The Information Age
By Trent LoosAirports are always a hotbed of new topics, and since I passed through seven different terminals last week, I am overflowing with thoughts to share. I had a conversation with a retired schoolteacher who works with the Franciscans on community improvement in Las Vegas. We discussed how and where to find credible information in this age of technology.
If you type “mad cow” into the Google search engine, you will find 1.790 million websites. However, the first listed and most hit website has not been updated since 2001. The second site on the list was updated in 1999. How dangerous is that? What about credibility? A lot has happened with BSE in the past few years. Last week I received an email forward from someone in Montana. The letter was against McDonalds and the imported meat they use. Many people that I know have received this message. This is how the letter closes:
"I am sending this note to about thirty people. If each of you send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300) ... and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000) ... and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers! I'll bet you didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you? Acting together we can make a difference. If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on."
David W. Forrest, Ph.D., PAS, Dipl. ACAP Department of Animal Science; Texas A&M University
While addressing 900 Block and Bridle members at their national convention in San Antonio last week, Dr. David Forrest was in the crowd. When I brought up the McDonalds e-mail, I could see his heart sink like the sun on a clear, summer evening. He informed me that in June of 2000, someone had sent the e-mail to him to verify the validity of its content. He forwarded the message to someone else, again to check the credibility. Somehow his name got attached to the document and has been floating on the internet ever since.
For the first six months, Dr. Forrest received an unlimited number of calls. The chaos finally died down, but since Dec. 23, 2003, the e-mails have been running through cyberspace like a dog after a rabbit. Can you even imagine what it must feel like to have thousands of people reading what they consider to be your thoughts when they aren’t yours at all?
The most recent Dr. Atkins controversy is no different. The major news networks reported that Atkins was obese at the time of his death. Then we find out that the two organizations that circulated this information about Atkins were the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PRCM) and the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). These are both animal rights groups with known vegetarian agendas. PRCM has been told by the American Medical Association “to immediately terminate the inappropriate and unethical tactics your organization uses to manipulate public opinion.” PCRM “represents less than .5 percent of the total U.S. physician population.” Despite these warnings from the American Medical Association, our “news” networks continue to rely on them as expert sources.
If you listen to the “news,” all you hear about is Janet Jackson or the end of the Sex in the City series. Why don’t we get real news anymore? The story of Wilder Morey from Warroad, MN should have been national headline news. He was awarded the Dust Off Crew Member of the Year Award for his rescue of other team members when their helicopter crashed in the Tigris River in Iraq last year. This award is given to one Army person each year - Wilder saved human lives. That is news that is worthy of some airtime.
Why, as a society, don’t we spend more time asking “Why”? We tend to accept things on the surface and move on. Back to my bumper sticker mentality: we don’t have time to look at anything in depth so we need it in six words or less. My flight partner from Las Vegas feels our “news” is nothing more than “economic blackmail” and she doesn’t listen to any of it. She takes the time to do the research. She checks the credibility and potential agenda of each information source. How many people are going to do that?
Yes, we do live in the information age, but if more people don’t ask “Why,” the decisions that are made based on misinformation will hurt our society more than if there was no information available at all and people relied on common sense. Don’t be afraid to ask “Why?”.
