” Before we get into this let’s talk about facts. Statistics show that less than 1% of all abortions done in this country are done as a result of rape or incest. (http://realweb.ifastnet.com/stats.html#arpinct) LESS THAN 1%!! This is not where pro-lifers are addressing their energy, yet pro-aborts can’t take their focus off of it. Let’s not even pretend for a moment that this is an easy topic to discuss! You will get so many opinions from pro-lifers on this. First of all, let’s get back to the health and safety of the mother. Is this a 12, 13 or 14 year old girl? Their little bodies can usually support a fetus from beginning to birth, but often times at great risk to their own bodies and can cause a lifetime of pain and other medical conditions because their developing bodies were just not ready for the extreme rigors of pregnancy. Again, when the mother’s life is in danger, rational thinking would allow for any and all medical procedures to save the mother…as sad as that may be, it is the right of the mother to preserve her own life.



But, this is not the end. There are, in that tiny 1%, older girls and women who have been raped. Here is where I see the pro-life movement being more rounded in their concern. For a pro-abort supporter they see only the pain of having to carry a child who was created in such a horrendous cruel manner. Pro-lifers, on the other hand consider the physiological welfare of the mother after the abortion. Many women after having gone through this ordeal live not only with the pain of the rape, but also the regret of having ended the life of an innocent child. After all, the child is being punished for the sins of the father.



When considering this, pro-lifers recommend to these moms to give their children up for adoption. These children are not unlovable. They were just brought into the world under unfortunate circumstances. But what better way to heal the mother than to be able to say, “Yes, this absolutely horrible thing happened to you, but you, YOU gave life to a little baby and blessed the world with their innocence and wonder!” Isn’t that a whole lot more healing in the long term than to have to live with the knowledge that you ended the life of that child as an attempt to ease your own pain? I am sure there will be differing opinions here, but the point is that pro-life people do deeply care about women, now and for many years to come…and don’t just seek immediate solutions to circumstances that are much too complex to be solved with one heartrending, absolute and permanent action.



Now, this argument of mine could carry on for a very long time, so for now I want to just wrap this up with some simple facts. Of the thousands upon thousands, upon thousands of babies that are aborted in this country every year, every month in fact, about half of them are aborted for one of two reasons; mother is not-ready for motherhood or lack of finances. (http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/abreasons.html) Let me repeat. A life, a human life, is ended because the women chose to have sex before she was ready to have a child. A mother chose to kill that human rather than give them a chance through adoption for no other reason than the fact that she had not planned on the possibility of pregnancy.


So whose fault is it again that the mother got pregnant? Is it the unborn child’s? They are the ones paying the ultimate price of death for those actions. We hear the words “A women’s right to choose” over and over again. Yes, a mother does have a right to choose…the right to choose not to have sex, the right to choose to use contraceptives that do not create the risk of unintended abortions. They have the right to choose to regard sex as a means to pro-create and to do so only when ready to accept the end result of those actions.


I realize I have only touched the surface here of the complexities of this issue, and rest assured I will write more in the future. My goal in this blog was to get the point across that extremism on both sides of this issue will not help us bring an end to abortion being used as means of birth control. It will not help us end legal abortions at all stages of pregnancy, for any reason (meaning you could abort your child in many states in this country at 39 weeks for no other reason than you just decided you don’t want a baby anymore). I believe rational educated people on both sides can agree that the abortion laws in this country (thanks to Roe vs. Wade) allow for inhumane practices nationwide.